Time to endure

Without the strength to endure the crisis, one will not see the opportunity within.- Chin-Ning Chu

The fear of some unknowns seems to haunt investor confidence as any indices seem to be in a hurry everyday to end in the red. The global cues have been encouraging but that effect doesn’t seem to rub off on the Indian bourses.



The People’s Bank of China raised the one-year lending rate by a quarter point to 6.06% and the one-year deposit rate an equivalent amount to 3%. Reserve Bank of India governor D Subbarao said on Tuesday that China keeping its currency low hurts India in some ways.

The global markets seem to have taken it in their stride with the US and Asian markets

mostly higher. In fact, the Dow rose for the seventh day in a row.

The outlook today is no different from the proceedings seen in recent days. The negative bias continues.

We will have to wait and see how market reacts to the political drama that is unfolding. Expectations are that the Prime Minister may finally give in and agree to a Joint Parliamentary Probe into the telecom scandals. This will in turn enable Parliament to function and of course the smooth passage of the budget later this month. India's current account deficit in the current fiscal year is likely to be at 3.5% of GDP, reports indicate.

Meanwhile, the dollar fell against the euro and gained against the British pound and Japanese yen. Gold futures for April delivery appreciated $15.90 to $1,364.10 a troy ounce.

US President Barack Obama has asked American business leaders to aggressively pursue the huge middle class in India and China to increase their export .

In other media news: SBI may not be in a position to launch its proposed rights offering aggregating Rs200bn this fiscal as it was not able to secure approvals from its dominant shareholder by early February. (ET)

The Union budget is likely to step up the target for farm credit to Rs4.5tn, up 20% yoy. (ET)

Foreign institutional investors have been net sellers of equity worth Rs 10,130 crore since January. On Tuesday, their net sales added up to Rs 726 crore. Domestic institutions bought shares aggregating Rs 449 crore (net).