Taxes in Indian Stock Market

Taxes on trades and gains in Indian Stock Market.

Performance of Real Estate vs Stocks vs Gold in India - 2011 to 2016

When it comes to asset allocation, majority of Indians prefer Gold and Real estate over Stocks as they provide tangibility and sense of security. But sense of security is not sufficient as far as investments are concerned as savings in any form need to beat inflation for creating wealth.

So lets check how each of these asset classes have performed over last 5 years and whether Indians are right in their judgment of allocating majority of their investment capital in Real estate and gold:

CPI INFLATION IN INDIA

CPI Inflation has averaged around 8% in past 5 years

Top 5 large companies impacted most by BREXIT

As they say "Unexpected Always Happens" and BREXIT happened exactly when financial markets was least expecting it. Britain exiting from Europe will have large ramifications on European Union and might lead to disintegrating the union which will happen off-course over the years. But this brings uncertainty to businesses and that is what market dislikes most. 

Though India is largely insulated from the BREXIT for the time being but if EU is to disintegrate it could be a serious problem for us also as we do substantial amount of business in Europe. Also the uncertainties in European countries might lead to capital flight to safe heavens such as USD and precious metals which would certainly impact our stock market returns.

On a medium terms basis companies which are deriving more than 50% of their revenue from Euro Zone should be watched carefully for any adverse impact of U.K exiting from Europe. Following are the top 5 companies which derive  substantial amount of revenue from Euro Zone:

Buy Indian Stocks, China stock market crash an opportunity

Chinese stock markets and fear of its hard landing has played havoc on commodities and scaring equity investors globally. But doesn't it feel like it's getting far too much? Oil at $30 with just around a million barrel oversupply when half the world production of 95 million barrels per day is making cash losses at current prices. Similarly doom Sayers are predicting crash in Chinese economy and thus a crash in global stock markets. Lets look at some facts behind Chinese stock markets and if it really can hurt global investors and markets.

CSI 300 5 Year Chart

1. Unlike mature markets of Europe, America, India etc, Chinese stock markets have more than 80% retail investors with barely 2% foreign holding. So a 50% crash in Chinese market would affects these foreign investors portfolio by just 1%. BIG DEAL!

SENSEX Valuation expensive on FY-16 EPS

Indian Stock Market has delivered exceptional return since the start of the calendar 2014 and rightly so based on expected lines. We got historical political mandate in May 2014 and the global liquidity situation has been very benign since then. But without proper consolidation and time correction (if not price correction) market is increasingly getting vulnerable for sudden sharp knocks.

Valuation is no longer attractive and good quality companies are trading at historically high valuation. Like I have always said, Market is a pendulum which keeps swinging back and forth between the state of overvaluation & undervaluation and never stay at fair valuation (center) for long. Right now markets are stretching towards the overvaluation. The more it stretches in that direction, sharper will be the retrenchment.

Indian Stock Market Outlook - 2014

In general 2014 appears quite optimistic as far as performance of Indian equities are concerned. 2013 witnessed some major shocks in terms of currency, inflation and deficits which resulted in whipsaw movements in stocks and indices. Gross Corporate earnings in India has also not been encouraging so far. But in-spite of all bad macro and micro news flow in 2013, most of markets globally including Indian markets made new highs. Mutual funds sold more than Rs.75,000 crores worth of stocks in the year gone by while FIIs continued to pump in money and bought more than Rs.1 lakh crores worth of stocks.

During second half of 2013, QE tapering risk kept emerging markets on edge as none of us were able to estimate the impact it would have on capital markets. Finally after lot of suspense the QE tapering did happened and fed reduced the bond buying program by $10 billion. The market reacted positively as the quantum of tapering was low and it also signalled improvement in U.S economy.

So what to expect from Indian equites in 2014?

In a straight answer to this question, 2014 is expected to be optimistic and scale new high. But there will be no straight line movement and we will witness occasional correction on account profit bookings and unknown fears.

Indian Stock Market History: PPT / PDF

Indian Stock Markets have come a long way since the days when trading used to happen under a banyan tree. In 1957 Bombay Stock Exchange became the first stock exchange to be recognized under Securities Contract Act.

In 1993 National Stock Exchange was established which brought the paradigm shift in the way trading use to happen. In 2000 Internet trading was started at NSE. BSE followed soon later.

Impact of 2012 Assembly Election On Stock Markets

Indian Stock Market witnessed volatile movements in the morning until the clear consensus emerged during noon that SP is going to come in UP with full majority. 

Initially when the markets opened at 9:15 A.M it went up based on a hope that Samajwadi Party might not get full majority and could pull in Congress to form the government in UP. But as the day progressed it became clear that SP would get full majority and won't require congress support. That made the Indian stock Markets very nervous and SENSEX fell more than 550 points from the highs of the day.

So what were the reasons for nervousness and what's the future?

Sensex, Nifty gained for seventh straight week

Key benchmark indices gained for the seventh straight week to scale highest closing level in 28 weeks as latest government data showed that inflation in January eased to a 26-month low. Nifty continues to form higher highs throughout the week and finally closed above 5550 levels. 

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) pumped in another 3500 crores during last week taking total for 2012 to 24,100 crores (till February), as per provisional data from the stock exchanges. The BSE benchmark Sensex was up by 540.70 points or 3.05% for the week to settle at 18289.35 levels. The NSE flagship Nifty ended at 5564.30 levels, up by 182.70 points or 3.40%. 

Indian Stock Market Performance: 10 Years History

SENSEX and NIFTY, the benchmark indices of Indian stock market, has performed very well in last decade in spite of it's under performance in last 2 - 3 years. In 1998 the NIFTY index was at 884 which went to as high as 6138 in 2007 and then fell to 4624 level in 2011.

Just to summarize the absolute returns generated by the NIFTY index over the last decade, following is the year wise Index closing levels and return generated since 2001.