Bulls & Bear Hfund of India

Rajan surprises yet again, raises repo by 25 bps For the fourth time in a row, Raghuram Rajan surprised the market and proved pollsters wrong as he decided to hike the key interest rate or the repo rate by 25 bps to 8% during the third quarter review of monetary policy. This is the third occasion RBI hiked interest rate since Raghuram Rajan took charge in September. Since then, the repo rate has been hiked by 75 bps to tackle inflation which stayed stubbornly high. CPI inflation, however, came down to a three-month low of 9.87% in December compared with 11.16% a month ago – which was record high. The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation also fell to five-month low in December at 6.16% compared with 7.52% the previous month. During the mid quarter policy review in December, Rajan decided to hold rate despite an uptick in inflation as he wanted to wait for more data and he also expected inflation  to soften on  the back of fall in vegetable prices. That Rajan has gone ...

Argentina :  After spending more than $4.5 billion in  defending  the Argentine  peso  last year, the Argentine central bank  allowed the peso to plummet against the  dollar , Wednesday and Thursday, in two brief devaluations that weakened the peso by about 11%. As of Thursday, Argentine dollar reserves were at a seven year low of $29.3 billion from the steady drop in reserves from a peak of $52.6 billion in early 2011 and have sparked concerns that Argentina might struggle to make  debt payments  this year and in 2015. With an energy bill of $15 billion and debt obligations of $10 billion to pay this year, the Central Bank cannot endure much more pressure.   Turkey:  The  Turkish currency  has been falling steadily amid concerns that a bribery and corruption scandal, that involves people close to Prime Minister Erdogan, might destabilize the government. Moreover, it is expected that an intimidating and non-conciliatory t...

Market Update Markets have started the trading session on a lower note tracking weak global cues. By 9:30, the Sensex was lower by 330 points at 20,803 mark and the Nifty declined by 100 points at 6,167 mark. Asian shares took a beating and the yen raced to a seven-week high against the dollar on Monday, as emerging markets remained under pressure with the US Federal Reserve poised to continue tapering its stimulus and tighter credit conditions in China raising fears of a slowdown. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan tumbled 1.6% to nearly a five-month low, on track for its worst one-day performance since August after losing more than 1.0% on Friday. Japan's Nikkei share average gave up the 15,000-level and dropped 2.7%. US stocks tumbled on Friday, to their biggest loss in more than seven months, extending a global sell-off that investors fear signals turmoil to come as financial markets adjust to a pullback in central-bank stimulus. The Dow ...

All the talk of  reducing  power tariffs and and auditing  distribution companies  has been casting a pall of gloom on stocks of power sector companies.  Utility stocks  have been underperforming the markets this calendar year and the BSE Power index figures atop the list of biggest losers among all the sectoral indices of the BSE. Till date 2014, the BSE Power index is down 6.6% 2014 as compared to the Sensex, which has been marginally positive at 0.4%. For over three years now, Indian utility companies have underperformed the Sensex by 43% due to various concerns such as lower  merchant  tariffs, unavailability of fuel, and state of the health of discoms. The latest talk of reducing tariffs by 20% in Maharashtra has been another dampener to the sentiments in the power  sector . Analysts, however, are not too perturbed saying that there is nothing much to worry about as these subsidies are not sustainable and the  tariff -cu...

Sensex ends at all-time closing high Key benchmark indices extended gains in today’s trade to end at fresh highs on a closing basis. The 50-share Nifty ended at its highest closing level in 2014 while the 30-share Sensex hit an all time closing high in today’s trade. The positive tone for the market was set in noon trades when European markets started in the green reversing some of its earlier losses. For the day, the Sensex closed up 36 points at 21,374 and the Nifty gained seven points to close for the day at 6,345. Earlier in the day, markets had a choppy session with key indices largely in red on account of negative Asian cues coupled with profit booking in heavyweight names like Reliance Industries and TCS. However, in the noon deals investor sentiment was boosted by positive moves in the European markets. However, there was a bout of selling in the broader markets with both the mid and smallcap indices closing for the day in the negative territory. The smallcap index was...

  and HCL Technologies, to do an encore in their December 2013 quarter earnings. All three companies also exuded confidence about the future demand environment. N Chandrasekaran, chief executive officer & managing director of TCS, said he believed next year would be a stronger one than 2013-14, as customers executed their business plans in a relatively stable environment. HCL Technologies Chief Financial Officer Anil Chanana said the deal pipeline looked significantly better. “We won 15 large deals in this quarter — about half of them in the IMS (infrastructure management services) space. We remain confident of the growth ahead as client budgets remain stable”. Infosys had also improved its revenue guidance for the financial year from 9-10 per cent to 11.5-12 per cent. For the December 2013 quarter, TCS’ revenues grew 32.5 per cent to Rs 21,294 crore and net profit stood at Rs 5,314 crore, up 49.6 per cent from that in the year-ago period. For Infosys and H...