Do it yourself

2025 is proving to be an interesting year for traders in the Indian stocks. The traders have faced multiple challenges in the past eight months; and had some good opportunities to make extraordinary profit. More notably— What made traders’ life tough ·          The external environment has been volatile. Geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East had escalated materially. The war between Russia and Ukraine continued and developed a new trade/tariff angle for the Indian economy. India engaged with Pakistan in a small but intense war that could have serious long-term repercussions for regional geopolitics. These events caused sharp volatility in the market, causing exacerbated margin calls and losses to the traders. ·          The US imposed reciprocal (25%) and penal (25%) tariffs on imports of merchandise from India, making Indian exports to the US significantly uncompetitive in comparison to the tradit...

  South Block’s Doctrine, North Block’s Dilemma Past four weeks have marked a watershed in the geopolitics of South Asia. A terrorist attack in Pahalgam (J&K, India) on 22 nd April 2025, resulted in the brutal killing of 26 tourists (25 Indian and 1 Nepalese). The terrorists were believed to be from groups actively supported by the Government/Army establishment of Pakistan; and operating from the Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) and Pakistan. The Government of India responded to the attack by (i) taking several diplomatic and economic measures against Pakistan over the next couple of weeks, and (ii) targeting terror infrastructure in PoJK and Pakistan, on 7 th may 2025, reportedly killing 70-100 terrorists and their allies. A number of terrorist training camps and hideouts were also destroyed in the targeted precision airstrikes by the Indian Airforce (IAF). The operation was code named “Operation Sindoor”. Pakistan escalated the conflict by launching artill...

In the past one year, inflation has been one of the primary concerns for most countries across the globe. Rising prices of food and energy in particular have materially impacted the lives of common people on all continents. The central bankers of most major economies have hiked policy rates in the past one year to control inflation. In the current year 2023 so far, 13 major central bankers have taken policy action(s) and all of these actions have been hike in policy rates. However, in recent weeks inflation has shown some tendency of cooling down. It is difficult to assess how much of this cooling down is due to tighter monetary conditions; and how much could be attributed to other factors like restoration of supply chains that were broken during the pandemic and warmer winters resulting in lower energy demand in the northern hemisphere, etc. Nonetheless, some central bankers have adjusted the pace of tightening to smaller hikes. Most of them, though remain...