Morgan Stanley has upgraded China's equities amidst optimism about the country relaxing restrictions to slow down the spread of Covid-19. "Multiple positive developments alongside a clear path set towards reopening warrant an upgrade and index target increases for China," the brokerage said in a note. MSCI China's return on equity (ROE) is likely to rise from 9.4 per cent to 11.1 per cent by the end-2023.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) turned net buyers in October after being net sellers in the previous month. In October, FPIs bought shares worth nearly Rs 8,430 crore ($1 billion) against net selling of Rs 13,405 crore ($1.6 billion) in September. Positive flows during three of the previous four months have pushed the domestic markets towards fresh all-time highs. At present, the Sensex and Nifty are less than 2 per cent shy of breaching record highs logged in October 2021. A rally in equity markets in the US and Europe is in hopes that the Federal Reserve may go soft on rate hikes after its November meeting.
The fundraising through rights issues in the first 10 months of 2022 is the lowest since 2016 during a similar period.
IPO market hopes to come out of slump in festive season, reports Sundar Sethuraman.
The benchmark Nifty50 managed to reclaim its 200-day moving average (DMA) on Wednesday but about half of top 500 stocks continue to languish below this key technical indicator. The 200-DMA - nearly a year's average of closing prices - is analysed by traders to understand the market sentiment. A fall below these levels indicates a weak trend.
The small-cap universe outperformed large-caps, but failed to match the returns generated by mid-caps in August. The Nifty Smallcap 100 Index rose 4.9 per cent. By comparison, the Nifty50 Index rose 3.5 per cent and the Nifty Midcap 100 soared 6.2 per cent. This was only the third calendar month in 2022 when the small-cap index has outperformed the large-cap-oriented Nifty50 Index.
In August, domestic equity markets garnered one of the highest foreign portfolio investor (FPI) flows since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, despite the US Federal Reserve standing firm on unwinding its stimulus measures to control inflation. FPIs pumped in over Rs 51,000 crore ($6.4 billion) in August, the most since December 2020 and the third-highest tally since March 2020-the month the Covid-19 pandemic roiled global markets. This was the second consecutive month of positive foreign flows. In the preceding nine months, FPIs had yanked out over $32 billion or Rs 2.2 trillion.
A sharp rally in domestic stocks from June lows has once again rendered Indian markets expensive to their emerging-market (EM) peers. The 12-month forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple for the Nifty50 Index is around 20.6x - 82 per cent higher than 11.3 per cent for the MSCI EM Index. India's valuation premium has hit a five-month high. This is on the back of sharp outperformance to EM and global peers from June lows and also due to earnings downgrades, following the April-June quarter of 2022-23 earnings.
The benchmark Sensex is 2.4 per cent shy of a new lifetime high but the market capitalisation (m-cap) of all companies listed on the BSE is already in the record books. At Thursday's (August 18) closing price, the total m-cap of 4,776 firms on the BSE stood at Rs 280.5 trillion, surpassing the previous high of Rs 280 trillion on January 17. This, even if the Nifty Midcap 100 is currently 5.4 per cent below its lifetime high, while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index is down over 20 per cent.
Trading volumes for the equities cash segment remained soft, even as the benchmark indices rallied nearly 9 per cent in July. Meanwhile, volumes in the futures and options (F&O) market dipped marginally, but continued to hover at record levels. In July, the average daily turnover (ADTV) for the cash segment was Rs 46,602 crore, up 4.5 per cent month-on-month (MoM), but 26 per cent lower than the preceding 12-month average.
A new generation of investors has taken to stock trading on mobile phones with a renewed zeal, driven mainly by social changes after the Covid-19 pandemic breakout. The proportion of the cash market turnover ascribed to mobile phones has jumped from 5.3 per cent in June 2019 to 18.7 per cent in June this year, reveals BSE data. The share of mobile trading on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) for June this year stood at 19.5 per cent.
Investors have scaled back their allocation to equities as pessimism has reached "dire" levels due to cloudy economic outlook, according to the latest Bank of America (BofA) monthly global fund manager survey that covered nearly 300 money managers with combined assets of $800 billion. The survey showed that the expectations for global growth and profits are at all-time lows and cash levels are at highest since the 9/11 attacks. Interest rate hikes by central banks, the unwinding of an easy monetary regime, disruptions in global supply chains, and fears of recession have heightened market volatility since the beginning of the year.
Equity mutual funds (MFs) deployed maximum in shares of Reliance Industries (RIL) in June at Rs 2,177 crore, followed by Maruti Suzuki (Rs 2,045 crore) and Bharti Airtel (Rs 1,310 crore). Shares of both RIL and Bharti Airtel have been turbulent this month. On July 1, shares of RIL crashed over 7 per cent, following the government imposing windfall taxes on domestic crude oil production and fuel exports.
Initial public offerings (IPOs) have attracted droves of retail investors to the stock market in CY22. But these applicants have lost money on 40 per cent of the fresh issues this year - a trend that may impact sentiment towards maiden share sales during the remaining part of the year. Of the 14 companies that have listed this year, five have closed below their issue price.
'A soft landing of the Indian economy would be a long-term positive for the equity markets.'
LIC's $2.7-billion initial public offering (IPO) shall be the fifth-biggest globally in CY22. South Korean EV battery maker LG Energy Solution holds the record for the year's largest IPO at $10.8 billion, while Chinese mobile communications provider China Mobile IPO, which raised $8.6 billion, comes second. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority's (DEWA's) $6.1-billion IPO in March is currently the third biggest public offering for the year, followed by China National Offshore Oil Corporation's (CNOOC's) IPO; the firm had raised $5.1 billion by issuing shares in Mainland China after delisting from the American bourses.
The number of draft red herring prospectuses (DRHPs) filed with the markets regulator - Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) - jumped nearly fivefold to 145 in 2021-22 (FY22), compared with just 30 in the preceding financial year (2020-21, or FY21). This was on account of companies rushing to take advantage of a favourable market sentiment towards initial public offerings (IPOs), triggered by an influx of new investors, surge in the secondary market, and encouraging performance of newly listed stocks. In fact, DRHPs filed in FY22 was 4x the previous 10-year average and the highest since 2007-08, according to primary market tracker PRIME Database.
Experts say companies wanting to launch IPOs will have to scale back their expectations given the fall in valuations.
Once stability returns to the secondary market, companies that have obtained approval from Sebi will start tapping the market.
Year 2021 was another great year for fund-raising through equities. A total of Rs 1.8 trillion was raised through initial public offerings (IPOs), qualified institutional placements (QIPs), and rights issues, against the Rs 1.7 trillion raised in the previous year. Funds raised through IPOs quadrupled, while those from rights issues and QIPs reduced.
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