On Monday, we anticipate weakness might persist in the initial part of the trading session as cues from Asian peers are negative and the behaviour of the Nifty vis-à-vis the level of 10,840-10,850 continues to remain very decisive. Stocks in the news: Tata Communications, Biocon, Indian Hotels, Phoenix Mills, ICICI Bank, Symphony, Goa Carbon, Bombay Dyeing and Unichem Laboratories.

As we step into the F&O expiry week, we feel that Indian markets may open on a weak note as leads from the Asian markets are negative. This is on the back of media reports stating that the US President Donald Trump is planning to impose new curbs on Chinese investments in the US. The Nifty 50 index future on the Singapore stock exchange is currently trading lower by 50 points at 10,786.  

The Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has asked general insurance companies to submit third party vehicle insurance policies offering 3-year and 5-year insurance for cars and two-wheelers, respectively, and offer these options to their customers. The IRDAI directive to the insurers comes in the wake of the recommendation made by the Committee on Road Safety of the Supreme Court.

If you are in need of money and want to have a loan at a rate cheaper than personal loan, you can consider pledging your life insurance policy as collateral for raising the loan. You may apply for the loan either through the insurance policy or directly with the bank.

The performance of a mutual fund scheme cannot be done in isolation and it has to have some reference point or yardstick for comparison. The index to which the scheme is benchmarked provides such a reference point for comparison of the performance. If the scheme gives higher returns than the benchmark’s returns, it is said to have outperformed the benchmark during a given period of time; however, if it gives lower returns than that of the benchmark, the scheme is said to have underperformed the benchmark.

In India, an average investor barely knows about money market mutual funds (MMMFs), and even if he is aware, he seldom ventures to invest in these funds. There is a tendency among Indian investors to opt for known investment avenues such as bank fixed deposits, bonds, debentures, PPF, etc. The lack of awareness amongst investors about MMMFs deprives them of a good investment opportunity.

If you are planning to invest in securities such as fixed maturity plans (FMPs), closed-ended mutual funds, tax-free bonds or non-convertible debentures, you need to know that these securities are illiquid as there are not many buyers and sellers of these securities in the market.

The trade war tensions have escalated and the Asian markets have been rattled and have reached 6-month low post the deepening of trade war between the US and China.

Indian benchmark indices which remained subdued for almost the entire trading session, gave the last hour bounce back to close nearly 0.7 per cent up. Broader markets too closed in green but underperformed the benchmark indices. All the sectors closed in the positive territory where pharma followed by all banking sectoral indices and FMCG outperformed the markets.

Fund houses in India are launching ESG Funds. Read on to find what are these ESG funds and should you be investing in them.