Asian stock markets are lower today as Chinese and Hong Kong shares fall. The Shanghai Composite is off 1.1% while the Hang Seng is down 1.8%. The Nikkei 225 is trading down by 0.8%.

Back home, India share markets opened on a negative note. The BSE Sensex is trading down by 127 points while the NSE Nifty is trading down by 29 points. Both, the BSE Mid Cap index and BSE Small Cap index opened down by 0.2%.

Barring oil & gas stocks, all sectoral indices have opened the day in red with consumer durables stocks and automobiles stocks witnessing maximum selling pressure.

The rupee is currently trading at 71.18 against the US$.

Moving on to the news from the economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered India's economic growth forecast to 4.8% for this fiscal year owing to the crisis in the non-banking financial sector and weak rural demand.

It also cut the world's growth estimate and blamed the slowdown in India for its move.

The IMF projection, 1.3 percentage points lower than its earlier estimates, is less than the 5% projected by the official advance estimates.

The IMF projected India's economy to grow by 5.8% next year, which is 1.2 percentage points less than its earlier forecast. It also forecast the economy to grow by 6.5% in 2021-22 which is 0.9 percentage point lower than earlier projections.

The IMF estimated world economic growth at 1.9% for 2019, 0.1 percentage point lower than its earlier forecast.

Similarly, it projected the global economy to grow by 3.3% in the current calendar year, 0.1 percentage point lower than its previous estimates, and 3.4% in 2022, 0.2 percentage points below its earlier estimates.

The downward revision primarily reflects negative surprises to economic activity in a few emerging market economies, notably India, which led to a reassessment of growth prospects over the next two years.

Volatile markets and some recent economic numbers have confused investors.

Note that, economic growth (GDP) and corporate profit growth hardly go hand in hand.

Over the past few years, the share of corporate profits to GDP has steadily declined. The revival of capex cycle may cause corporate profits to soar much faster than the GDP growth.

                                                  Rebound in Corporate Profits May Not Immediately Reflect in GDP