Good evening, and welcome to Business Hook’s daily news podcast, where we bring you a roundup of the day’s top business stories. I’m Avni Raja, and today is the 8th of October, 2024.
Let’s start with Asian equity markets – most Asian indices ended the day in the red as the China rally lost steam. Investors were disappointed as, contrary to market expectations, Chinese authorities didn’t announce further stimulus measures. As a result, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost nine percent in Tuesday’s trade. The Shanghai Composite, which had surged ten percent at the start of the session, lost more than half of it. Japan’s Nikkei also closed one percent lower.
Back home, the Sensex and the Nifty snapped their six-session losing streak, with BSE-listed companies adding eight lakh crore rupees to investor wealth. The Sensex surged almost 600 points to close above 81,600, and the Nifty gained nearly a percent to close above 25,000. Of the fifty Nifty constituents, 36 advanced while 14 declined. Tata Group-owned retail major Trent was the star of the day, rising eight percent to close above 8,000 rupees per share. Private insurer SBI Life was the biggest laggard, dropping more than three percent.
One of the biggest boosts for Indian stock markets came from the political landscape – in a major setback for the Congress-led INDIA bloc, the BJP swept the assembly elections in Haryana. Exit polls had predicted a landslide for Congress, but under the leadership of Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, the BJP pulled off a surprise, winning the state for the third consecutive term. The stock markets responded positively to the BJP’s victory, which comes just months after the party’s lacklustre performance in the Lok Sabha elections. As a result, the Nifty PSU Index and Adani Group stocks saw some of the highest gains in Tuesday’s session. In Jammu and Kashmir, which had also voted for assembly polls, National Conference led alliance emerged as the winner.
In stock-specific action, fintech major Paytm’s shares surged nearly 16 percent, marking the best single-day gains since the eighth of February, 2023. After Tuesday’s surge, the stock has turned positive for 2024. While there was no evident trigger for this remarkable surge in the stock price, some market experts are attributing it to a recovery following a phase of profit-booking. Paytm had hit lifetime lows earlier this year after the RBI imposed curbs on its Payments Bank.
In the IPO space, Hyundai Motor India’s IPO is expected to open next week for subscriptions. According to a Reuters report quoting sources, the issue is likely to be priced in the range of 1,865 to 1,960 rupees per share, valuing the automaker at over 1.5 lakh crore rupees. The IPO, which is expected to raise around 25,000 crore rupees, will be India’s largest. It will open for subscriptions for big institutional investors on the fourteenth of October, and for retail and other categories from the fifteenth to the seventeenth.
In the e-commerce space, Meesho clocked a 40% year-on-year growth in total orders during the 'Meesho Mega Blockbuster Sale 2024' – the company’s version of festive sales. The SoftBank-backed company recorded 145 crore customer visits during the 10-day sale, which was held in the last week of September and the first week of October. The online retailer also saw its app downloads soar to around 1.5 crore leading up to the sale.
With that, it’s a wrap on this edition of the Business Hook News Wrap podcast. We will be back on tomorrow with the next edition of our podcast. Till then check out the Business Hook YouTube channel for the top business developments of the day.