Arvind's Newsletter

1.Nifty catches Wall Street's fever: Bear market growls turn into roars after massive selloff

The Indian stock markets extended its decline for the third day on Monday after US President Donald Trump's announcement on tariffs. The markets fell nearly 5%, dragged by information metal, information technology and auto shares.

Nifty 50 fell as much as 5.07% to 21,743.65 and Sensex was down 3,939.68 points to 71,425.01. This comes after the Asian markets plunged most in 14 years on Monday following the Wall Street's decline.

The Nifty index posted its worst open since March 2020. Towards the end, the Nifty closed 742.85 points or 3.24% lower at 22,161.60, while the Sensex shed 2,226.79 points or 2.95% to 73,137.90.

2.Global stocks tumble as Donald Trump offers no respite from tariffs

The market rout triggered by Donald Trump’s tariffs deepened on Monday after the US president signalled he would not back down from his aggressive trade policies despite growing fears of a global recession.

Equities fell heavily, haven currencies rose and bond yields declined. The S&P 500 down 2.1 per cent shortly after the US market open, having earlier fallen as much as 4 per cent and briefly entered a bear market. The Nasdaq Composite lost 2.1 per cent.

This is after,Donald Trump’s bid to upend the international trading order with huge tariffs had wiped $5.4tn from US stocks in two days last week, as China hit back with its own levies, deepening fears of recession in the global economy.

Earlier in the day, Asian shares were pummelled, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index down more than 13 per cent, its worst single-day fall this century.

European stocks tumbled, with the Stoxx Europe 600 index sinking 4.7 per cent, while Germany’s Dax was 4.2 per cent lower, having briefly plunged more than 10 per cent at the open. The FTSE 100 was down 4.5 per cent.

3.Trump’s biggest target, China, is not taking it lying down. 

The country’s policymakers discussed measures over the weekend to stabilize the economy and the markets in the face of Trump’s tariff onslaught, including whether to accelerate plans to unleash stimulus to bolster consumption, according to people familiar with the matter. 

On Friday, President Xi Jinping’s government announced it will impose a 34% tariff on all imports from the US starting April 10, matching the level of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on Chinese products. Authorities in Beijing also announced several other countermeasures, including immediately restricting exports of seven types of rare earths. It’s also honing a domestic message of resilence and calling for calm.

4.Oil drops further as fears of global recession rise

Oil prices dropped further on Monday as US President Donald Trump signalled he would push ahead with sweeping global tariffs despite plunging stock markets and rising fears of recession. 

Brent crude fell 2.5 per cent to $63.94 a barrel by early afternoon in London — a four-year low and a drop of 15 per cent over the past five days — in an indicator of deepening worries that the global economy is heading for a sharp slowdown.  

Trump’s “liberation day” announcement of tariffs last Wednesday was followed hours later by an unexpected move by the Opec+ coalition to boost oil output. 

5.Brain gain: Skilled Indians are fuelling India’s remittance surge

18.5 million is the total number of Indian migrants living, studying, and working abroad in 2024, making India the world’s largest source of international migrants, per UN data cited by Livemint and How India Lives. These migrants sent home $119.5 billion in 2023, cementing India’s status as the world’s top recipient of remittances. Over half came from five high-income countries — the US, UK, Singapore, Canada, and Australia—reflecting a shift toward a more skilled diaspora. Meanwhile, just 1.4% of remittances were above Rs 5 lakh, but accounted for 28.6% of total value.

6.Meta announced the release of its new Llama 4 artificial intelligence tools, built on what the company calls one of the world’s most advanced large language models. 

The centrepiece is Llama 4 Behemoth, which is still in training and promises to be capable of working with media beyond text —as do two distillations from the model that are available now.

It’s another step in the tech giant's aims to make Llama the industry standard worldwide—and another US response to a flurry of new models and services from China’s tech sector.

In January, Meta unveiled plans to invest up to $65 billion on AI-related projects this year. Potentially included: A Wisconsin data centre project with an expected multiyear outlay of nearly $1 billion. And the firm is said to be in talks with Apollo Global Management on a roughly $35 billion data centre financing package.

Some hurdles have emerged. The company’s head of AI research announced her departure this month, creating a high-level vacancy. And Meta's shares have suffered amid a broad selloff that's also hit its Magnificent 7 peers.

7. How Kerala got rich

With roughly 35 million people, Kerala, which sits along India’s southwestern tip on the Indian Ocean, is among the smaller Indian states, though it is densely populated. In the 1970s, Kerala’s average income was about two-thirds of the Indian average, making it among the poorest states in India. This difference persisted through the 1980s. In the coming decades, a miracle occurred. Kerala, one of the poorest regions in India, became one of the richest. In 2022, Kerala’s per-capita income was 50-60 per cent higher than the national average. What happened?

8.The relentless innovation fuelling China’s ‘brutal’ car wars

From cars with roof-fitted drones to free self-driving software and five-minute battery charges, the rapid pace of electric vehicle innovation by China’s BYD is powering what some analysts believe is the most intense period of competition in the car industry. Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are expected to lead to higher costs for resources and electronic parts in the US and Europe, resulting in a further slowdown in EV sales. 

However sales in China, the world’s biggest EV market, are forecast to rise about 20 per cent to 12.5mn cars this year. As EVs start to outsell cars with internal combustion engines, 78 per cent of those sales are being soaked up by just 10 companies, including 27 per cent solely by BYD, according to HSBC data.

That leaves about 52 car brands fighting for the remaining 22 per cent of the Chinese market, including more than 30 marques that produce fewer than 30,000 cars a year and might soon face oblivion, according to Yuqian Ding, a Beijing-based analyst with HSBC.

With a new car model released on average every two days in China, keeping pace with cutting-edge technology — such as assisted driving functions and the latest infotainment systems — has become crucial for survival as the market inevitably consolidates.

Ding said it had become “binary”, split between companies with “smart EV” capabilities and those without. She added that with the market for fuel-powered cars further deteriorating, the sector was entering a period of “the most brutal competition” in its history.

“You either fold or call,” she said, referring in poker terms to giving up or matching rivals’ investments. Read on in FT gift article.

9.Tata set to Launch $1.3b Raise for BigBasket, 1mg: Economic Times

“Tata group is set to embark on a billion-dollar capital raise for two of its prime digital assets, BigBasket and 1mg, as it gears up to capitalise on these businesses and catch up with the competition.

The salt-to-software conglomerate has mandated global investment banks Citi and Moelis to help raise $1.3 billion from external investors. Of this, $1 billion has been earmarked for BigBasket, known for scheduled and slotted grocery deliveries and forced to pivot to quick commerce after resisting the shift. The residual $300 million will be for online pharmacy 1mg, said the people mentioned above. Both units come under the Tata Digital umbrella.”

10.Paris residents vote in favour of making 500 more streets pedestrian

Parisians voted in a referendum to pedestrianise a further 500 of the city's streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts by the French capital's left-leaning town hall to curb car usage and improve air quality.

Some 65.96% of Parisians voted in favour of the measure, while 34.04% rejected it, official results showed. Only 4.06% of voters turned out in the consultation, which was organised by the municipality.

This was the third such referendum in Paris in as many years, following a 2023 vote that approved a ban on e-scooters, and a decision last year to triple parking charges for large SUVs.

The referendum will eliminate 10,000 more parking spots in Paris, adding to the 10,000 removed since 2020. The city's two million residents will be consulted on which streets will become pedestrian areas.