Opening Bell:
Gift Nifty is up by 4.5 points in the early morning trade, indicating a positive opening for Indian stock market.
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed to start the week as investors look to key data from Australia and China later in the week. The Reserve Bank of Australia will release its rate decision on Tuesday, while China is expected to release its trade balance for August on Thursday and its inflation rate next weekend. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 started the week up 0.37%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 also climbed 0.12% and the Topix was 0.16% higher. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.21%, while the Kosdaq was down 0.18%. Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index stood at 18,304, pointing to a weaker open compared with the HSI’s close of 18,382.06 last Thursday. Hong Kong’s markets were closed Friday as the city braced for super typhoon Saola, which made landfall over the weekend.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose on Friday as traders weighed the latest US jobs report to conclude a winning week. The 30-stock Dow ticked up 0.33%, The S&P 500 added roughly 0.18%, and the Nasdaq Composite inched down 0.02%. The major averages were up sharply earlier in the day. The Dow briefly traded more than 250 points higher, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq climbed about 0.8% each before easing. The Dow and the Nasdaq added 1.4% and about 3.3% for the week, respectively, notching their best performances since July. The S&P 500 gained 2.5% to register its best week since June.
Stocks News:
👉Kotak Mahindra Bank: Uday Kotak on 1 September announced to step down as managing director and chief executive officer of Kotak Mahindra Bank, and with this, the baton was passed to Joint Managing Director at Kotak Mahindra Bank — Dipak Gupta. Gupta will carry out the duties of the MD and CEO until 31 December, which is subject to the approval of the RBI and the members of the bank. Uday said he would continue as a non-executive director of the bank.
👉Infosys: IT services company Infosys on Friday said it has completed the acquisition of Danske Bank’s IT centre in India. Danske Bank chose Infosys as a strategic partner to drive digital transformation initiatives with speed and scale, and this follows the announcement of the collaboration made on June 26, 2023, a release by Infosys said. Danske Bank’s IT centre in the country employs over 1,400 professionals.
👉Coal India: Coal India on Friday reported a 13.2% rise in its coal production last month at 52.3 million tonne (MT) of coal in August on a year-on-year basis. In August 2022, the public sector major produced 46.2 MT. So far in the current financial year (FY24), Coal India has produced 281.5 MT of the mineral, registering an 11% growth compared to the same period last fiscal, said a company statement.
👉IDFC First: Rajiv Jain-led US-based boutique investment manager GQG Partners Llc, on Friday, acquired a 2.6% stake in private lender IDFC First Bank Ltd for ₹1,527.26 crore, raising the former’s total fresh investment in Indian firms to over ₹41,000 crore in a span of just six months. Through a bulk deal on the exchanges, Cloverdell Investment Ltd, an institutional shareholder in IDFC First, has sold 278.7 million shares or 4.2% stake in IDFC First Bank for ₹2,480.3 crore to several entities including GQG Partners.
👉Foreign institutional investors (FII) bought shares worth Rs 487.94 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DII) purchased Rs 2,294.93 crore worth of stocks on September 1, provisional data from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed.
Domestic and International Events
- GST collections grew by 11% to over Rs 1.59 lakh crore in August on the back of improved compliance and reduced evasion, with experts forecasting higher mop-up to continue in the upcoming festive season. The gross GST revenue collected in August 2023 is Rs 1,59,069 crore of which Central GST is Rs 28,328 crore, State GST is Rs 35,794 crore, Integrated GST is Rs 83,251 crore (including Rs 43,550 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is Rs 11,695 crore (including Rs 1,016 crore collected on import of goods).
- Data from NPCI shows that 10.5 billion transactions were recorded on the platform Unified Payments Interface (UPI in August, up from 9.9 billion in July 2023. In terms of the value of funds settled, UPI recorded Rs 15.7 lakh crore in August, slightly higher than the Rs 15.3 lakh crore figure for July.
- Oil prices were set to snap a two-week losing streak as they rose for a fourth consecutive session on Friday due to tightening supplies and expectations that the OPEC+ group of oil producers would extend output cuts to the end of the year. The US West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) was up 81 cents, or 1%, at $84.45 a barrel, while Brent crude was up 82 cents, or 0.9%, at $87.65 a barrel. WTI has risen over 5% during the week, while Brent was up about 3%.
- Gold gave up initial gains on Friday, but was still headed for a weekly rise after an increase in the US unemployment rate boosted bets on a pause in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. Spot gold lost 0.05% to $1,938.79 per ounce. It was poised for a 1.2% weekly gain after prices touched one-month highs on Wednesday. US gold futures for December delivery were higher 0.02% to $1,966.20.
Key Equity Indices
| EMERGING | LATEST | % 1D |
| Hang Seng | 18,382 | (0.6) % |
| Shanghai Composite | 3,133 | 0.4 % |
| DEVELOPED | LATEST | % 1D |
| Dow Jones | 34,838 | 0.3 % |
| DAX | 15,840 | (0.7) % |
| FTSE 100 | 7,465 | 0.3 % |
| Nikkei | 32,711 | 0.3 % |
| Straits Times | 3,233 | 0.4 % |
