The Indian National Congress is promising to redistribute India’s wealth. At an election rally, the former president of the Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, according to newspaper reports, said that after a caste census, a financial and institutional survey will be conducted, following which a distribution of India’s wealth according to the population share will be...
The recent Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) warning of a potential bubble in several small-cap stocks had taken some gains off a market that the regulator believed was getting overheated. Retail investors who had looked at the substantial returns in some small-cap funds and stocks over the past year and had rushed in...
How would you react if your bank kept half your money when you withdrew a fixed deposit before the maturity date? There would be huge depositor angst and the regulator, the Reserve Bank of India, would step in to stop this money gouging. However, in another part of the financial sector, the insurance regulator has...
The interim Budget 2024 has few policy announcements. Given the coming elections, a work-in-progress budget is better than a freebie laden one. he average middle-class person has two expectations from the budget. One, to get a lower tax burden and two, to see proposals that lead to lower inflation. In Budget 2024, being an interim...
On January 10, the US securities market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to list and trade on the stock market. This has opened a window for retail investors to trade safely in a digital token. The future of cryptocurrency has been hanging between the ban-it or...
The year 2024 is likely to see a continuation of the trend of volatility, uncertainty, confusion and ambiguity — the VUCA world seems to be here to stay. General elections in two of the world’s largest democracies, India and the United States (US), two ongoing wars, a global financial sector that some say is teetering...
The IRDAI has taken a baby step to potentially reduce the costs for a policyholder when she surrenders the policy earlier than the maturity period The insurance regulator’s December 12 draft on product regulations has led the life insurance industry, which had an annual premium collection of almost ₹7 lakh crore in the financial year 2021-22 to go...
Data released by the Income Tax Department last week had some points of headline news, but hidden in the pdfs were stats that, when analysed, show the growth roar of the Indian middle class. The headline numbers map the rise in income tax returns which have more than doubled starting financial year 2011-12 and ending...
The Indian stock market rose 16% between March 24 and July 17, powered by a clutch of reforms, and fuelled by retail and foreign institutional investor money Stock markets make headlines when they either throw a tantrum and crash dramatically or reach lifetime highs. Gaining a breathless 16% from March 24 to July 17,...