Arvind's Newsletter

1.Indian market is seeing MNC sentiment rebound: Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley’s latest India Equity Strategy report revealed a positive shift in the multinational corporation sentiment, signaling a strong outlook for India’s economic growth and corporate performance. According to the firm's proprietary MNC Sentiment Index, sentiment has rebounded significantly in the third quarter of 2024, recovering from a three-year low. This uptick in sentiment is expected to have a substantial impact on India’s capital expenditure, balance of payments, corporate profits, and stock market performance. 

The MNC Sentiment Index rose 13% sequentially in the third quarter, following a 4% decline in the previous quarter. On a year-on-year basis, it saw a 5% increase, compared to a 21% drop in the same period last year. This improvement in sentiment reflects the growing optimism about India’s evolving position in the global economy.

2.IndiGo Among World’s Worst Airlines In Global Rankings.

IndiGo has been ranked among the world's worst airlines this year. The AirHelp Score report 2024 has placed the Indian airline near the bottom at 103rd out of 109 analysed. The report also ranks Air India at 61st and AirAsia at 94th. 

AirHelp has released its annual analysis of the best and worst performing airlines. At the bottom is Tunisair, coming in at No. 109. Keeping it company in the last 10 are a handful of national and low-cost carriers, including Ryanair’s Polish subsidiary Buzz, Bulgaria Air, Turkish carrier Pegasus Airlines and Air Mauritius. 

As for the best all-around airline globally: It’s Brussels Airlines, part of Deutsche Lufthansa. Qatar Airways fell to No. 2 after holding the top spot since 2018. United Airlines and American Airlines were in third and fourth place, respectively.

3.India's aviation sector is grappling with a puzzling paradox: record passenger growth alongside continued financial challenges.

According to credit rating agency ICRA, domestic air traffic in the country is projected to reach 164-170 million passengers in FY2025, a 7-10% increase. However, ICRA also forecasts a net loss of Rs. 20-30 billion for the industry in FY2025 and FY2026.

Despite the surge in traffic, airlines face high operating costs, low ticket prices, and supply chain issues, hindering profitability. The grounding of approximately 144 aircraft, representing 16-18% of the total fleet, due to engine failures and supply chain problems further aggravates the situation.

Interestingly, these projections differ from those made in March 2023, which estimated a higher growth rate of 8-13% for FY2024 and FY2025. 

4.Probing the Sun's Corona

The Indian Space Research Organisation and the European Space Agency are set to launch the Proba-3 solar probe today from Sriharikota, India. The mission consists of two satellites that will study the sun's corona—the outer layer that can reach temperatures of around 2 million degrees and significantly influences Earth through solar flares and mass ejections. 

Proba-3 aims to demonstrate precision formation flying, with the satellites maintaining a 150-meter separation to create artificial solar eclipses. The approach allows for extended observations of the sun's corona, lasting up to six hours per orbit, and can generate approximately 50 artificial eclipses annually. The mission has been in development for more than a decade, involving contributions from 14 European countries.

The launch follows the success of ISRO's past missions such as Aditya-L1, India's first space-based solar observatory, and Chandrayaan-3, which made history by achieving a soft landing in the moon’s south polar region.

5.Russia is using civilians as target practice for its killer drones

Kherson in Ukraine’s civilians have been, since midsummer, the target of an experiment without precedent in modern European warfare: a concerted Russian campaign to empty a city by stalking its residents with attack drones.  

The killer machines, sometimes by the swarm, hover above homes, buzz into buildings and chase people down streets in their cars, riding bicycles or simply on foot. The targets are not soldiers, or tanks, but civilian life.

“They are hunting us,” said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration. “Imagine what that does to a person, the psychological impact.”

Since mid-July, Kherson and its neighbouring villages along the western side of the Dnipro river have suffered more than 9,500 attacks with small drones, killing at least 37 people and injuring hundreds more, according to Prokudin, regional prosecutors and police. 

6.South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces impeachment after declaring, and rapidly rescinding, martial law. 

By briefly imposing martial law, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol took an extreme political gamble — one that seems to have backfired dramatically. The main opposition party has called for his impeachment and said it will pursue treason charges against him.

Angry Koreans took to the streets to protest Yoon’s move, which recalled the country’s long history of authoritarian crackdowns under past military rule. The shock of such an action — which blindsided the nation, his own People Power Party and global allies including the US — continues to reverberate. “It really stunned everyone,” said Yeo Han-koo, a former trade minister in the previous government. “My friends in Korea as well — we don’t know exactly what happened, why it happened, and how it happened.” 

The fiasco also raises concerns about the country’s sovereign-debt rating, while the won faces elevated volatility if lengthy political gridlock results. As for Yoon, even before Tuesday’s dramatic comments, he wasn’t popular, with approval ratings at record lows. His failed attempt to impose martial law only seems to have dimmed prospects for his rule. “I think it’s safe to say that Yoon’s days as president are numbered,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, senior fellow at Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North. 

7.Why Are Women Less Likely to Use AI? Josie Cox in Bloomberg

AI’s early adopters are disproportionately men, a disconnect that could exacerbate the gender pay gap.

Because of the relative novelty of generative AI models and technology, comprehensive studies on who uses them, how frequently and for what have so far been hard to come by. Nonetheless, one research paper from July corroborates my flimsy poll. Based on responses to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York consumer survey, economists at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) indeed established the existence of “an economically and statistically significant ‘gen AI gender gap’.”

On average, they found that half of all men reported having used generative AI over the previous 12 months, while only 37% of women did. Among those who said they used it weekly, the gap was similarly large.

8.What happens when you fall in love with an AI ?

Millions of people are turning to AI for companionship. They are finding the experience surprisingly meaningful, unexpectedly heartbreaking, and profoundly confusing, leaving them to wonder, ‘Is this real? And does that matter?’

9.The brain microbiome: could understanding it help prevent dementia?

Long thought to be sterile, our brains are now believed to harbour all sorts of micro-organisms, from bacteria to fungi. How big a part do they play in Alzheimer’s and similar diseases?

10.Eli Lilly’s Zepbound beats Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy in first head-to-head study

In the first head-to-head test, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound obesity drug helped people lose significantly more weight than its main competitor, Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy.

People taking Zepbound lost 20.2% of their body weight on average after 72 weeks of treatment in the Lilly-sponsored study, compared with a 13.7% loss for Wegovy patients, Lilly said Wednesday.

That translated into an average 50-pound loss for people who took Zepbound, while Wegovy users lost 33 pounds.

Lilly’s new study is the first randomized clinical trial to demonstrate that Zepbound could induce more weight loss than Wegovy in head-to-head testing.

Previous studies sponsored by Lilly and Novo Nordisk found that each of the drugs helped people who are obese lose significant amounts of weight, but those trials didn’t compare Zepbound and Wegovy against each other.