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SENSEX
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50,029.83
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+ 1.05%
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NIFTY
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14,867.35
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+ 1.20%
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US$
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73.33
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- 0.16%
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GOLD
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44,865
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+ 0.51%
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10-YR
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6.17%
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+ 1.9 bps
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OIL
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4,516
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+ 3.01%
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*As of market close
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- Markets: The last trading day for the stock market was Thursday and that feels like it was ages ago. As far as we can remember, metals, banks and auto stocks were the best performers and the overall mood in markets across the world was pretty positive going into the long weekend.
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Gold
Golden
India’s precious metal imports suddenly went up 470% in the month of March. And people are trying to figure out what suddenly happened.
We imported more than $10 billion worth of gold and silver in March 2021. Of this, $7.2 billion was gold and this was almost 6x of what we imported in March 2020.
Now we know that March 2020 was the lockdown month and so the number must’ve been very low. But even after things opened up, gold and silver imports were fairly constant. Take a look at this chart by BloombergQuint to get a sense:
Some experts interviewed by BloombergQuint say that this may be because of the fact that gold prices have come down significantly from the recent highs.
Also, the festival of Akshaya Tritiya is coming up and jewellers often like to stock up in advance. They are also anticipating a strong comeback for weddings and thus a lot of ‘pent up demand’ for gold jewellery.
Even so, average gold imports are around 60-70 tonnes per month in India and this goes up to 90 tonnes during the busy season. But March 2021 saw 160 tonnes!
We really wonder how much bitcoin people in India bought in March? Also, do you think crypto is an acceptable wedding gift to give?
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Real Estate
New House Who Dis?
So one of the biggest deals in residential real estate in India just went down. And the amount is a whopping Rs 1,000 crores!
We are pleased to announce that we have bought a new house/office in Mumbai for our team at The Gyst. Thanks to all our wonderful subscribers we were able to pay the Rs 1,000 crores upfront.
Okay, we know you never once believed that.
So the truth is that the buyers of this house are legendary investors Radhkishan Damani and Gopikishan Damani. And the amount is Rs 1,001 crores to be precise.
The house they’ve bought is a 2- storied, 62k sq feet bungalow in South Mumbai’s Malabar Hill. Meaning they paid ~Rs 1.62 lakh per square foot! Just the stamp duty on that deal was Rs 30 crores.
Radhakishan Damani has quietly been one of India's most successful investors. He’s been well known among the investor community for a long, long time but people (news channels) really started talking about his net worth after the IPO of his company Avenue Supermarts Limited, which runs D-Mart.
You can read his inspiring life story here.
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Manufacturing
$1 Billion Off
There is plenty of chips-related chatter going on globally nowadays.
This isn't about a new Lays flavour guys (although we wish it was) nWe are talking about the semiconductor industry.
Recently there has been a global shortage in the semiconductor industry due to supply chain issues caused by you guessed it - COVID.
Now our very own Indian government is thinking it is time to try and help out and become a part of the semiconductor supply chain.
India is offering more than $1 billion in cash to each semiconductor company that decides to 'Make In India'.
What's Happening Here?
India is already the 2nd biggest mobile manufacturer now in the world after China.
Most of the work done here is smartphone assembly but India has ambitions to strengthen its electronics supply chain.
So now with smartphone assembly relatively successful, our government believes it is the perfect time for chip companies to set up operations here.
Our government estimates it would cost roughly $5-$7 billion to set up a chip fabrication unit in India. The approvals etc should take 2-3 years.
The hope is the $1 billion direct cash incentives tempts these chip makers.
What all is included in the incentives we don't know yet but there are talks about waivers on customs duty, research and development expenses and interest-free loans.
Try and Try Until You Succeed
This isn't the first time our government has tried to woo chipmakers btw. They tried it before too but for some reasons, their offers were flatly rejected.
So while we in India have gotten used to these issues, for high-end manufacturers, wobbly infrastructure, unstable power supply and other 'sarkari' issues are a big turnoff.
Hopefully, some of those will be solved and we get one of these chipmakers here.
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Foreign Tour ✈️
Who Owes Me a Billion Dollars?
Government officials from Egypt have said that they may seek around $1 billion in compensation after a huge ship blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week and roiled shipping markets.
The figure is a rough estimate of losses linked to transit fees, damage to the waterway during the dredging and salvage efforts, and the cost of equipment and labour.
The funny thing is that they did not specify who they'd seek this compensation from. The charterer of the ship, Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Corp has already said that they don't owe anything.
Read more
Data For Sale
Some hackers decided to put out data from 533 Million Facebook accounts for free and that too in a low-level hacking forum!
The data leaked was mostly personal information and mobile numbers linked to Facebook.
Users from 106 countries ended up being exposed and from an Indian angle, there were 6 million users whose data was put online.
Facebook came out and said that the leaked data was scraped due to a vulnerability that the company fixed in 2019.
Even though the leaked data is a couple of years old, it could provide useful information to hackers.
This is probably the last thing Facebook needed right now especially with all their issues with governments going on globally.
Read More
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If you have more time ...
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