In the last bi-monthly monetary policy meeting held on October 9, 2024 (before the CPI inflation data for October 2024 was released), the RBI maintained a status quo on the policy repo rate for the tenth time in a row. Five members out of the six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), namely Shri Saugata Bhattacharya, Prof.…
India’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation for October 2024, inched up to 6.21% (a 14-month high) from 5.49% in the previous month and surpassed the RBI’s target range of 2-6%. The CPI inflation reading for rural India was higher at 6.68% than for urban India at 5.62%. Inflation in ‘food & beverages’, which has nearly…
The Indian equity market has been rather volatile of late. One of the factors weighing on is the geopolitical scenario. In the recently concluded U.S. Presidential elections, Donald Trump (of the Republican Party) triumphed over the Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris, becoming the 47th President of the United States of America (USA) by a sweeping majority and also…
Indian mutual fund houses amidst the upbeat market sentiments (backed by the fact that India is the fastest growing economy with robust fundamentals) and that retail investors are enthusiastically investing in mutual funds have launched a variety of schemes, both active and passively managed ones, over the last few years. Table: Fund Houses Opened NFO Factories…
In the calendar year 2024, Mirae Asset Mutual Fund has come up with several NFOs and a majority of them have been from the passive investment category — either equity-oriented exchange-traded funds or Index Funds. Given the fascination for the passive style of investing of late, particularly index funds, and also because certain diversified equity funds haven’t…
Against the backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions, particularly in the Middle East, volatility in the Indian equity market increased. RBI Governor, Mr Shaktikanta Das, in his speech on Global Financial Stability; Risks and Opportunities in the September 2024 bulletin, stated that the contagion risk from geopolitics can no longer be ignored, and geoeconomic fragmentation is weighing on the…
The capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), in order to facilitate enhanced transparency, make it easy to understand for investors, and standardise the approach towards disclosures by mutual funds, last week on September 27, 2024, released a consultation paper. In it certain changes have been proposed that shall help you, the…
In the full budget of the Modi 3.0 government presented in July 2024, Finance Minister, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman ended up upsetting market participants by increasing the capital gain tax. With respect to listed debt securities such as bonds, debentures, etc., the Long Term Capital Gain (LTCG) tax was increased to 12.5% from the previous 10%, with no indexation…
The data of the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) reveals that a predominant portion (over 60%) of the Indian mutual fund industry’s assets comes from individual investors. Individual investors are deploying their money into equity-oriented mutual fund schemes in the desire to earn better returns as opposed to investing in bank Fixed Deposits (FDs) and other interest-yielding investment instruments.…
Despite the geopolitical tensions (Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas war, attack by Israel on Lebanon to target Hezbollah, likely escalation in the Middle East, tensions flaring up in the South China Sea between China and Philippines, China and Taiwan, strained US-China relations and trade war, among others), risk of geoeconomic fragmentation, adverse climate events, the risk to…
