• Liquid funds saw the bulk of the outflows to the tune of Rs.24,509 crore during the month
• Income funds and balanced funds also saw outflows even as equity fund inflows were nearly 20% lower

• The ECB decision was largely based on expectations that EU GDP growth and inflation would falter this year
• Most global markets corrected in the aftermath of the ECB announcement as it pointed to growth pangs

• Forex reserves had fallen from $428 billion to a low of $392 billion as RBI had intervened to defend the rupee
• Forex reserves in excess of $400 billion are a must considering that imports are likely to cross $500 billion this fiscal

• On the one hand there was the US data coming in of rising shale production and higher inventories
• But the real worry for oil came from weak EU outlook. EU being a major oil importer is likely to dampen oil prices

• The NCLT resolution had run into rough weather after Essar promoters made a much higher bid for the company
• However, the final ruling of the NCLT has come in favour of the highest bidder at NCLT (Arcelor Mittal)

• The Nifty rally was driven by aggressive buying in index heavyweights like banks and autos
• Markets ignored the Trump GSP threat and the MSCI down-grade to focus more on positive cues from PMI numbers

• This sounds a tad ironic considering that Norway created the wealth fund corpus out of its oil earnings
• The Norwegian Pension Fund will remove a total of 134 exploration companies from its overall portfolio

• This could be a new method of divesting where government raises funds without diluting indirect control
• The government has set a very aggressive target of Rs.90,000 crore disinvestment in the coming fiscal 2019-20

• The insolvency plea was filed with the NCLT after Punj Lloyd had defaulted on a Rs.854 crore loan
• With the provisioning norms being tightened, the room for error is almost nil for banks and for borrowers

• The weak jobs data was one more signal that the slowdown is spreading across China, EU and also the US

However, the US economy has been at close to full employment for a long time with record low unemployment

• The sentiments on politics seems to have changed with the decisive tactics adopted by India after the Pulwama attack
• If the current NDA government comes back, the markets would see that as a vote for tough reforms

• The CPI inflation has been on a consistent downtrend over the last few months on weak food prices
• However, the Reuters poll still estimates the inflation rate to be well within the RBI range of 4%

• This infusion was largely led by expectations that a stable government may continue at the centre post elections
• Also, the Indian markets had underperformed other Asian EMs in the last six months making it undervalued

• This is likely to be an outcome of the stringent NPA provisioning in the light of the slightest delay in payment
• The government has, meanwhile, announced a slew of measures to bail out the power sector from this mess

• The government is likely to consider letting India, China, Japan and South Korea to continue imports of oil from Iran
• The concessions expire on May 04^th and India may be allowed to continue import of its 300,000 bpd from Iran

• According to a report by Morningstar, women in India comprise just 8% of the fund management industry
• This is sharply lower than the number in other countries across Asia, Europe and the US

• The US withdrawal of GSP for India may impact exports to the US to the tune of nearly $5.6 billion annually
• However, the WTO complaint may not be successfully unless India has been specifically discriminated against

• Equity and debt together accounts for nearly 60% of the asset allocation by wealthy Indians versus 23% for realty
• In the calendar y ear 2019, Knight Frank expects the wealthy segment to get involved in private equity in a big way

• Now liquid funds will have to make MTM provisions for any holding above 30 days as against 60 days in the past
• In addition, SEBI also compressed the peak spread between fair value and actual value. Yields may drop by 15 bps

• This move came a day after the Grant Thornton report found that nearly Rs.13,000 crore had been round tripped
• The former management has 7 days to response failing which criminal action will be initiated against them

• One reason for this static yields could be that the banks have not transmitted rate cuts to the end borrowers
• Bond markets are also wary of the fact that fiscal deficit this year could cross $100 billion putting pressure on yields