Introducing The Indian Indices- BSE Sensex and the S&P CNX Nifty

The BSE is the Stock exchange that pioneered the stock broking activity in India in 1875. The stock market through its life since inception has seen a lot of ups and downs, but till 1986, there was no measure to quantify these ups or downs. This is when the BSE Sensex was compiled in 1986. Trading on the NSE began in 1994. In 1998, NSE and CRISIL formed a JV named India Index Services & Products Ltd. (IISL), which was formed with the objective of concentrating on the formation and maintenance of only indices as a product of this JV. This is when the CNX Nifty was launched, where CNX stands for CRISIL NSE Indices. This index is owned by IISL. Later on Standard & Poor’s, which owns the S&P 500 Index endorsed the CNX Nifty and then it begun to be called as the S&P CNX Nifty.

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I was reading 5 Uncommon Uses For a Simple USB Thumb Drive by Skellie and I found her first point very useful. She explains how we can use Flash Drive as a Digital Business Card. You can buy a Flash Drive for less than $10 and then copy your portfolio, your resume, your contact details, PowerPoint presentations, or any other projects (as there is enough disk space to be used). And handover the flash drive to a prospective client. Keep in mind that you need to pay $1 (or more depending upon the keyword) a click if you go for Pay Per Click advertising on Google. So this idea makes sense.

In the past few weeks I was wondering whether it makes sense to take a Loan from the bank and then invest that money in Fixed Deposits. Today, I asked the same as a Question in Yahoo! Answers which is a good portal to get immediate response or answers from users all over the world. And I was right I got pretty good responses in minutes. It was a mixed response some said YES and some said NO.

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Ever since the stock market crashed I began to pick stocks. Here is the my latest portfolio update. These are some quality stocks which you can consider after a careful analysis.

I guess you read the first part of my Guide To Investing In Stock Market (Part 1). If you haven’t read that yet then I request you do so. Before investing in stock market I really recommend you to read the life of Warren Buffet (World’s Greatest Investor of all times).

Warren Buffett’s Secrets of Success

If you are an investor and don’t know who Warren Buffett is then Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930, Omaha, Nebraska) is an American investor, businessperson and philanthropist. He is the third richest person in the world according to Forbes Magazine with an estimated current net worth of around US$56.9 Billion. He known as the world’s greatest investor or “Oracle of Omaha”.

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While investing people tend to look at loads of factors, which is beyond their control. They look at parameters such as oil prices, stock prices, and interest rates when it comes to making equity investment. Investors usually spend hours tracking these uncontrollable factors but hardly spent time on factors, which is in their control. The uncontrollable factors include index level, oil prices, interest rates, inflation, laws and other political and natural risks. The factors, which are in an investors’ control include his needs, goals, time horizon, objective and risk taking ability.

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The sharp appreciation of the rupee against the USD of late has caught the fancy of investors and corporates at large. We tried to look at the impact that this sharp appreciation actually has on the various sectors.

The rupee has appreciated very sharply over the last one year against all the major currencies, especially against the dollar. Against the dollar, the rupee has appreciated 12.8% from the peak USD/INR rate and 5.1% since the beginning of FY08. Against the Euro and the GBP it has appreciated 9% from the peak rate and 5.5% since the beginning of FY08.  It is therefore very important to understand the impact that it will have on different sectors as each sector has some or the other exposure in foreign currency. Some have revenues coming in a foreign currency, where some may have foreign currency denominated expenses and some have balance sheet items, which relate to foreign currency. Below, we take the sectors and try to understand the factors where they stand to lose or gain in this rupee-appreciating environment.

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