Asian stock markets are higher today as Chinese and Hong Kong shares show gains. The Shanghai Composite is up 0.6% while the Hang Seng is up 0.9%. The Nikkei 225 is trading up by 1.8%. Wall Street's indices climbed on Thursday, with the Nasdaq erasing losses for 2020, following a clutch of upbeat earnings reports led by PayPal as investors looked past more weak jobs data caused by the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.
Trends on SGX Nifty indicated a positive opening for the index in India with a 91 points gain.
India share markets opened higher. The BSE Sensex is trading up by 542 points while the NSE Nifty is trading up by 158 points. The BSE Mid Cap index and BSE Small-Cap index opened up by 0.9% and 0.6% respectively.
All sectoral indices are trading in green with metal stocks and banking stocks witnessing maximum buying interest.
Note that the coronavirus impact has shaken markets worldwide. For the BSE Sensex, FY20 was the second-worst year post FY08, the year of the global financial crisis.
Good Time to Start Investing Now?
Naturally, there is an atmosphere of fear all round.
Is it time to sell stocks now? Will the correction get worse?
History has shown that after years like the one we had just now, the next 3 years are good for the markets. In fact, these corrections are the rare times when you find businesses with solid fundamentals at reasonable valuations.
If you can find good businesses that can survive the current crisis, you will do well in the long run.
Moving on, the rupee is currently trading at 75.57 against the US$.
Gold prices are currently trading up 1.7% at Rs 46,161.
Gold prices in India edged lower in yesterday's trade though it remained in a narrow range.
On MCX, June gold futures fell about Rs 30 to Rs 45,340 per 10 gram, extending losses to the third day.
Gold prices had fallen about Rs 426 per 10 gram in the previous session. Silver futures also gave up early gains and were down 0.1% to 41,803 per kg.
In global markets, gold prices edge higher today after a sharp fall in the previous session.
Spot gold climbed 0.3% to US$1,690.19 per ounce, after a 1% fall in the previous session. Despite bleak economic data, the dollar's strength is weighing on gold.
The US dollar today touched a more than one-week high against a basket of major currencies. Besides firmer dollar, some bullion refineries restarted have production, easing supply-side concerns.
Moving on to mutual funds sector. Investors pumped Rs 837.8 billion in equity-oriented mutual fund (MF) schemes in FY20, registering a decline of 25% from the Rs 1.11-trillion inflows in the preceding year.
However, this was the sixth successive year of net inflows in equity mutual funds, according to data by the Association of Mutual Funds in India.
The flows into equity funds in the last fiscal were lower than the flows in 2018-19 primarily because of the equity markets displaying volatility, which made some investors take a break from making fresh equity investments.
Net inflows in these funds were Rs 1.7 trillion in FY18, Rs 703.7 billion in FY17, Rs 740.2 billion in FY16, and Rs 710.3 billion in FY15. However, they had witnessed a net outflow of Rs 92.7 billion in FY14.
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