Experts Financial News

Marico Ltd. traded 0.04 per cent at Rs 672.55 at 10:25AM (IST) on Monday, even as BSE benchmark Sensex 407.94 points to 76970.97. The stock had settled at Rs 672.85 in the previous session. The stock quoted a 52-week high price of Rs 719.80 and 52-week low of Rs 486.75, respectively. As per BSE data, total traded volume on the counter till 10:25AM (IST) stood at 3444 shares with a turnover of Rs 0.24 crore.

Cholamandalam Investment & Finance Company Ltd. traded 0.19 per cent in Monday's trade at 10:35AM (IST). Around 5,277 shares changed hands on the counter. The counter opened at Rs 1239.85 and touched an intraday high and low of Rs 1259.00 and Rs 1227.55, respectively, in the session so far. Shares of the company of Cholamandalam Investment & Finance Company Ltd. quoted a 52-week high of Rs 1650.00 and a 52-week low of Rs 1011.50.

Indobell Insulation will debut on the exchanges on Monday. Ahead of the listing, the company's shares were trading with a GMP of Rs 39 in the grey market. Considering the upper price band of Rs 46, the stock is expected to list at a premium of 85% over the issue price.

Avenue Supermarts, which operates the retail chain of Dmart, will remain in focus on Monday, January 13, after the company announced that its standalone Q3 revenue jumped 17.5% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 15,565 crore while profit rose 6.5% YoY to Rs 785 crore. However, the retailer's EBITDA margin fell to 7.9% in Q3FY25 as compared to 8.5% in Q3FY24 while the PAT margin also decreased to 5% vs 5.5% on a YoY basis.

Jeff Bezos in an interview with Reuters on Sunday said he does not think SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will use his close ties with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to undercut his space company Blue Origin, adding he feels «very optimistic» about the incoming administration's space agenda. «Elon has been very clear that he's doing this for the public interest and not for his personal gain. And I take him at face value,» said Bezos, founder of Blue Origin which rivals SpaceX in the space industry. Bezos is in Cape Canaveral, Florida for the debut launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn, a 30 story-tall rocket that is expected to chip away at SpaceX's market dominance and kick start Blue Origin's long-delayed entrance in the satellite launch business.

The Maha Kumbh is one of the largest and most significant religious congregations in the world, held every 12 years at one of four locations in India. The Mahakumbh 2025, which is Poorna Kumbh is taking place in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, from January 13 to February 26, 2025.

artificial intelligence, promising to create special zones for data centres and encouraging more graduates to study technology-focused courses. Starmer will say he wants to put AI at the heart of his ambition to grow the economy, while the government will claim if the technology is fully adopted it could increase productivity by 1.5% a year, worth an extra 47 billion pounds ($57 billion), annually over a decade. Ahead of a speech in London by Starmer on AI, the government said it will adopt all the 50 recommendations set out in the report "AI Opportunities Action Plan" by venture capitalist Matt Clifford, submitted to the government last year.

Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has sought additional documents from the company as part of its ongoing investigation into the electric two-wheeler manufacturer. “In continuation of the earlier letter received from the Central Consumer Protection Authority dated December 04, 2024, by Ola Electric Mobility Limited we would like to inform you that the company has received further request for information via email dated January 10, 2025,” the company said in an exchange filing on Friday post market hours.

Brent crude futures climbed $1.35, or 1.69%, to $81.11 a barrel by 2339 GMT after hitting an intraday high of $81.44, the highest since Aug. 27.

Triveni Sangam in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj to take a holy dip during the Maha Kumbh Mela. Despite the freezing waters during the cold winter season, a group of foreign devotees took a dip in the Triveni Sangam, the sacred confluence of the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and the 'mystical' Saraswati. A Brazilian devotee, Francisco, who came to India for the first time in search of Moksha, said that it was an amazing feeling to be present there. He mentioned that the water at the confluence was cold, but his heart was filled with warmth after he took a dip.

BSE Sensex was the eighth best-performing global index in 2023, but slipped to 13th rank in 2024. The analysis is based on 22 world equity benchmarks that cover the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The data is sourced from Reuters-Refinitiv. The weak performance of corporate India in the September quarter, geopolitical factors, elevated valuations, strengthening of the US dollar index and substantial FPI outflows (in October and November) led to a jump in volatility in the fourth quarter of 2024. As the markets enter 2025, the volatility is unlikely to abate soon due to high US bond yields and a stronger USD index. These factors will keep the US markets attractive and prevent FPIs from sustained buying in emerging markets (EMs), including India.

Diamonds were never truly investments in the first place, and the very idea that they could be regarded as such is a carefully constructed marketing myth. The recent attention to the Diamond Standard Index’s lacklustre performance over 22 years might seem like news. However, it merely confirms what smart savers have known all along, that the diamond market is unlike any other investment market. The basic principle of any investment is not just its quoted price, but the realisability of this price, that is, what you can get when you want to sell it. With diamonds, this gap between theory and reality is rather wide, to put it mildly. This peculiar nature of diamonds isn’t accidental; it’s by design. The story goes back to 1870, when massive diamond discoveries in South Africa threatened to destroy the gem’s value forever. The solution? Create a monopoly—which became De Beers—to control supply and prices. The real masterstroke came in 1938, when Harry Oppenheimer, the founder’s son, launched one of history’s most successful marketing campaigns, transforming diamonds from mere precious stones to supposed symbols of eternal love and value.

Here's breaking down the pre-market actions:

Infosys is set to roll out its annual pay hikes from February, ushering in the New Year on a happy note for its employees. The country's second largest software exporter will hand out letters to employees falling at job level five (JL5) and below next month with the raise effective retrospectively from January 1. Those at JL6 and above will receive their letter in March with the hike taking effect from April, a senior company executive told employees at an Infosys Validation Services unit (IVS unit) town hall on Friday, people briefed on the subject told ET.

decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors such as thermal power, iron and steel, and cement plants, people familiar with the matter told ET. The contours of the mission are being firmed up and an announcement could be made in the February budget, they said. This mission will be in line with India's goals to halve carbon emissions by 2050 and attain netzero emissions by 2070. «Discussions are on, on the contours of the mission… details are being worked out,» a senior government official said. A committee under the chairmanship of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) is in place for defining the requirement and timeline of this mission and scheme needed to implement the goals, the person said.Asecond official said two meetings of this committee have already taken place.

Flipkart is in advanced discussions to lead a $35–40 million funding in its fintech venture, Super.money, which for the first time may see external investors also joining the round but with the web-retailer retaining its majority ownership, people in the know of the matter said. Super.money, started by Flipkart senior executive Prakash Sikaria, is among the big focus areas at Flipkart for its financial services and lending business and has emerged as one of the fastest growing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) apps. It surpassed Amazon Pay last month in terms of volume with more than 100 million UPI transactions, as per National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data. Super.money is emerging as a rival to payments firms like PhonePe — previously part of the Flipkart group — and others. The Flipkart-led latest funding will set the valuation benchmark for the fintech venture that will be scaled aggressively in 2025.

Business correspondents (BCs)-who process thousands of crores of rupees daily in domestic remittances-have urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to relax the restrictions it had imposed on monthly and daily transfers 14 years ago, according to people aware of the development. They have written to the RBI, requesting it to double the monthly transfer limit to ₹50,000 and reduce the requirement of a two-factor authentication (2FA) to once a month from it being needed for every transaction now, the people cited earlier told ET. This comes after the BCs complained to the regulator about the misuse of its latest domestic money transfer rules that mandate KYC (know-your-customer) checks of every remitter.

India, too, has its share of quirky regulations. Until recently, kite-flying required a permit under the Indian Aircraft Act of 1934, as kites were classified as 'aircraft'. Delhi barbers are still legally obliged to maintain a register of every haircut performed. These outdated laws, often harmless on the surface, highlight a deeper problem: absence of an institutionalised system for regulatory review. Without mechanisms to periodically evaluate and repeal redundant laws, governance becomes riddled with inefficiencies, eroding public trust and creating unnecessary friction.

Steel Authority of India and John Cockerill India will jointly invest around ₹6,000 crore on setting up a downstream plant for steel, which will be used for the production of cold-rolled grain-oriented and cold-rolled non-oriented types of electrical steel, sources aware of the development said. The hot-rolled coils (HRCs), a form of finished steel to be used as raw material for this plant, will be supplied from SAIL, while the downstream unit itself is likely to be set up at one of SAIL's existing plants, they said. While a final call on where the plant will be set up is yet to be made, the project is expected to come on-board between 2027 and 2029, they said. In November last year, SAIL had signed a memorandum of understanding with John Cockerill India for green steel technologies and innovation, with a focus on carbon steel, green steel and silicon steel.

Adani Group will invest Rs 65,000 crore in energy and cement projects in Chhattisgarh, the conglomerate said Sunday. Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani met Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai on Sunday and announced an investment of Rs 60,000 crore to expand the group's power plants in Raipur, Korba and Raigarh in the state. The expansion will enhance Chhattisgarh's power generation capacity by 6,120 MW, a company statement said. Adani Power is India's top private thermal power producer. It is targeting to double its thermal power capacity to 30.67 GW by 2029-30 from 15 GW currently. The firm said last month it was exploring options of investing Rs 20,000 crore to set up a coal-fired ultra-supercritical thermal power plant in Bihar.