India: The South Asian giant

Daily Analysis - 15/11/2018

India, the fastest-growing major economy

The world's fastest expanding and a very important economy now is India. All the credits of that achievement go to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Although according to economists India's economy still has some major obstacles to overcome. While the country's expansion is exciting, it has not seen that wealth equally shared. That's exceptionally important for the prime minister, who will run for re-election next year because general increase had been a significant commitment during his 2014 pre-election campaign. Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at data firm IHS Markit, told CNBC "The Indian economy has shown sustained strong growth under the Modi government, with GDP growth of around 7 percent every year in fiscal 2017-18 and similar growth momentum forecast for 2018-19."

Cryptocurrency market capitalization dropped substantially

The market cap of Bitcoin since yesterday dropped at $97,554,227,588, according to Coinmarketcap.

Due to a sharp sell-off in the cryptocurrency exchanges that started yesterday, the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin saw its market capitalization dropping beneath the $100 billion mark. That specific level not seen since October last year. That significant move occurred after a major sell-off in the cryptocurrency exchanges yesterday and continued today in the Asian session. Yesterday BKCM CEO and founder Brian Kelly said on CNBC's that the quick sell-off probably is because of bitcoin cash, which split off in last summer from the normal bitcoin with the purpose of processing more transactions. Bitcoin cash is doing a "hard fork" or "effectively a software upgrade," the cryptocurrency fund manager said. "When you do a software upgrade, everybody usually agrees. But in this particular case, everybody is not agreeing."

EU stocks mixed due to Brexit draft deal

Yesterday Theresa May announced that she had secured adequate support from senior members of her Cabinet for a draft Brexit agreement. Although market spectators state that they have reservations whether the draft agreement will get administrative approval. On Thursday European stock futures traded in a mixed sentiment while traders tried to absorb the newest story on the Brexit draft deal and at the same time closely watch the U.S.-China trade tensions.

The CAC opened slightly higher at 5071.75, the FTSE gained momentum and reach the 7049.59 level while the DAX was seen up 20.2 points.

Oil prices slip once more amid fears of oversupply

Brent crude oil futures was at $65.87 per barrel and was down about 24 cents, from the last close. On Thursday the oil prices went down on rising supply. The fears of oversupply are expected to slow down the production and raise the prices once more. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $55.96 a barrel, down 29 cents. Since early last month, oil prices have given back around a quarter of their price while supply rises as demand is expected to slow down. Mike Corley, president of Mercatus Energy Advisors said

"Asian refiners and consumers we speak with are mentioning initial concerns of slowing demand."