Looking past the poverty and ahead, if you sit on Indian investments you could be rewarded with plenty of profits. This from Chris Mayer writing for the Daily Reckoning: Of all the crazy events in 2008, seeing the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in flames on TV is one I’ll remember for a long time. Last year, when I traveled throughout India, my first stop was Mumbai (or Bombay, as people still call it). I stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace. I remember what an oasis of calm that hotel was after spending a day in bustling Bombay. I remember its onyx columns and archways and domes, its hand-woven carpets and crystal chandeliers, its exceedingly polite staff and impressive Sikh doormen. Built in 1903 by a Tata, the Taj was a place of grace and old-world charm. From the hotel, you got a panoramic view of the bay, where the ...

Of all the crazy events in 2008, seeing the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in flames on TV is one I’ll remember for a long time. Last year, when I traveled throughout India, my first stop was Mumbai (or Bombay, as people still call it). I stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace.

I remember what an oasis of calm that hotel was after spending a day in bustling Bombay. I remember its onyx columns and archways and domes, its hand-woven carpets and crystal chandeliers, its exceedingly polite staff and impressive Sikh doormen.

Poor India, the old stomping grounds of the great Hindu kings, the playground of the Mughal Empire, had a rough year in 2008. India has had such a good run - five years of nearly 9% economic growth and a booming stock market - that it had reason to feel it was Fate’s spoiled darling. But in a long and checkered

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Tender Offer for Taro Pharma Tarries Along India's largest generic drug company [web link to analysis of this market] by market cap, Sun Pharma (Bombay: 524715), and Israel-based Taro Pharma (TAROF) have one month to reach agreement on an outstanding tender offer of $7.75 per share by Sun Pharma to acquire its smaller rival or the Israel Supreme Court will decide on the case. In early 2007, Taro agreed to the deal as it was struggling to survive and Sun invested $60M as part of a private placement to resolve Taro's liquidity issues. However, in May of this year Taro cancelled Sun Pharma's takeover of the Company and in September a Tel Aviv District Court dismissed Taro's argument that ...

The weight of the global economy rests on the American consumer, says J. Christoph Amberger. That’s who all these government bailouts are trying to reach. And unless shoppers throw caution to the wind this Christmas, we could be in for a rough ride.

This from Today’s Financial News:

The U.S. dollar dropped against the euro as the Commerce Department reduced Q3 GDP growth to -0.5% and the Fed announced that it was getting ready to throw another $800 billion into the fiery furnace of this fine financial mess.

Why did the greenback drop? I think it is more of a reflexive move. Investors still think in bi-polar terms: If things look bad for the States, the grass must be greener in Europe.

Of course, it isn’t. It never was.

If anything, Europe is worse off than the United States. The EU economy has turned recessive a full quarter before the U.S. economy. While

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India’s central bank yesterday (Monday) unexpectedly lowered its base lending rate for the first time since 2004 – a move that signals that India Reserve Bank Governor Duvvuri Subbarao sees weaker growth and the credit crisis as bigger threats than inflation in Asia’s third-largest economy. The Reserve Bank of India cut its overnight lending rate from 9% to 8%, according to a government statement issued in Mumbai yesterday. The “surprise move” that came days before a regularly scheduled meeting of its policy board came after India’s central bank reduced the cash reserve ratio by 2.5 percentage points to 6.5% – retroactive to Oct. 11, Bloomberg News and MarketWatch.com both reported. The so-called “repurchase rate” is the discount rate at which India’s central bank lends money to commercial banks to infuse liquidity into the market. India’s rupee ...

There is no surprise as to what dominates the news this morning; US Futures are taking a walloping. Looking at it from an Irish perspective (given its heavy financial weighting) it makes grim viewing even before today's news struck.So I took a look at some market relationships. The relationships described below were calculated last week so there will be a few more percentage points to add. I used the S&P as one can get data all the way back to the 1950s. At its worst for this year the S&P traded 15.2% away from its 200-day MA (July 15th). However, historically this ranks only 371st out of 14,310 trading days for the index. So what periods were worse?In 1974 there were 101 trading days when the 200-day MA was greater than 15.2% away from its 200-day ...

There is no surprise as to what dominates the news this morning; US Futures are taking a walloping. Looking at it from an Irish perspective (given its heavy financial weighting) it makes grim viewing even before today's news struck.So I took a look at some market relationships. The relationships described below were calculated last week so there will be a few more percentage points to add. I used the S&P as one can get data all the way back to the 1950s. At its worst for this year the S&P traded 15.2% away from its 200-day MA (July 15th). However, historically this ranks only 371st out of 14,310 trading days for the index. So what periods were worse?In 1974 there were 101 trading days when the 200-day MA was greater than 15.2% away from its 200-day ...

Hedge Funds in IndiaThe Benefits of Offering Hedge Funds in IndiaHere's a short article on how the Committee of Financial Sector Reforms in India might introduce hedge funds and why this would be a positive move for the Indian markets and fund industry as a whole.______________________ The Draft Report of the Committee on Financial Sector Reforms headed by Professor Raghuram Rajan was issued for comment in April 2008. Among the proposals that the high-level committee made was the introduction of domestic hedge funds. The committee feels that, “The presence of hedge funds would induce greater competitive pressure for other regulated fund management channels such as mutual funds.” This week’s article discusses the benefits of introducing hedge funds in the Indian market. It shows how ...