Equity Market
Monthly
Return % As on 31st Jan 08

BSE Sensex
-2.31%

S&P Nifty
-2.85%

BSE MID CAP
-9.08%

BSE SMALL CAP
-9.34%

BSE100
-3.96%

BSE200
-4.28%

BSE Bankex
-10.17%

BSE IT
0.38%

Dow Jones
-8.84%

FTSE
-6.42%

HangSeng
-7.71%

KLSE
0.88%

Kospi
3.35%

Nikkei
-9.77%

MSCI Emerging Markets Index
-3.12%

BSE Realty
-26.65%

Market Levels
As on 31st Jan 09

INR USD
48.875

Inflation
5.64

Gold
927.85

Crude (Brent)
44.94

10 Year US Treasury
2.83%

10 Year G Sec
6.21%

5 Year AAA
8.85%

5 Year G Sec
5.95%

Source: Bloomberg, MFI

The benchmark indices fell in January 2009 erasing out the gains reported in late December’08 and early January’09. This was despite the moderating inflation and the better-than-expected IIP numbers for November 2008 (reported in January). The weakness likely came in …

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… Continued from Part 1 & Part 2 of the series …

What you should NOT DO in the market

Try and time the market. As mentioned in Part 1, the market does not follow any fixed pattern or trend. It will take its own course. Trying to time the market is a common mistake made even by veterans who have spent years and years studying and understanding the market. Its better to let the market decide its own course, …

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… Continued from Part 1 of this series …

Golden rules of investing in the market

The first and foremost step in making every financial decision is to have a goal or objective in place. Goal can be short-, medium- or long-term depending on the individual’s requirement. Ideally, you should choose a few momentum-based stocks to meet your short term goals and invest the rest in growth and value stocks with sound fundamentals, good track record and professional management to …

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The Sensex has retracted from its peak of around 21000, touched lows in the 7600-8000 range and is presently trading in a close range of 9000 in the last few months. Still the crucial question on every investor’s mind remains: “Whether the time has come to start investing again in order to reap the benefits of early bird investing?” But some questions still remain unanswered: Has the market bottomed out yet? Should we wait for some more time before taking a final …

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Q3FY2009 seems to be a bad quarter for most media companies as the rate of the yoy growth tapers off substantially in the wake of a significant cut in the advertising spends in the key sectors, such as BFSI, real estate and automobiles. Also, a general sense of rational advertisement spend and fragmentation across media verticals due to an increase in competition would lead to a slower revenue growth. The Hindi general entertainment channel space continues to witness hefty competition with …

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After an outperformance in Q2FY2009, the Capital Goods sector underperformed the broader markets in Q3FY2009 amidst growing concerns of slowdown in order inflows and liquidity crunch. The Q3 saw the capital goods index underperform the benchmark index as the BSE Capital Goods index declined by 34.8% as against a 26.1% decline witnessed by BSE Sensex. The capital goods index in the monthly index of industrial production numbers continued to be volatile, as it rose by 3.1% in October 2008. The …

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Black Gold (i.e. Oil) has lost its sheen, and how! Today, the cost of a litre of petrol or diesel for Indian oil majors is less than the price of a bottle of packaged water. Back-of-the-envelope calculations show that a litre of petrol costs about Rs 11 and diesel about Rs 14, excluding transportation and sundry other charges. By contrast, a one-litre bottle of water costs between Rs 12-15. 

Here’s how the arithmetic goes. A barrel of crude oil contains about …

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