Sunday, February 28, 2010

Growth Oriented Budget

By now everybody would heard, read or made an opinion about this years Union Budget. In fact I wanted to post this on Friday night itself but as usual my laziness came in between me & my blog posting!!!

First thing which comes to my mind about this budget is "inclusive growth" concept which government is talking about from quite a few days. I think first time a Finance Minister of India coming out openly in budget speech & saying India needs to double digit growth to eradicate poverty, he is saying "nobody is going feed 120 crore people of India rather we have to feed ourselves & in excess we have to export". This vision itself is future growth oriented.

Now coming to budget details first eye catching point is Direct Taxes which is going to affect middle, higher middle class & upper class savings & expenditure pattern. The upper cap for first slab of direct tax (i.e. for 10% tax rate) raised from 3 to 5 lakh and 20% tax rate slab increased from 5 to 8 lakh. Here tax payers can save Rs. 20000 & Rs. 50000 per year with respect to 1st & 2nd slabs. This saving itself will lead to more consumption/investments & etc. And why I feel good about this is not because less tax payment but direct consumption/investment is far more effective than the government spending as we all know efficiency of bureaucracy! And in addition to that Mr. FM has extended Rs. 20000 from 1 lakh to 1.2 lakh tax deduction amount under 80c act Income tax for long term investments. Which again leads to more saings & investments. Why I stressing this savings part is because of this only India relatively less affected from this present Financial Crisis. Because if you see the roots of the crisis is US saving rate(less than 2% where as India's is 33-35%), their dependency on credit card life, kind of loans like NINJA (No Income, No Job & Asset) & some regulatory issues.

Now coming to corporate taxes, he kept base tax of 30% same but reduced surcharge from 10% to 7% & kept education cess same as 3%. Previously altogether it used to come around 33.99% but now 33.2175%. I don't find reducing surcharge is a good move particularly companies are getting back to their normal profit & bottom line targets. And I was watching Mr. Narayan Murthy, a well known Infosys Founder was saying that "there should not any tax holidays to IT companies as they are paying taxes in all over the world then why not in India". So I don't find any harm in his statement, as I believe tax holidays or anything like that is for starting up/building companies & not for well built companies. In accordance to Murthy's views Mr. FM has increased MAT (Minimum Alternative Tax, which is paid by tax holiday companies/sectors & etc) from present 15% to 18%.

Now coming to rural/agriculture in which still major part of India is living & getting livelihood. First in this NREGS which is quite a revolutionary in recent time by providing at least 100 days job in a year to villagers & particularly 75-80% of them are women with a wage of Rs. 90 to Rs. 100. NREGS got allocation of Rs. 40100 crores. This scheme brings many advantages mainly, women empowering financially, less crowding of urban areas for unskilled jobs, increase in income of village people. In fact one of the cause for present food inflation is strong demand from villagers as compared to villagers. Okay about inflation we can talk later. Mr. FM has kept the target of agriculture loan of Rs. 375000 crore for this financial target. Rs. 400 crore has been allocated to extend the green revolution to eastern parts of India like Bihar, UP, WB, Orissa & etc, due to which obviously productivity will increase. And most importantly Rs. 300 is provided to organise "60000 pulses & oil seed villages" to increase the productivity. Providing banking facility to places having more than 2000 population by 2012-13.

And most important thing from FDI & FII perspective is Fiscal Consolidation/Deficit. Financ Minister has given surprising target by beating the market expectation of pegging it to 4.8% for 2011-12 & 4.1% for 2012-13. Here government is expected raise some Rs. 35000-40000 crores from disinvestment process & substantial amount from 3G auction process.

Now most controversial but step towards the oil price deregulation is restoring the basic duty of 5% on crude petroleum; 7.5% on diesel and petrol and 10% on other refined products. Also, the central excise duty on petrol and diesel would go up by Re.1 per litre each. Almost all political parties including some parties UPA opposed & opposing this move but I dont know till when they expect government to give subsidy & run oil companies in loss?

Similarly substantial amount & concentration has other important sectors like infrastructure, power, environment & climate change, education, health & etc.

So overall I rate this budget as 8/10.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Market outlook


Market slightly bounced back from its 200 DMA level of 4670. Due to global market bounce back our markets slightly recovered from oversold zone.

Now I feel market may trade in this broad range of 4650 to 5300 levels & breaking from either side may not happen in near term until unless some major break out of news.

If you look at the chart, if market breaks out 4950 level (which is the intermediate resistance & may shorts starts building up) then market head towards 5180 levels. And break out from that level can be taken as starting new bull rally.

And there are some long term buying opportunity in some stocks like...

Bharti Airtel : Major support @ 270 & if it breaks then free fall...
HDIL: Major support @ 300...
Sesa Goa: Support 330-340 levels...
Gitanjali Gems: 110-115 levels...
Renuka Sugars: 175-180 levels...
Educomp Soln: 650-660 levels...
Kesoram Industry: 350 levels...

But there should be step by step buying as in the case of Systematic Investments Plan (SIP) as being participants we are expecting some bad news from RBI (tightening of monetary policy to curb inflation which has already crossed RBI's comfort level of 8%), normal/slow exiting of fiscal polices announcements in budget to control Fiscal Deficit & Ultimately global markets & economy still mysterious whether there is U or W shape recovery because W recovery means double dip recession which I feel very much possible in these kind of crisis due to various reasons like multiple bubbles in multiple countries, instead curing roots of problem, just removing the symptoms like regulatory issues in US & etc...

Monday, February 8, 2010

Comment from reader

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Lucy

My comment to this comment...

I am glad that my blog is helpful at least fo somebody... From these type comments only I feel like posting regularly & share whatever I feel about certain things...

Keep reading...

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Market has support in the range of 4620 to 4660 levels


From 2 charts above mentioned if you observe daily & weekly DMAs & support has support around the 4660 & 4620 levels...
And you can also check out the RSI & Stochastic are in oversold region...

Monday, February 1, 2010

Intermediate Support @ 4800

Nifty levels...
Intermediate support - 4800
Medium term support - 4580
Intermediate resistance - 4980
Medium term resistance - 5040 and if this level breaks-out this is the confirmation of short term trend coming back to BULLS...