After pulling out $17 billion in calendar year 2022, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have pumped $7.3 billion back into equity markets so far this year. The turnaround in foreign flows has helped domestic markets exceed the all-time highs chalked up in December 2022 and bounced back more than 10 per cent from this year's lows. However, a big nugget of FPI inflows seen this year could be off the back of two factors: exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and block deals.
In the mid-year monetary policy review on Tuesday, RBI, left the key interest rate unchanged but reduced cash reserve ratio by 0.25 per cent to infuse additional liquidity of up to Rs 17,500 crore (Rs 175 billion) into the system.
India's most valued company, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), reported a robust performance in the third quarter of the current financial year (Q3FY25), surpassing analyst expectations. This coupled with positive commentary by brokerages led to the stock of the oil-to-telecom conglomerate surging as much as 4.44 per cent to hit an intraday high of Rs 1,325.1. It settled at Rs 1,301.3 apiece, up 2.57 per cent.
Investment by US PE firm KKR will add fire to Ambani's battle for dominance in the retail market that is also being eyed by Jeff Bezos' Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart.
The taxman is rapidly catching up with foreign companies operating in India through agents. After Star, Morgan Stanley and Sony, it was the turn of UK-based Rolls Royce to be asked to pay taxes on a part of profits earned from Indian operations.
Goldman Sachs has amassed $2bn to use for property investments in Asia, a move likely to intensify competition for assets in fast-growing markets such as China and India.
Overall, the positives in favour of ONGC seem to outweigh the negatives from a long-term perspective.
Call it a revival of the information technology (IT) industry or increase in demand from non-IT sectors, office lease and sale transactions have picked up by 10 to 15 per cent in the past quarter.
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, as well as Britain's Asia-focused Standard Chartered said they would try to support London's financial sector
But Citi's woes might call for more visionary and charismatic leadership than he can offer.
After a stellar run in 2021 that saw the S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 clock gains of 20 per cent and 22 per cent respectively, global equity markets, including India, are gearing up to welcome 2022 on a cautious note. For one, new variants of the Covid -19 infection that make current vaccines less effective is one of the key risks worth flagging, analysts said. Inflation was also a risk for this asset class in 2021, although most market participants expect that the current elevated inflation levels will be transitory.
After having raised Rs 20,000 crore by selling NFOs, mutual funds are now likely to turn buyers. A slew of funds, including Morgan Stanley ACE Fund, Birla Sun Life Pure Value Fund, Mirae Asset India Opportunities Fund Standard Chartered Fund closed recently. Mutual funds launch NFOs to raise money since the mutual fund penetration in India is low. Most mutual funds expect redemptions on account of advance tax provisioning that corporate houses do at this time of the year.
Foreign institutional investment flows remain key driver for the Indian markets.\n
Fidelity's head of investment strategy defends his lengthy portfolio and explains his approach.
Domestic equity markets are in elite company. In May, Indian markets joined select developed markets (DMs) such as the US, UK and Germany to record new all-time highs. Among emerging markets (EMs), Brazil is the other market to have logged new highs this month. Asian peers such as South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand are currently between 2 per cent and 10 per cent below their previous highs made earlier this year. The domestic markets were among the worst-performing major global markets in April amid a lethal second-wave of covid-19 infections.
According to a Thomson Financial research, no Indian investment bank figures in the top ten list of the M&A deals that was struck this year, which was topped by UBS.
IndiGo heads towards $400 mln IPO as air travel booms.
'Investors looking at the next 6-12 months can be certain that the Fed will maintain its easing cycle, and we expect the overall environment to be conducive for fixed income investments for portfolio diversification.'
Even though stocks may remain volatile in the run-up to the polls, as political parties stitch up alliances, the long-term trajectory for the markets remains bullish.
Most players are looking to invest anywhere between $500 million and $1 billion in new ventures in the next couple of years, said experts on this segment.
Food ordering platform Zomato, whose Rs 9,375 crore IPO opens on July 14, is planning to launch a grocery section on its app soon, a senior company official said. The company recently invested USD 100 million (around Rs 745 crore) for acquiring a minority stake in grocery delivery platform Grofers. "It (grocery) is a large opportunity. The online grocery is nascent right now but is growing rapidly not just in India but across the world... "We are actively experimenting in that space and recently invested $100 million for a minority stake in Grofers, with the idea of getting more exposure to that space and building our strategies and plan around that business," Zomato CFO Akshant Goyal said.
Vikram Pandit has taken the helm at the troubled financial-services giant. He talks about the road back.
HDFC Bank's latest shareholding data showed that the room for foreign investment has fallen just 5 basis points short of the threshold set by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) to fully include the stock in its indices. Currently, the index provider has applied an adjustment factor of 0.5 since the foreign room is less than 25 per cent. Removal of the adjustment factor will result in inflows of a massive $4.8 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) into HDFC Bank, according to Brian Freitas, a New Zealand-based analyst with Periscope Analytics.
Morgan Stanley writing down its investment in the e-commerce leader by 27 per cent does not augur well for the sector.
The under-leveraged nature of corporates will help reduce the impact.
Petronet LNG Ltd, which completed construction of India's first LNG import terminal at Dahej in Gujarat, announced on Monday that it will float an initial public offering of 26.10 crore
India Inc was, perhaps, watching out for a repeat of the dot-com bubble burst of the early 2000s.
A weak rupee, though seemingly good for exporters, would push up input cost further for Indian companies.
Ruchir Sharma on the market potential over the next 12 months
New Delhi Television Ltd has filed a draft red herring prospectus with Securities Exchange Board of India for its initial public offer of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).
Petronet LNG Ltd will float an initial public offering of 261 million shares, representing 34.8 per cent of the total equity of the company, around mid-February, P Dasgupta, director (finance), PLL, said in New Delhi on Friday.
Around 250 financial market players will participate in a closed door meeting with Narendra Modi on February 27.
