The future trend in the stock market will finally get defined by the aggregate earnings expectations from individual companies in an economy.

We were expecting the RBI governor to step in and provide liquidity and rate cuts. The RBI governor did just that today. He declared a string of measures like cutting the Repo and the reverse repo rates, cutting the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by 100 basis points, injecting liquidity of Rs 3.74 lakh crores in the system etc. All this should cause the interest rates to go down (and hence bond prices to go up). At the time of writing this piece, the interest rates were indeed down.

Risk shows up infrequently, but it is high impact. This is why one must always be aware. In the current set of events, it’s the risk attached to bond investing which has had a greater impact than equity investing. Understanding both the risk of bond investing i.e., credit risk and the risk in equity investing i.e., risk of quality, are important.

If you are a mutual fund investor, budget 2020 does change some things. There are three key items that have been announced in this budget. Taxation on dividends, removal of dividend distribution tax and changes in the tax treatment of side pocketing in Mutual fund portfolios.

The potential economic impact of the Coronavirus outbreak affected markets significantly towards the end of February. Another big challenge faced by the economy is continuing weakness in GDP growth combined with a relatively high fiscal deficit. Some of the key initiatives like lower corporate tax rates are expected to kick start the investment cycle by the industry

Fiscal deficit and economic growth are twin concerns facing the economy. Experts have been recommending loosening up fiscal targets and focusing on economic growth. Moreover, there seem to be early signs of the economy recovering.

Our analysis suggests that many of the larger companies, leading the Nifty, continue to grow at rates higher than nominal GDP growth and are trading at valuations that are reasonable. Moreover, as and when the economy recovers, growth rates will be stronger than long term expected growth rates as companies start re-stocking their inventories.

Despite the weak economy, the stock markets have been holding up well on the back of the reduced corporate income tax rates leading to higher earnings growth. Moreover, this step is expected to trigger an investment cycle.

Stock markets in India rebounded strong, post the announcement of reduced tax rates for Indian companies. The Nifty was up sharply, making up for the losses over the past few months.

In one stroke, the FM reduced the corporate rates from 34.9% to 25.2%. Let’s find out how it benefits shareholders and thus you, as an investor.

Market watchdog Sebi recently came out with new guidelines for liquid funds. The newly introduced norms could potentially change the portfolio orientation of liquid funds.

NBFC Credit flow impacting GDP growth. Scripbox Market Commentary June 2019.