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from India Insight:
Tracking Sensex: Top five gainers, losers this week
The BSE Sensex ended above the 20,000 mark on Friday after gaining 2.6 percent in the last five trading sessions. The index has now risen for four straight weeks. Here are the top five Sensex gainers and losers of the week:
GAINERS
Tata Motors: The automaker’s stock surged 8.15 percent in the week ending May 10, making it the best Sensex performer. Though the stock is still flat in 2013, it has gained nearly 15 percent since April. However, Ambareesh Baliga of Edelweiss Financial Services advises caution: "Tata Motors' overdependence on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to negate the Indian underperformance makes it a risky investment at this juncture especially in view of lower margins at JLR"
Hindalco: Shares of India’s largest aluminium producer surged 8 percent this week. The stock extended gains throughout the week after rising 3.5 percent on Monday, on expectations of better realizations after copper prices rose more than 6 percent last Friday.
ITC: Shares in India's biggest cigarette maker ended the week with gains of 6.7 percent, after touching an all-time high on Friday. Investors have placed long positions in ITC futures, indicating they expect gains to continue.
from Edward Hadas:
In favour of much less trading
It was front page news in the Wall Street Journal. For three long hours last week, there was no trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the home of S&P 500 stock index options and the Vix volatility index. The Journal quoted a trader: “It was very, very unnerving”. Risks went unhedged. Experts worried about the effect of a more grievous software fault on an even more important exchange. What would happen then?
Almost nothing. Imagine a worst case scenario: a hacker closes down all the exchanges for a full month. All portfolios of stocks, bonds, options, futures, currencies and commodities are exactly the same on June 1 as on May 1.
from Expert Zone:
Gold not a good investment for now
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters)
Since November, the price of gold has been unstable but in April, its decline was precipitated. What is surprising is not the fall itself but its speed. In just two sessions, gold prices dropped 13 percent in the steepest fall in 33 years. It wasn't gold alone that got caught in the bear grip. Prices of other commodities such as silver, crude oil, copper and so on also declined, but not as sharply.
from Nicholas Wapshott:
Gold’s decline shakes the true believers’ faith
The dramatic slide in the price of gold in the past week has reversed a rise that for more than a decade has been steady and seemingly inexorable. The sudden fall ‑ in which prices plummeted 9 percent, to $1,347.40 an ounce, on Monday, the biggest two-day loss percentage since 1983 ‑ has put goldbugs, who are by definition pessimistic lovers of certainty, into a state of high anxiety. When the commodity of last resort so conspicuously fails to hold its value, the world becomes scarier place.
There is room, however, for a small celebration: that the Cassandras have been caught short. Their simple remedy of faith in the abiding value of gold as a hedge against an otherwise treacherous, inflated market has been shown to be flawed.
from Breakingviews:
Gold is the canary in the financial mine
By Ian Campbell
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Gold is a canary in the mine for financial markets. Its burst bubble warns of the huge dangers lurking for bonds, commodities and stocks. Those dangers may be at a safe distance now, but they are real.
from Breakingviews:
Markets wrong to downplay Italian political risk
By Neil Unmack
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Italian bond spreads have risen nearly one percentage point since Italy’s election. It could have been worse - and considering the risks, it should.
from Expert Zone:
Budget 2013 does have some words of wisdom
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not of Reuters)
The finance minister had a tough job in hand with this being the government’s last budget before elections due in 2014. P. Chidambaram had to focus on fiscal consolidation while walking a tightrope between populism and pragmatism.
In my previous column, I had written about the issues he needs to address. Here’s a look at how Budget 2013 fared on these counts.
from Breakingviews:
Gold melts as economy warms and Fed warns
By Ian Campbell
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Gold is teetering on the brink of a precipitously high cliff. That some U.S. Federal Reserve officials are reluctant to press on with the bank’s quantitative easing was enough to knock it to a seven-month low. What an actual end to QE would mean is not something gold investors want to hang around to find out. Though it may be near to a ledge now, the metal’s medium-term downside looks deep.
from Edward Hadas:
The menace of financial markets
Financial markets are unstable, unhelpful and often immoral. They should be kept under better control.
My disdain will be dismissed by free-market enthusiasts. For them, lively markets where equities, bonds and currencies are sold at publicly disclosed prices are clearly a good thing; they may even be capitalism at its best. Such open markets, they say, both improve economic efficiency and make society more free.
from Expert Zone:
India Markets Weekahead – Opportunity for those who missed out rally
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily of Thomson Reuters)
It was a second straight week of losses of 1.59 percent with the Nifty closing at 5,903. As discussed in this column a fortnight back, we are in a phase which would tire out the participants and change the mood to a negative consensus on the street.
