Weekly Market Insights: 30th October 2021

Markets continued the correction through the week. Unlike last week where small and midcaps were major losers, large cap indices absorbed most of the pressure this week, majorly due to weakening in banking stocks

Weekly Movement of Key Indices

Markets are pricing in earnings disappointments across various sectors. Additionally, FII selling pressure added to the woes with FII becoming net sellers for the month of October.

Key events next week that will determine market movement is the release of India’s manufacturing and services PMI data, depicting economic progress in October. Globally, the Fed meet next week and subsequent announcements will also set the tone for global equities in the coming month.

Weekly Movement of Key Sectoral Indices

Nifty Bank was the major laggard this week. Concerns over asset quality and weak earnings pulled the sector down. Other sectors fell in line with the broader market

A key data point for the auto sector will be the release of October sales numbers. Historically, auto, consumption and e-commerce/retail themes tend to do well during the festive season.

Mutual Fund Industry Highlights

SEBI restricts MF employees from transacting in certain schemes

SEBI has restricted mutual fund employees, trustees and board members from transacting in mutual fund schemes that are about to disclose any key information to unitholders.

Such information includes restrictions on redemptions or winding up of scheme, creation of segregated portfolio, change in investment objective, accounting policy or valuation of assets, conversion of a scheme from close ended to open ended or vice versa. The rule also applies in case of change in liquidity position or default by a security.

MF schemes to have uniformity in benchmarks

Mutual funds can now choose to have two benchmarks for their debt and equity schemes — one for comparing performance with uniform benchmark and another for comparing how investment style has fared.

The first benchmark will likely to be uniform across scheme category and will be decided by AMFI for each scheme. The second benchmark will be independent and it will largely depend on the style the fund follows.

MFD count grows to 1 lakh

As of September end 2021, total MFD count crossed the 1 lakh count owing to a fast paced ARN registration pace in FY 22.

NFO's currently open

  • ITI Pharma and Healthcare Fund
  • LIC MF Balanced Advantage Fund