Asian shares were trying to find a firmer footing on Friday after a rough week, hammered by concerns about China's ailing economy and fears of US rates staying higher for longer as long-term bond yields surged.

The Nikkei is trading 0.6% lower while the Hang Seng index is down 1.1%. The Shanghai Composite is trading flat.

US stocks fell for a third straight day Thursday as rising yields in the bond market keep cranking up the pressure.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.51% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.15%.

Here's a table showing how US stocks performed on Thursday:

Data Source: Equitymaster

Back home, Indian share markets are trading on a negative note following the trend on SGX Nifty.

At present, the BSE Sensex is trading lower by 260 points. Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty is trading down by 78 points.

Cipla and L&T are among the top gainers today.

TCS & Wipro on the other hand are among the top losers today.

Broader markets are trading on a positive note. The BSE Mid Cap index and the BSE Small Cap index are trading marginally higher.

Sectoral indices are trading on a mixed note with stocks in the power sector and capital goods sector witnessing buying. While stocks in the IT sector and the metal sector witnessing selling pressure.

Shares of Trent and KPR Mill hit their 52-week high today.

The rupee is trading at Rs 83.11 against the US dollar.

In commodity markets, gold prices are trading 0.2% higher at Rs 58,415 per 10 grams today.

Meanwhile, silver prices are trading 0.6% higher at Rs 70,431 per 1 kg.
 

JSW Steel picks majority stake in Tech Resources

JSW Steel is looking to form a consortium to bid for a majority stake in Teck Resources' steelmaking coal business, potentially rivaling a US$ 8 billion (bn) offer from commodities giant Glencore Plc.

Mumbai-based JSW is seeking partners for an offer to acquire a 75% interest in the asset known as Elk Valley Resources.

A deal could value the coal business at more than US$ 8 bn, and JSW has been sounding out banks about financing for a potential offer.

Any JSW consortium could yet face competition for the coal asset from Glencore, which in June proposed buying the business for about US$ 8 bn as an alternative to a full takeover of Vancouver-based Teck.

Japan's Nippon Steel Corp. had agreed to take a stake in a spun-off Elk Valley Resources in February before Teck dropped the plan to split its coal and metals businesses after failing to muster shareholder support.

Between June 2022 to June 2023, the stock has zoomed 42%.

With domestic steel demand robust across sectors, driven by constructions and railways, JSW is all set to enjoy sectoral tailwinds. 
 

LTMindtree's order win

IT services company LTIMindtree on Thursday (17 August) said it has been selected by US-based insurance company Aflac to digitally transform the organization by leveraging the cloud-native services of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

As part of the engagement, LTIMindtree will rearchitect Aflac's on-prem applications that are currently deployed on an out-of-support platform.

On-prem refers to private data centers that companies house in their own facilities and maintain themselves.

The cloud-first approach to AWS solution, built on reusable UI components and common business functionalities as services, will capitalize on the salient features of AWS tools such as Amazon CloudFront, AWS Key Management Service (KMS), AWS Secrets Manager, and serverless components.

This is to ensure that the solution design is in line with the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which is also secure and reliable.

Moving to AWS will protect Aflac from security risks and positively impact its users, including the agent community. The applications are designed to follow the WCAG 2.1 guidelines, making them accessible to a wider audience.

The disaster recovery capability has improved availability and uptime by more than 50%. Migration to AWS has reduced the total cost of ownership by over 20% and an overall reduction in application hosting cost by over 30%.

Aflac is a Fortune 500 company helping provide protection to more than 50 million people through its subsidiaries in Japan and the US.

The Indian stock market can be great a great source of wealth creation in the coming years. LTIMindtree makes among the top 5 companies that have the potential to create lasting generational wealth.

LTIMindtree is all set to capitalize on the next wave of growth, making it top 5 emerging bluechip stocks to add to your watchlist.

More By This Author: