A Fed cut in June, rupee at 82 could add to India’s appeal: Bank of America's Adarsh Sinha
Everything we've heard from Fed officials so far suggests the median would still be three rate cuts and the June cut is still on the table
Chart of the Day: Coal power plant utilisation levels jump to decade highs
Thermal power generation grew by a strong pace for the third consecutive year
Moneycontrol Pro Panorama | Does the wisdom of crowds hold true in the IPO market?
In this edition of Moneycontrol Pro Panorama: India slows China's roll in Indian Ocean, mutual funds and their rising popularity, Asia's capex cycle gears for an upshift, how to manage effective governance of AI, and more
Dutch chip titan ASML is proving too big for its home country
Societies and companies riding the AI boom should watch this ASML fight closely. There’s a need to find a healthy path between the extremes of killing the goose that lays the golden egg — which is where Dutch politics is headed — and the corporate blackmail that favours one sector over another. Attracting qualified foreign talent is an obvious benefit, but it should be accompanied by a serious focus on local infrastructure, education and housing
The Houthis are schooling us in asymmetric warfare
The first challenge is that advances in the production of missiles and drones have democratised extremely powerful weapons that until recently were available only to the richest states. The suicide vest and improvised explosive device are being replaced by the suicide drone and precision-guided missile. The second is a growing asymmetry of vulnerabilities. The Houthis are demonstrating in real time just how target-rich developed nations are
Advertising: Don’t believe what you see in the age of AI ads
History is littered with innovations that were exploited by unscrupulous marketers. The telephone opened up the floodgates to robocalls and e-mail to spam. Generative AI seems to have opened the door to a new era of fantasy where advertising will become more unreal than ever. From people having their identities stolen and publicised without permission to low-level fakery like unappealing, inauthentic food, AI poses a new challenge for consumers
Groq: The new blazing-fast AI platform that beat ChatGPT and Gemini
Groq is the ‘fast and furious’ of the LLM world offering a staggering 500 tokens per second for smaller models with an output speed of 2.5 seconds
Supreme Court’s push to fix medical rates is unjustified and counterproductive
Unfortunately, price controls do not function as a wish granted by a genie, where the government wills it and it miraculously is followed by everyone. Several decades, if not centuries, of evidence should make it evident that price controls have disastrous unintended consequences
Chart of the Day: Asia's capex cycle gears for an upshift
Leading indicators point to light at the end of the tunnel for capex spending in Asia, says a Nomura research note
An (almost) inverted yield curve is worrying China
An inverted yield curve has a bad rap. In normal times, notes with longer maturities offer higher rates to compensate lenders for tying up their money for an extended period. When those yields sink close to or below shorter ones, it’s an indication that investors are pessimistic about an economy’s growth prospects
Is the world close to collapse? Ask the Bronze Age people
Complexity has a cost — in physical energy, administrative friction and other forms. At first, increases in complexity seem affordable and even useful. Eventually, however, a law of diminishing marginal returns on complexity sets in, and the costs, while difficult to see, become harder to bear. If such a complex society is then buffeted by external or internal shocks, it can collapse. The shocks have typically included droughts, famines, plagues, migrations, rebellions, civil wars and invasions
The ‘factors’ investors should be wary of
Investing in funds that focus on a particular stock characteristic such as growth or value have very mixed record
Can ever evolving AI be effectively governed?
Without a practical grasp of how to measure AI milestones or test the attributes that regulations aim to address, policymakers risk enacting rules that are either too broad or too narrow in scope, ultimately lacking meaningful impact
The Eastern Window: India set to counter China’s drive towards Indian Ocean
The government’s decision to establish a second naval base in Lakshadweep is part of a larger objective of countering China’s influence building in the Indian Ocean region. The issue has become complex as the Maldives has responded by announcing plans to build a base for surveillance drones 750 km away
Why China’s push for the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFA) in WTO was opposed
Sanghnomics: Blocking China’s attempts to add IFA to the WTO agreement in the 13th Ministerial Conference was a priority for the Swadesh Jagran Manch as it recognised the Chinese attempt to subvert the sovereign prerogative of nations to reject foreign investment that are against national interest
How to take FOMO out of mutual fund investing
The rising popularity of mutual funds has been accompanied by rising confusion among investors, with FOMO seeing them rush into mid and small cap schemes
Euphoric Tata Chemicals investors should not ignore earnings headwinds
Prices of soda ash, a key product of Tata Chemicals, are declining on excess supplies in the market
India’s policy response must be in lockstep with the AI march
IndiaAI mission will be effective if New Delhi can address the issues of job displacement and regulatory uncertainties
The trouble with cheaper cooking gas as a gift for women on International Women’s Day
The manner in which government has described its cooking gas subsidy as a gift to Indian women reinforces gender stereotypes of women as the sole custodians of the kitchen. Cheaper cooking gas should gladden the hearts of not just women, but also of men, or it will over time, lead to our decline as a people, as an economy, as a nation. South Korea serves a warning
SpaceX's methane-tracking satellite launches new front in climate fight
Methane can trap around 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Most methane emissions come from preventable leaks in oil and gas wells and pipelines. Despite new regulations penalising gas and oil producers for methane leaks and major companies pledging to slash their methane emissions, the problem is we can’t manage what we can’t measure. MethaneSAT will locate, measure and make public methane emissions, helping in informed decision making
Financial crises are a feature, not a bug, of the US system
The US system is highly responsive to democratic, political and often populist demands. SVB sunk, in part, because in 2018, lobbying efforts by smaller banks allowed them to escape tougher rules created only a few years earlier – with bipartisan support. Politics deemed these banks weren’t systemically risky. But they were. Independent central banks may be good at inflation targeting and financial stability, but they struggle to help economic growth or helpful innovations
International Women’s Day: How India can invest in her women, accelerate everyone’s progress
‘Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress’ is the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day. This is a clarion call with particular resonance for India given the barriers to women’s economic participation. Imagine the extraordinary economic tailwinds that can be generated for India if these barriers are dismantled and women have access to capital and technology and supportive public policy frameworks
China badly needs a foreign policy reset. But Xi Jinping has got bigger problems
China is increasingly losing friends and influence and needs a new foreign minister to reset the tone and work to create some goodwill. For now, it is clear that domestic stability is President Xi Jinping’s priority, even as tensions escalate across the region. Talking tough on Taiwan is Xi's way of building up his nationalist credentials, and a way to show strength while the economy around him flounders. But the optics are not good for China in other national capitals, especially in its neighbourhood
How India's struggle to meet renewables target is firing up its coal sector
The government now expects coal demand to increase by about 50 percent between now and 2030, when it’s set to hit 1.5 billion metric tons. If renewables don’t get built, that may be the only way to avoid blackouts and meet India’s inexorably rising demand for power
Indian airlines shouldn't gamble with stricter safety
Indian pilots are exhausted, battling erratic schedules, consecutive late-night departures and excessive hours. Yet airlines are pushing back against new DGCA rules that mandate longer breaks and shorter work hours for cockpit crew. Fearful of higher costs and restricted operations, carriers want to delay implementation. They shouldn’t
