The country's largest insurer LIC on Tuesday listed its shares at a discount of 8.11 per cent at Rs 872 per share on the NSE. On the BSE, the shares got listed at Rs 867.20 apiece, down 8.62 per cent over the issue price of Rs 949 a share. LIC had fixed the issue price of its shares at Rs 949 apiece after a successful initial public offering, which fetched Rs 20,557 crore to the government.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers readers' queries on stocks they own or want to buy. Here are his replies to some of the 'buy, sell, hold, avoid or exit?' e-mails that we have received.
New Delhi's timing couldn't have been worse, both for India's fledgling electric vehicle (EV) sector and prospective electric bike buyers. It was hard to miss the perfect storm brewing for India's EV industry since early 2022. On one hand, you had several accidents involving battery fires that unnerved consumers; on the other, uncertainty had crept in over subsidies.
Foreign investors have pulled over Rs 6,400 crore from the Indian equity market in the first four trading sessions of the ongoing month when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and US Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Given the headwinds in terms of elevated crude prices, inflation, tight monetary policy among others, FPIs' flows in India are expected to remain volatile in the near term, Shrikant Chouhan, Head - Equity Research (Retail), Kotak Securities, said. Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) remained net sellers for seven months to April 2022, withdrawing a massive amount of over Rs 1.65 lakh crore from equities. This was largely on the back of anticipation of a rate hike by the US Federal Reserve and due to the deteriorating geopolitical environment following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Stock markets are expected to remain under pressure this week due to the overhang of US presidential polls and uncertainty over global growth due to resurging cases of coronavirus, according to analysts.
Foreign money has been pouring into India's fast-growing e-commerce sector, with investors ranging from Japan's Softbank Corp to Singapore's Temasek Holdings.
A long and bitter funding winter in the start-up world is beginning to take its toll on start-up advertising across properties. Earlier this week, Mastercard replaced Paytm as the title sponsor for all international and domestic cricket matches organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). But this is just one part of the story. The other side is that organisers of high-impact shows and events on Hindi general entertainment channels, too, are feeling the winter chill.
The most preferred CoCo bonds are those through which banks raise their additional Tier-I capital.
A total of 49 companies raised Rs 81,615 crore in Samvat 2077, more than the preceding four years and almost double the amount raised in the previous year. Samvat 2078 appears even more promising with mega issues of Paytm and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India. However, Paytm's record could be short-lived as state-owned LIC is planning to launch a Rs 1-trillion IPO by March 2022.
Companies in the small-cap universe are having a dream run - the Nifty Smallcap 100 index has shot up more than 25 per cent on a year-to-date basis, even as the benchmark Nifty is up 7 per cent. This is the best start for the index since 2017 when the Nifty Smallcap 100 index surged 32.3 per cent between January 1 and May 10. However, in terms of outperformance to the Nifty, this year's performance is the best in more than a decade. A combination of sectoral tailwinds and lack of institutional selling pressure has helped small companies escape from the correction triggered by the second wave of Covid-19.
The bank lost out on fairly meaningful quantum of fees from point of sale terminals and ATM usage during the demonetisation exercise.
It has been a slow 2022 thus far for the primary markets. In the last 8 months, only 16 companies have raised Rs 40,311 crore via the initial public offer (IPO) route, data from PRIME Database suggests. In comparison, 63 companies had raised a cumulative Rs 1.18 trillion via the IPO route in 2021. A large part of the funds raised in 2022 were on account of the two IPOs - Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and logistics firm Delhivery - that raised a total of over Rs 26,000 crore between themselves.
'Overtightening of monetary policy by central banks and the spread of new Covid variants, which may force governments to restart lockdowns or restrict mobility.'
Software major Tata Consultancy Services on Wednesday reported a 14.8 per cent rise in net income to Rs 11,392 crore for the fourth quarter of last fiscal against Rs 9,959 crore in the year-ago period. The country's largest technology services company by market value said its revenue rose 16.9 per cent to Rs 59,162 crore during the reporting season from Rs 50,591 crore a year ago.
The current valuation is 38 per cent higher than the 10-year average of 22x and over 50 per cent higher than the 20-year average of around 20x.
India's GDP may turn positive at 1.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2020-21, having witnessed contraction in the previous two quarters due to the coronavirus pandemic, as the number of cases is falling and public spending has started rising, according to a report. The government will release the GDP numbers for the October-December quarter of the current fiscal on Friday. Projecting that the gross domestic product (GDP) may have returned to the black in the last quarter of the calendar year 2020, DBS Bank in the report said the full-year growth in real terms may be at a negative 6.8 per cent.
Hiring activity in the country, which was hit by the second COVID wave, bounced back with a 15 per cent growth in June compared to May, according to a report. The activity was led by the IT-software/software services sector. The latest Naukri JobSpeak report on Thursday said that India's hiring trends grew 15 per cent in June with 2,359 job postings from 2,047 in May.
Open order books in February breach 700,000; wait period for some models exceed a year.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced to increase the policy repo rate by 50 basis points to 4.9 per cent, the second hike in five weeks aimed at quelling the inflation. The MPC vote was unanimous and has decided to keep stance withdrawal from accommodative, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a press conference on Wednesday. The decision was taken during a three-day meeting of the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to review the interest rates in the country. The MPC voted unanimously to increase the policy repo rate by 50 bps to 4.90 per cent," Das said.
The rupee tumbled 19 paise to close at a fresh lifetime low of 77.93 against the US dollar on Friday as rising crude oil prices and unabated foreign capital outflows soured sentiment. A sell-off in equity markets and stronger greenback overseas also weighed on the domestic unit, forex traders said. At the interbank foreign exchange market, the local currency opened at 77.81 and witnessed an intra-day high of 77.79 and a low of 77.93 against the US dollar.
'Good investment opportunities should not be missed.'
Continuing their massive selling spree for the ninth consecutive month, foreign investors dumped Indian shares worth Rs 50,203 crore in June -- the highest net outflow in over two years -- amid aggressive rate hike by the US Federal Reserve, elevated inflation and relatively higher valuation of domestic equities. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have now pulled out around Rs 2.2 lakh crore from domestic equities in the first six months of 2022 -- the highest-ever net withdrawal by them. Before that, FPIs withdrew Rs 52,987 crore in the entire 2008, data with depositories showed.
After a stellar November that saw companies mop up over Rs 36,000 crore from the primary market via initial public offers (IPOs) and offers for sale (OFS), the current month, analysts said, will test investor's willingness to stay on with their investments as the one-month mandatory lock-in period for anchor investors begins to loosen. A note by Edelweiss Alternative Research suggests that in calendar year 2021 (CY21), 51 companies went public. Of these, 41 issuances' anchor selling dates are already over.
As regards India, FIIs have pumped in over Rs 34,400 crore in the Indian stocks in calendar year 2021.
India's industrial production contracted by 3.6 per cent in February, official data showed on Monday. According to the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), manufacturing sector output declined by 3.7 per cent in February 2021. Retail inflation rose to 5.52 per cent in March, mainly on account of higher food prices, government data showed on Monday. The consumer price index (CPI) based retail inflation stood at 5.03 per cent in February.
Lenders had filed 1,251 cases to recover Rs 24,765.5 crore. Wilful defaulters are the entities that do not pay back money despite the ability to do so. Defaulters above Rs 1 crore were considered for this exercise.
After two months of buying, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have turned net sellers in October by pulling out Rs 12,278 crore from Indian markets. As per depositories data, FPIs took out Rs 13,550 crore from equities but invested Rs 1,272 crore in the debt segment during October 1-29. The total net outflow stood at Rs 12,278 crore during the period under review.
'12250 should be considered a reasonable level to re-enter into the market.'
With retail inflation witnessing significant uptick in May, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to maintain status quo in its August monetary policy review, according to a report. According to the SBI's research report- Ecowrap, inflation may remain elevated in the coming months due to several global and domestic factors. "We expect a status-quo in August. We believe RBI would still try to find a marriage of convenience of regulatory and developmental measures and monetary policy in August policy," the research report said on Wednesday.
ONGC was the top loser in the Sensex pack, followed by HCL Tech, SBI, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp and M&M.
From the pandemic shocks to state polls to global trends, a raft of sentiment drivers are expected to steer the Indian stock market in 2022 after a historic year of massive investor returns and milestones. The Union Budget, which will be closely watched for further reform moves, and quarterly earnings of corporates will be among the developments on investors' radar amid global central banks moving towards tighter interest regime in the wake of inflationary pressures. The year 2021 was rewarding in a big way for equity investors.
A slow but steady economic uptick can be seen in various segments of the economy. India's economy expanded 4.8 per cent in the second quarter, higher than the preceding quarter's 4.4 per cent.
Despite inflation being a near-term concern, we feel its impact on economic growth is likely to be limited. The structural growth drivers remain intact and bode well for equities in the medium to long term.
Sounding a note of caution, former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has said that India is "dangerously close" to the Hindu rate of growth in view of subdued private sector investment, high interest rates and slowing global growth. Rajan said that sequential slowdown in the quarterly growth, as revealed by the latest estimate of national income released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) last month, was worrying. Hindu rate of growth is a term describing low Indian economic growth rates from the 1950s to the 1980s, which averaged around 4 per cent.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your queries.
Since 2016, Sebi has made many rules to prevent unauthorised trading by stockbrokers. Yet, one comes across dozens of cases of blatant overtrading in client accounts, every year, leading to massive losses to investors, observes Debashis Basu.
There is no direct impact of the Russia-Ukraine crisis on India in terms of bilateral trade but a surge in oil prices poses considerable risk to the economy, an analyst report said on Friday. International oil prices which have surged past $100 per barrel "pose risks to external stability and currency movement," a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report said. Russia has launched military operations against Ukraine, stoking fears of significant disruption in the region, including loss of life. The West is ramping up financial sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine.
'Earlier-than-expected tapering from the US, followed by rate hikes, and locally, a potential third wave, which mimics the second wave in terms of severity.'
Analysts attribute the surge to a host of factors, particularly the interest shown by the retail investors in these two market segments.
Increasing awareness about mutual funds, ease of transactions through digitisation and sharp surge in equity markets have aided asset management companies to add a staggering 3.17 crore investor accounts in 2021-22, with experts saying the trend is likely to continue this fiscal as well. This was a significant rise from 2020-21 when 81 lakh accounts (or folios in mutual fund parlance) were opened, data with the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) showed. The ongoing financial year too appears to be promising in terms of folios as increase in investor accounts will enable people to move beyond fixed deposits and savings accounts, said Priti Rathi Gupta, founder of LXME, a financial platform for women.