it was a good day of trade as Nifty hit its new 52-week high today

• It was a new 52-week high for the Nifty today with modest gains for the market. Sensex shut shop at 17711, up 66 points and Nifty at 5302, up 20 points from the previous close.
• Kalpana Kochhar, country head-India of the International Monetary Fund, says it is ‘very difficult not to be bullish on India’ , thanks to country’s demographic advantage, its durable institutions and its dynamic private sector.
• Indian  government will sell 63 percent of its bond issuance for the new fiscal year in the first half, slightly less than expected, giving a near-term respite to satiated bondholders and helping send yields slightly lower.The government said it will sell 2.87 trillion rupees ($64 billion) of bonds in the first half of 2010/11, which starts on April 1.
• Mergers and acquisitions around the world jumped to $520.4 billion in the first quarter, accompanied by a big shift in global dealmaking as emerging market and energy-focused takeovers made up a growing slice of activity.
• The BSE Sensex hit a 25-month high before closing 0.4 percent up on Monday, its fourth straight rise, as earnings optimism and firm global equities boosted sentiments. Financials led the gainers.
• The 30-share BSE index closed 0.38 percent or 66.59 points higher at 17,711.35. It rose as much as 17,793.01 points in the day, its highest level since February 2008.Twenty-one of its components advanced.
• The rupee strengthened to a near 19-month high on Monday, as the dollar’s weakness overseas triggered selling in the U.S. currency by exporters and firmer share prices underpinned sentiment.
• Bharti Airtel and Kuwait’s Zain are likely to sign agreements for the Bharti’s $9 billion buy of Zain’s African assets on Tuesday, two sources said.
• State-run Steel Authority of India Ltd  said on Monday, it had formed an equal joint venture with Shipping Corp of India  to take care of its shipping needs.
• India will issue 1.09 trillion rupees ($24.2 billion) of treasury bills between April 1 and June 30, the central bank said in a statement on Monday.
• All sectoral indices except IT and tech. were in green.
• The government will borrow 490 billion rupees ($10.9 billion) in April and another 650 billion in May, a central bank release said on Monday, detailing the borrowing calendar from April to September.
• India’s state-run lender Bank of Baroda  has set the final price guidance on its planned benchmark-sized 5-½ year dollar bond sale, which could be priced as early as today, a source close to the deal said.
• Indian state-run explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp. said on Friday its crude oil output target for the 2011 financial year is 27 million tonnes.
• European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said on Monday he did not see any problem with the European Union deal on Greece or the planned involvement of the International Monetary Fund.
• Countries within the euro zone need to improve their economic coordination to avoid large imbalances building in the system, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
• The Reserve Bank of India on Monday that it will conduct second liquidity adjustment auctions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
• China’s annual economic growth will reach 12 percent this quarter, a government researcher said in remarks published on Monday, as economists ratchet up growth forecasts following strong industrial output growth last month.
• Greece has not asked the International Monetary Fund for help and there is no immediate sign of its needing to do so, the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said on Monday.
• India’s infrastructure sector output grew 4.5 percent in February from a year earlier, lower than an upwardly revised annual growth of 9.5 percent in January, government data showed on Friday.
• Some U.S. Congressmen want to slap duties on Chinese goods unless Beijing revalues the yuan. Yet China’s premier Wen Jiabao insists the currency isn’t cheap. Goldman Sachs also thinks the yuan may be fairly valued. The argument that the renminbi may be less  undervalued than it appears is persuasive.
• SEBI obviously recognised the need to shift away from its Friday habit so that even the mutual fund industry could enjoy its weekends.The changes are more operational whilst continuing to stay focused on investor benefit and well-paced giving time for the stakeholders to rearrange their affairs. I have presented them below in my strong belief that, whatever is good for the customer cannot do anything but good for the manufacturer.
• Bassam Fattouh of the respected Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES), a leading academic researcher on oil markets, has published a landmark assessment of the influence of fundamentals and speculation on the formation of oil prices over the past decade.If his view is accepted by policymakers, it could break the stalemate about whether fundamentals or speculation drives commodity markets, lead to a more constructive discussion about how to regulate futures markets, and improve cooperation between producer and consumer countries.Fattouh’s findings are set out in a powerful paper on “Oil Market Dynamics through the Lens of the 2002-2009 Price Cycle,” prepared for ministers from producer and consumer countries meeting in Cancun next week as part of the International Energy Forum.
• “With substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to be subdued for some time”, according to the statement released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) after its last meeting on Mar. 16.
• When the head of the Asian Development Bank says his better-off members should become aid donors, not recipients, it’s a good indication that the region’s rise is not just a flash in the pan.Asia’s banks were scarcely touched by the global credit crunch and its economies are now recovering briskly. The ADB is poised to upgrade its growth forecasts next month.

Financial regulation , a herculean task

• The parallel “shadow” banking system needs fixing: that should mean painful choices for money-market funds.
• If a film to be made with title “It’s a Wonderful Life” today, the hero would probably not be a banker—and not just because of the optimistic title. The shape of finance has changed radically in the past few decades.
• For every traditional bank clerk there are several sorts of financial intermediators. The character of George Bailey would today be as likely to manage a money-market fund as take in humble bank deposits. Or he might work at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, America’s housing-finance giants, buying home loans from banks and packaging them into mortgage-backed securities.
• India’s headline inflation should peak in March with demand-side pressures likely having a short-term impact on prices, the federal chief statistician said on Friday.
• This “shadow” banking system is huge, particularly in America—too big for the banks to be able to replace it. In the summer of 2007 assets funded through the capital markets were larger than those held by America’s banks. Only one-third of the country’s home mortgages were on banks’ balance-sheets. The bank bail-outs hog attention, but many of the government’s crisis measures were designed to prop up the shadow system. Even so, many bits of it, especially private mortgage-backed securities, remain moribund.
• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unexpectedly raised key rates last week to help tame inflation, which is at close to 10 percent, and warned of pressure from rising demand in the rebounding economy.
• The intellectual case for securitisation, the process of pooling lots of different loans and selling the cashflows to investors, remains strong. Done properly, it should enable banks and investors to diversify their exposures. In Europe, where bank lending is more important, it offers a useful, alternative source of financing. But the shadow system has to become far more stable. Great chunks of the crisis happened outside the banks. The rot started in the market for securitised subprime mortgages. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were non-banks that were crippled by a silent run among panicky overnight “repo” lenders, many of them money-market funds uncertain about the quality of securitised collateral they were holding. Mass redemptions from these funds after Lehman’s failure froze short-term funding for big firms.
• Banks like JPMorgan Chase have found themselves the owners of a wide range of businesses, from distressed oil companies to hotels and newspapers, as a result of a recent wave of bankruptcies
• .So far the reformers of finance have neglected the shadow system. Some changes are on the way—new liquidity rules for money-market funds, for instance. But uncertainty about the long-term prospects of Fannie and Freddie has been a brake on the revival of securitisation. Congress started hearings on their future this week, but the White House has yet to put forward detailed thoughts of its own. Fiddlier issues require more clarity, too. Investors want assurance that securitised assets will be ring-fenced from claims if a lender fails, for instance.
• House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday formally signed and sent to President Barack Obama the final installment of landmark healthcare overhaul legislation.
• Financial organisation need attention. But what should be done? Two things stand out. The first is the need to project some light into the shadows. The pre-crisis securitisation markets were deeply murky. Efforts to get banks to retain more of the risk associated with securitised loans are well-intentioned, but the danger is that investors will regard this as a comfort blanket (as they previously saw gold-plated credit ratings) and skimp on due diligence. Investors need to have up-to-date information on the quality of the loans inside securities: central banks can help by mandating disclosure requirements for collateral that they accept at the discount window. And regulators need better data on obscure areas like triparty repo and stock lending.
• The other imperative is to make sure that the bits of the shadow system that act just like banks are regulated accordingly. That shift in thinking has already happened for investment banks, but needs to go further. Money-market funds are an obvious example. Investors in these funds expect to get their money back on demand, just like depositors in a bank. The post-Lehman run started after one fund “broke the buck”; it stopped when the government said it would guarantee investors against losses. So these funds should be forced to make a choice: keep the commitment to pay up and set aside capital and insurance funds (like banks have to do); or drop the commitment and put the burden of losses on investors.
• As Britain prepares to go to the polls, its sick economy is uppermost in voters’ minds. With good reason. There are fundamental doubts that it can ever recover fully from a banking crisis and recession that laid Britain lower than many other rich countries. In the short term, the worry is whether a feeble recovery reliant on fiscal and monetary life-support can develop its own driving force. Looking ahead, there are fears that the strong, steady growth rate in the 15 years before the financial crisis is no longer Britain’s default mode. And casting a dark shadow over the next parliament are public finances that have veered wildly into deficit and will need to be hauled back harshly from the brink.
• Yet the housing-market recovery has almost run out of steam. Sales of new and existing homes have fallen for three consecutive months. As a result inventories have grown, putting downward pressure on home values. According to some measures, prices are dropping again: the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported national declines in December and January.
• Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Thursday said that it revised the outlook on India to stable from negative. At the same time, S&P affirmed the ‘BBB-‘ long-term and ‘A-3’ short-term sovereign credit ratings on India.
• For  bankers, the war is not yet over. Britain’s taxpayers are still sore. They blame the banks for pitching the country into crisis, and for hoarding their bail-out money rather than oiling the wheels of commerce by lending it.
• The surprise interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will not significantly dent property sales, but another widely expected rate hike in April may slow down sales marginally, developers and analysts said on Monday.
• World trade in merchandise goods is expected to rebound strongly this year as economic recovery takes hold, expanding by 9.5 percent, World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy said on Friday.
• Concerns that a gulf is opening between European Union countries that use the euro and those that do not resurfaced at an EU summit that saw euro zone states agree a plan to help debt-laden Greece.
• People must see their government play the role of an even-handed referee rather than be a dispenser of rewards or even a judge of economic merit or contribution.
• The U.S. economy grew at a slightly less brisk pace than previously estimated in the fourth quarter, while corporate profits slowed sharply from the previous quarter, government data showed on Friday.

SENSEX fumbling

• SENSEX up by 44 points , trading at 17,454.  (  2:46    pm , India.).
• The market opens  firmly today, supported by good global cues. Earlier, the US markets closed higher and Asia is trading okay this morning.
• All the sectoral indices trading flat. BSE health care sector up by 1.56%.
• Lanco Infratech Ltd. up by 6.16%.
• Honda Motor Co will steer clear of cooperating with rival automakers as it seeks to boost its presence in Asia, defying a resurgent trend towards tie-ups in the industry, a top executive said.
• India Piramal buys drug rights from Cipla for $21mln.
• The surprise interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will not significantly dent property sales, but another widely expected rate hike in April may slow down sales marginally, developers and analysts said on Monday.
• Asian shares inched back towards recent two-month highs on Tuesday as recovering commodity prices boosted shares of resource firms and as tech stocks drew support from gains in their U.S. peers.
• The chairman of India’s top lender, State Bank of India, said on Saturday the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may tighten monetary policy further at its April 20 review.
• India physical gold prices fell slightly on Tuesday, but traders may resume buying at these levels to stock up for the wedding season that begins from April, dealers said.
• Indraparastha Gas Ltd, which supplies gas in Delhi and surrounding region, aims to raise retail prices of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) by about 1.10 rupees per kg from April 1, a senior official said.
• The government will allow private-sector firms to issue infrastructure bonds to raise funds for projects, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said today.
• IRB Infrastructure said on Tuesday it has tied up 18.24 billion rupees for funding two high-way projects. The firm has tied up 9.24 billion rupees for Pathankot-Amritsar highway, and 9 billion rupees for Jaipur-Deoli highway project, it said in an emailed statement.
• State-owned conglomerate Dubai World is expected to propose a $26 billion debt restructuring plan to its creditors imminently, in a move seen as a test of the emirate’s ability to honour commitments.
• The Indian rupee was mostly steady in afternoon trade on Monday as a surprise rate hike by the central bank supported sentiment, though losses in domestic shares and a strong dollar overseas weighed.
• China will probably run a trade deficit of more than $8 billion in March, state media said on Tuesday, citing Premier Wen Jiabao.
• Japan’s government may need to issue more bonds or drop some spending plans as it faces a shortage of up to 7 trillion yen ($78 billion) in funds in the year to March 2012, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
• The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will agree to set exit strategies to unwind measures taken to battle the financial crisis at their summit meeting in April, Japan’s Nikkei business daily reported on Tuesday.
• Inflation is expected to come down in two months and the winter crop is likely to be good, the plan panel deputy told reporters on Monday, after the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) surprise rate hike late on Friday.
• China will have more scope to allow its currency to appreciate if the U.S. government adopts a low-key stance on the issue, a Harvard University economist who also advises the U.S. government on economic policy said.

SENSEX up by 108 points

• Though SENSEX up by 108 points, still a sence of sluggishness prevails.
• Auto, banks major gainers today.
• BSE Sensex closed at its highest level in more than six weeks, led by private lender ICICI Bank, as better-than-expected U.S. jobs data fuelled hopes of a recovery in the world’s largest economy.
• ICICI rose 2.3 percent to 922.75 rupees, its highest closing in nearly four months, with analysts saying the bank’s move to raise auto loans rates and discontinue its special home loan rate last week was a sign of a demand revival.
• Easing fears about the U.S. economy and European debt buoyed world equity markets on Monday, extending a rally that has taken many bourses into positive territory for the year.
• Indian gold traders are increasingly turning to hedges on local bourses to fight price volatility as they seek to revive from weak consumption seen last year, exchange officials and analysts said.
• The crisis over Greece’s debt mountain is unlikely to spread to other eurozone countries with high levels of public debt, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Monday.
• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Friday the new base lending rate for banks, to bring more transparency to loan pricing, will take effect from July 1.
• A share sale to raise about $3 billion in Indian state-run miner NMDC has been priced at 300-350 rupees each, two sources with direct knowledge of the deal said on Monday.
• India’s Exide Industries is selling up to 50 million shares at 107-108 rupees each to institutions to raise approximately $120 million, two sources with direct knowledge of the deal said.
• L&T Power Development Ltd, a unit of India’s largest engineering and construction firm Larsen and Tubro Ltd , plans to install power plants of 5,000 mega watt capacity by 2015, a top official said.
• US Stocks opened slightly higher on Monday, as investors digested Friday’s bullish payrolls data and as McDonald’s Corp reported that same-store sales increased in February. ( 8:33 pm , india , 8th march).
• The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 10.80 points, or 0.10 percent, at 10,577.00. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX rose 0.84 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,139.54. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC added 1.03 points, or 0.04 percent, at 2,327.38. ( 8:33 pm , india , 8th march).
• The European Union is considering creating a rescue fund that could herald fundamental changes in the 27-country bloc and bring closer economic cooperation following Greece’s debt crisis.
• Hopes of progress this week on Dubai World $26 billion debt restructuring lifted stocks and eased fears of default but potential divisions emerged among creditors to the state-owned conglomerate.
• Japan’s Nikkei average clawed up 0.3 percent on Wednesday, supported by hopes for a bailout package for debt-ridden Greece, but the yen’s advance to a more than two-month high against the dollar weighed on some exporters.
• European shares rose for the fourth straight day on Wednesday, boosted by upbeat U.S. economic data, optimism on Greece’s deficit.
• FTSEurofirst 300 closes 0.8 percent higher.
• US Stocks struggle in early trading.

SENSEX firm

• SENSEX up by 244 points , trading at 16,674. (12:58 pm , India).
• BSE index up 1.4 pct after 3-day weekend.
• Tata Motors jumps on robust Feb sales; Dec qtr earnings.
•  Reliance up; report suggests fading hopes of Lyondell
  buy.
• Japan’s Nikkei average edged up 0.5 percent on Tuesday as chip-linked stocks rose after a bullish outlook from flash memory maker SanDisk Corp , pushed up shares of their U.S. peers.
• Moody’s reviews Tata Motors’ B3 rating for possible upgrade.
• Japan’s government called for fresh action on Tuesday from the central bank to lift the economy out of deflation this year despite widespread scepticism that such a goal is feasible.
• India’s manufacturing industry in February grew at its fastest pace in 20 months, expanding for the third month thanks to expanding output and new orders, a survey showed.
• Australia’s central bank raised its cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.0 percent on Tuesday and lagged further hikes ahead, saying a surprisingly strong recovery allowed it to move policy toward more normal settings.
• The U.S. dollar is still somewhat overvalued while the Chinese renminbi is substantially undervalued, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday in an assessment of Group of 20 major economies.
• IMF says Chinese currency substantially undervalued.
• China will target a higher budget deficit this year of more than 1 trillion yuan ($146.5 billion), a senior lawmaker said on Tuesday.
• The government expects stake sales in state firms to fetch 400 billion rupees ($8.6 billion) in 2010/11, an estimate analysts believe is achievable if the stock market holds up and government offerings are priced attractively.