Funnycontrol | Crypto carol and more stock market terms explained by Santa Claus

Deck your wallets with boughs of bitcoins La La La La La Solana Na! (Photo by Daniel Reche via Pexels)

Christmas has come early to the markets this year and one wonders if a Houthi Missile is what it will take to derail this rally. But Santa Claus is also shortly due in town (and I don’t mean South Bombay) and he would like to teach you a few stock market terms before you lose your money to speculation with a Ho Ho Ho

1) The G-sec stocking: G-secs are government securities and indicate rupee-denominated debt issued by the Indian government. My reindeer tell me this might be a good year to hang up your stocking for the next tranche of T-bills. T-bills refer to short-term g-secs of duration of under a year and not to be mistaken for the Tea bill of the government in power issued to the taxpayer. There are more probably people on the South Pole than there are honest taxpayers in India.

2) The Crypto Carol: We have gone to “Deck your wallets with boughs of bitcoins La La La La La Solana Na!” as crypto assets surge in true Christmas spirit.  But the grinch has a way of revisiting just when the whole world is doused in rate cut federal reserve spirits and this time the grinch could even be hiding in Yemen.

3) The T+0 jingle: SEBI is determined to play Santa in the markets this year by introducing a T+0 settlement cycle wherein the settlement of funds and securities would happen on the same day as the day of the transaction. This is in complete contrast to the T+social media post+police case+0 payment cycle of laid off employees trying to recover their F&F settlement from a failed startup.

4) Finfluencing Reindeer: Many a finfluencing Rudolf have been found artificially shining their nose with out of context screen shots and out of money options. But SEBI has rapidly cut off their options & futures. So may I suggest you look at more middle-class reindeer like mutual funds and index funds?

(Photo by Tim Gouw via Pexels)

5) SGB – Santa Gold Bonds: One of the best indicators of gold prices is an uptick in news article about gold smuggling. Perhaps the government was afraid of gold smuggling featuring in Bollywood films again because that would clearly indicate that the reindeer has bolted the sleigh. So they pre-empted this with the introduction of Santa Gold Bonds but I refused to subscribe so they changed the name to Sovereign Gold Bonds in revenge. Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme was launched by the government in November 2015, under Gold Monetisation Scheme. Investors in the recently redeemed tranche in 2023 are discovering that Santa left them a nice chunk of capital gains. Now here’s hoping the grinch does not visit in the form of increased capital gains tax next year.

I hope you’ve been good in 2023 because I have access to the entire P/L statement of your karmic investments. So remember to stay away from speculative investments and go long on Christmas trees if you’re bullish on climate action. Merry Christmas!