Stock Market News & Stocks to Watch from StraightStocks » HDFC Bank http://www.straightstocks.com Leading Stock Market News, Opinions and Commentary Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:20:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 NCR Wins Biggest ATM Deal – Analyst Blog http://www.straightstocks.com/stock-watch/ncr-wins-biggest-atm-deal-analyst-blog/ http://www.straightstocks.com/stock-watch/ncr-wins-biggest-atm-deal-analyst-blog/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:57:52 +0000 Zacks Market Commentaries http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/25740/NCR+Wins+Biggest+ATM+Deal+-+Analyst+Blog
NCR Corp. (NCR) has secured the biggest order of automated teller machines (ATMs) in India. The State Bank of India (SBI) has entered into an agreement to purchase around 3,800 ATM machines from NCR. The leading bank of India also signed a seven year service contract with the company.
 
The bank is already using 10,000 NCR ATMs and this repeat order reinforces the fact that SBI is satisfied with the quality and service of NCR. Under this new agreement, NCR will be instrumental in ATM deployment, site implementation service, maintenance and site implementation service. NCR will be supplying the DVSS (Digital Video Surveillance Systems) along with the ATMs to prevent fraudulent activities. The financial terms of the deal is not yet disclosed by the company.
 
This apart, the company is rolling out new products at regular intervals and resolving operational issues of its customers around the world. Recently, NCR launched advanced point-of-sale solution for its customers. Again a few weeks back, NCR Advanced Store point-of-sale (POS) solution, version 5.4 achieved the “Payment Application Data Security Standard" (PA-DSS) version 1.2. of the “Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council" (PCI SSC). The (PA-DSS) standards have been deployed to protect credit card information of consumers against security threats. 

NCR also revealed that the company has signed a deal with U.S. Airways, whereby the later will deploy NCR TouchPort 80, a self-service kiosk that supports passenger check-in at outdoor locations. Although the company continues to roll out different products and services, but it is a pioneer in manufacturing ATMs.
 
Apart from SBI, the other big Indian customer of NCR ATM is HDFC Bank (HDB), which is also using large number of ATM machines from the company. This contract win proves that, NCR continues to maintain its leadership position in the Indian as well as global ATM market. Although the banking and financial services sector across the globe is going through doldrums and restricts their spending, we believe with gradual economic revival this segment will generate substantial revenues and win new customers for the company.

Read the full analyst report on "NCR"
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]]> http://www.straightstocks.com/stock-watch/ncr-wins-biggest-atm-deal-analyst-blog/feed/ 0 Profit From the “New Decoupling” http://www.straightstocks.com/market-commentary/profit-from-the-%e2%80%9cnew-decoupling%e2%80%9d/ http://www.straightstocks.com/market-commentary/profit-from-the-%e2%80%9cnew-decoupling%e2%80%9d/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:39:57 +0000 Investment U http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2009/July/decoupling-emerging-markets.html http://www.straightstocks.com/market-commentary/profit-from-the-%e2%80%9cnew-decoupling%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 Indian Budget Disappoints Market – Analyst Blog http://www.straightstocks.com/stock-watch/indian-budget-disappoints-market-analyst-blog/ http://www.straightstocks.com/stock-watch/indian-budget-disappoints-market-analyst-blog/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:15:54 +0000 Zacks Market Commentaries http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/21830/Indian+Budget+Disappoints+Market+-+Analyst+Blog The Indian market reacted with disappointment to the budget presented this morning by the new Finance Minister, due to lack of any new liberalization measures and the ballooning budget deficit. The Bombay Sensitive Index plunged 870 points, or almost 6%, as the high hopes for major pro-market structural reform in pensions, insurance and retail sectors were not met. Markets were expecting that there would be a roadmap for bringing down the fiscal deficit, as also details of disinvestment and deregulation of oil prices.

The budget seeks to boost government spending that would increase the fiscal deficit to 6.8% of GDP. The country's fiscal deficit has been soaring since the government enacted three fiscal stimulus packages of tax cuts and spending, on top of deep spending on fuel subsidies, government pay hikes and farmer loan and employment programs. Last year, the deficit was 6.2% of GDP, and the year before that it was 2.7% of GDP. Rising deficits have led to concerns of rating downgrades and crowding out of the private sector.

The government intends to boost much needed spending on infrastructure development (to 9% of GDP by FY2014), increase defense spending, create 12 million jobs a year and support the manufacturing export sectors which have been hit by the global slowdown. The budget aims to lead the economy back to a high growth rate of 9% from the current rate of 6.7%, as the economy was hurt by the global recession.

We agree that increasing spending on infrastructure and employment schemes was very much needed. Poor infrastructure is regarded as the major constraint in India's economic performance. Positive movements on social sector reforms are also required in view of high levels of poverty and illiteracy. But the budget provided few details on how these will be achieved.

While we are disappointed with the budget, we remain optimistic about the long-term outlook for the economy and the stock market, due to a stable political situation and prospects for high economic growth (the World Bank recently projected that India will be the fastest growing economy in 2010). The market, which was getting slightly ahead of itself, now stands at a much reasonable level. Investors can use the post-budget sell-off to gradually build positions in Indian ADRs like Infosys (INFY), Wipro (WIT), ICICI (IBN), HDFC Bank (HDB) and Tata Communications (TCL).
Read the full analyst report on "INFY"
Read the full analyst report on "WIT"
Read the full analyst report on "IBN"
Read the full analyst report on "HBN"
Read the full analyst report on "TCL"
Zacks Investment Research
]]> http://www.straightstocks.com/stock-watch/indian-budget-disappoints-market-analyst-blog/feed/ 0 Hedge Funds in India http://www.straightstocks.com/investing-in-hedge-funds/hedge-funds-in-india-2/ http://www.straightstocks.com/investing-in-hedge-funds/hedge-funds-in-india-2/#comments Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:15:21 +0000 Richard C. Wilson tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125009547106294711.post-5929465841690856592 Hedge Funds in India

The Benefits of Offering Hedge Funds in India

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.
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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 hedge funds could improve asset price efficiency. Besides, such funds, by virtue of their diverse investment styles, could provide investors an opportunity to enhance their risk-adjusted portfolio returns.

Of different genre

Suppose a long-only (mutual fund) manager and a hedge fund manager both have a negative view on SBI, a positive view on HDFC Bank and a neutral view on ITC.

Long-only active managers will buy ITC in the same weight as their benchmark index, may overweight HDFC Bank and may not take any exposure in SBI. There is a reason for such a strategy. Active managers strive to beat their benchmark index. But they do not take too many active bets, lest their bets go wrong. Often, active funds tail the benchmark index with few active bets. Importantly, such managers cannot short-sell to take advantage of their negative view on a stock.

Hedge fund managers’ do not suffer from such constraint. In the above example, the hedge fund manager may overweight HDFC Bank, short-sell SBI and not take any exposure in ITC.

Better still, to neutralise any market risk, the hedge fund manager may buy HDFC Bank and short-sell SBI in such a way that the market risk in HDFC Bank is offset by short-selling SBI. Often, neutralising market risk on a portfolio would mean short-selling Nifty futures.

Exploiting price inefficiency

Hedge funds identify mispriced assets and exploit any price inefficiency. One way to do this is to employ statistical arbitrage.

Suppose a hedge fund manager finds that combination of one share of HDFC Bank and two short shares of SBI (1HDFC – 2SBI) has a stable statistical distribution. If the “spread” wanders far away from its mean, a hedge fund manager would set-up this strategy with a view that the “spread” will tighten. Such relative-value strategies can help arbitrate away asset price inefficiencies in a “normal” market. Read more...

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