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As we all know Nifty futures is available for trading  from 19 Jul 2010 in Chicago Mercantile Exchange CME, more details have come into flow.  Two futures contracts, namely E-mini Nifty Futures and E-micro Nifty Futures would be available almost 23 hours all trading days. The first one will be valued at $10 times the current value of nifty index on the NSE, the other one, will be valued at $2 times the nifty index value at that time.

The interesting point is, since nifty futures is also traded on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) ,  traders can take a position on any of the two bourses and offset it at the other exchange and this is because SGX has mutual offset agreement with CME. It would provide good arbitrage opportunities for institutions and traders having access to both the exchanges.

The live rates can be accessed from E-Mini Nifty Futures and E-Micro Nifty Futures .

The Union cabinet of the Indian government unveiled a new rupee symbol joining the club of other international currencies, such as, dollar, pound sterling, euro and the yen. The new currency symbol reflects India’s aspiration to become a leading player on international financial markets.

The new symbol represents:

An amalgamation of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ without the stem.

The new symbol has a lot of similarities with the euro and many felt it should have been more Indian. But there is no doubt that this symbol make the rupee more internationally recognizable.Proper marketing campaign is necessary to create an awareness and to bring it to everybody's notice.

On the international front, India’s status in international financial markets will go up one notch and and will bring some visibility to the Indian currency.

HDFC AMC has launched an NFO with the name 'HDFC Gold Exchange Traded Fund'. This is yet another Gold ETF, apart from existing schemes like Gold Bees, Rel Gold etc which are already traded in NSE. The fund will invest in 90-100% of assets in Gold Bullion.

Some of the features include:

The fund will be listed in NSE and can be easily bought and sold like any other stock on the exchange through terminals spread across the country.
The minimum investment is Rs.5000/- and the NFO is open till Jul 23 2010.
Can be bought/sold anytime during market hours at prices that are expected to be close to actual NAV of the scheme.
Post-listing, the minimum purchase would be 1 unit .

Can one invest in this NFO?

Gold has been one of the biggest outperformers of most of the asset classes, recently and can be still considered for investing.  Hence, investors who don't have exposure to Gold ETFs, can consider investing in this fund.
There are many other Gold ETFs like Gold Bees, Rel Gold etc which are currently traded in NSE, which can also be considered for investments.

With Indian economy moving on an up cycle during FY10, FIIs infused $20bn in Indian capital markets, and retail participation has also improved through direct investments through stock brokers,  insurance and mutual fund route. There is a significant jump in number of online trading by retail traders and this trend is likely to continue its upward journey. So let us throw some light on this brokerage sector, albeit cyclical in nature.

Corporate fund raising activity (through QIPs, IPO, and debt syndication) has gained momentum during FY10, along with the secondary capital market volumes which has clocked a growth of 60% yoy.  This has aided capital market intermediaries’ fee-income substantially. Operating cost of capital market intermediaries is largely variable in nature but still cost effective distribution model - franchisee and online trading through portals helps in keeping a check on operating cost. And, thus operating and net profit margins are likely to remain stable.

India Infoline, Edelweiss Capital and Motilal Oswal  are the prominent listed stocks in this sector. Post correction, these stocks are trading at discount to the benchmark index valuations. The valuations are reasonable, which make them stocks to watch on any declines.

CME Group in partnership with the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and Standard & Poor’s is to offer S&P CNX Nifty Futures, nearly round-the-clock trading on the CME Globex platform.The institutions now have two new ways to take part in the dynamic opportunities of the Indian stock market - E-mini and E-micro S&P CNX Nifty futures (Nifty 50 futures) which are scheduled to begin trading on Monday, July 19, 2010.

Details about the contracts :

Trading hours will be Monday-Friday, 3:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. the next day (except Friday, which closes at 3:15 p.m.) with a trading halt.
Sundays-Thursdays from 9:30-10:30 p.m. CDT (8:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. CST) coinciding with the hour prior to the NSE opening.



This is an interesting listing, thereby providing the Global Institutions to gain exposure to the Indian markets and also arbitrage opportunities from short-term price differences versus the Singapore SGX Nifty futures.

And will this cause any changes in NSE's Trading hours or Nifty futures trading in NSE ? One has to wait and see !

Global markets sold off in May primarily over concerns on the ongoing developments in Eurozone. Over the past month, the DowJones and FTSE were down 8% and 7% respectively. There were significant losses on Asian indices as well with Sensex losing 3.5% . By and large, markets were not convinced that the bailout package was the end of the debt problem and feared that more Euro nations could face crisis similar to Greece.

Going by these developments how did India Inc fair?

The Indian corporate sector reported healthy numbers for the fourth quarter. 4QFY10 BSE-30 Index net profit grew a robust 25.9% yoy. The GDP growth for fourth quarter came at 8.6%, a significant improvement over corresponding quarter of the previous year.

So what's in store for Indian markets ?

From hereon, the markets would be focused on the developments on the monsoon front and of course global events. In the past ten months or so, markets have been largely range bound and have been consolidating between 15500-17600 levels. At this level, valuations are not demanding, but reasonable at 14.8X FY2011E EPS and 12.5X FY2012E EPS.

A full-blown, double-dip recession led by sovereign debt issues in Europe and the US may lead to rapid outflow of FII money from India as in 2008, which in turn could lead to a healthy correction. Currently markets are the higher band of 17000 levels and it could test the lower end of about 15500-16000 levels. Break of this lower band could take it lower to about 14000 levels.

Investors could use this global-led correction to invest in a staggered manner, with medium to long term view.