Bullets

With the Union Budget approaching, emotions are at an all-time high. The investor environment turns into a speculator's playground where emotions are involved.

Owing to the same, the indices are bound to turn into a rollercoaster ride. We suggest you believe in the company and not market sentiments.

Just as a "told you so", the Sensex and Nifty rose by 565 points and 153 points to reach 60,113 points and 17,809 points so far. Let's see where things end up by day end with market emotions being on a spin!

Adani Entreprises seems to have found a fast friend in LIC during its tough times, as the Indian insurance giant has increased its holding in AEL by ₹300 crore. This comes as a "light at the end of the tunnel" moment for the group as all 7 of the group's shares saw red this week. LIC bought 9,15,748 shares or 5% of the company's stake.

LIC: Kharab report ke saath bhi, kharab report ke baad bhi!

RBI's foreign exchange reserves rose by $1.7 billion in a week to reach $573.73 billion by January 20. During the same period, Rupee rose by 0.3% against the dollar. The rises come as a relief after the $100 billion decline in reserves from February to September 2022.

The appreciation of the Rupee and the Union Budget approaching might really make Amrit Kaal a reality after all (provided the growth is sustained and real)!

The Indian government has set out to pay ₹4,000 crore to various industries by March 2023 through PLI schemes. Sectors such as pharma, automobiles, renewable energy, and more already received benefits during 2021-22. This instalment is set to be directed towards industries like, bicycle components, leather, furniture, home textile and more.

These payouts are a part of a larger sum of ₹1.97 lakh crore planned for five years.

Watch out for Insider's take on the budget's effect on various industries.

Amazon has started its pharmacy delivery service called RxPass. Amazon Prime users will be able to get their prescriptions refilled on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on their needs, at just $5 a month.

RxPass will be Amazon's next foray into diversifying businesses with Basics and Fresh. The additional $5 will be added to users' Prime subscription fees.

The drugs supplied will be off-patent and sourced from over 60,000 pharmacies.

Great, Amazon's a step closer to world domination!

As the global economy edges ever closer to a recession, Microsoft has begun executing its 10,000-employee layoff. As per reports, 1,000 out of these 10k have already received notification regarding the end of their employment.

There are also reports that the number of employees to be laid off might go up as well, especially from engineering divisions.

Microsoft also faced a fall in the value of its shares, experiencing a 22% fall over the year to reach $235 from $303.

The American recession is starting to take its toll as another western giant falls to trying times. Amidst a mass layoff of 3,000 employees, the finance giant also reported a revenue drop of over 65%!

The fall in revenue comes as a result of a reduction in the number of IPOs in the American market. The revenues in the previous year fell by 16% to reach $10.2 billion before further falling to $1.2 billion for this year.

Adani Enterprises is planning to bring a ₹20,000 crore FPO, making it the biggest yet in India, beating Yes Bank's ₹15,000 crore July 2022 FPO. ICICI Securities and Jefferies are the first among the consortium of investment banks reportedly engaged in the FPO.

Adani Enterprises filed for SEBI's fast-track FPO procedure, allowing a listing company to skip the preparation and filing procedure of listing documents.

Based on recent developments, the FPO is likely to be published before the Union Budget.

Microsoft has been reported to be in talks to acquire OpenAI's chatbot software, ChatGPT. The Nadella-owned software giant had already invested $1 billion in the AI company in 2019.

The acquisition is valued at $10 billion while OpenAI is valued at $29 billion in an attempt to compete against Google.

If I had a browser like Bing as my offering, I'd try to adopt a "new kid", too.

Remember 2016 when everyone and their dog wanted a Jio sim? Well, best get ready for Reliance as it launches its "True 5G" network.

The 10 cities where the pilot phase will begin include Agra, Kanpur, Meerut, Prayagraj, Tirupati, Nellore, Kozhikode, Thrissur, Nagpur, and Ahmednagar. The company plans to release a "Jio Welcome Offer", wherein users will get unlimited data at 1GBPS+ speeds in these cities.

How many of the little to non-existent telecom companies will be eliminated this time?

 Amazon becomes the next tech company to begin laying off employees amidst the worsening American economy. A total of 18,000 employees, equal to 6% of the 3,00,000-strong Amazon workforce, will be let go in this round of layoffs.

The exact number pertaining to the layoff was previously unknown. However, it was soon brought to light through a memo by the CEO that was published thanks to an employee leaking the aforementioned information externally.

From smiles to severance cheques, Amazon delivers!😁

Yet December saw nearly 250 firings across various departments. To put that number into a bit of perspective, that's 5% of the delivery company's self-acclaimed workforce.

To add insult to injury, the 2.3x revenue growth was coupled with a 2.2x increase in losses. The losses for the year amounted to ₹3,628.9 crore compared to last year's ₹1,616.9 crore.

With such poor numbers, the IPO-bound company might want to "pull an OYO" and either lay off more or delay the IPO.

The Indian unemployment rate rose to 8.30% in December, reaching a 16-month high. When bifurcated into urban and rural unemployment, the former rose from 8.96% to 10.09% and the latter from 7.44% to 7.55%.

Government officials related to the matter stated that employment rates rose in December, too, reaching 37.1%, the highest it has been since January 2022.

So overall employment rose while urban unemployment rose more than rural. Makes sense, startups don't hire from the rural environment after all.

Steel and mining giant group JSW is planning to enter the EV space soon as the CFO of the group, Seshagiri Rao, could be quoted saying that plans to enter the EV market are in "advanced stages".

The move is not a shocker as major auto manufacturers like Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland saw a rise of 10% and 45% in just December sales.

So enough steel clashing. It is time for the giants to play bumper cars.

Rolex watches have beaten gold, shares and real estate performance in the last ten years. The major part of 2022 saw Rolex prices go up in the secondary market before settling a bit during the year's end.

The average price of a Rolex watch has gone from $5,000 to $13,000 over the decade.  According to McKinsey, the total market value of second-hand luxury watches stands at around $20 billion. Is it time for a new asset bubble already?

Reliance is gearing up to enter the retail business with much gusto. After Campa Cola, RIL is set to acquire a 51% stake in Lotus Chocolates. While Campa Cola was acquired for ₹22 crore, the chocolate-y acquisition is worth ₹74 crore.

The deal will be executed by Reliance Consumer Product Limited acquiring 65,48,935 equity shares at ₹113.00 each. The aim of the capital infusion (on paper) is to help Lotus grow and expand its business into consumer and industrial markets.

Amongst the ongoing startup downturn, Flipkart seems to have flipped the layoff cart! The Walmart-owned e-commerce website is the recipient of a $700 million windfall gain as a result of its sale of stake in PhonePe.

As Flipkart exited PhonePe recently after major fundraising from General Atlantic, the payment intermediary's shares held by the Flipkart employees through ESOP doubled in value. Ex-employees, top 20 employees and senior staff will receive up to $200 million out of the $700 million.

Venugopal Dhoot, CEO and founder of Videocon Group, has been arrested by the CBI in relation to the ₹3,250 crore loan fraud from ICICI Bank. The arrest was made 3 days after former ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochar and her husband, Deepak Kochhar, were arrested.

We would tell you the state of the company's shares due to the TV chief's downfall, but that is not possible anymore either. The shares bit the dust in June last year.

NDTV founder Prannoy Roy has sold 27.26% of his 32.26% shareholding in the media company. Adani Group will become the single largest shareholder with a 64.71% share. Adani Group started NDTV's acquisition through a company with stakes in the network and then by buying publicly traded shares.

The founder said that he is proud of what NDTV has become and that the network met their hopes.

Wonder why they are letting it turn into a corporate PR platform, then...

Russia and Sri Lanka are set to be the first two of many countries to enter international trade with India using the rupee. This move by India aims to support countries that have low dollar reserves, which stop them from being able to engage in international trade.

Russia suffers from sanctions, and Sri Lankan dollar reserves shrunk as the pandemic struck the country's export inventory. Countries such as Tajikistan, Cuba, Luxembourg, and Sudan are also trying to enter similar agreements.