Indian equity indices opened at an all-time high on Monday.

In early trade, Sensex and Nifty made a new all-time high of 77,079 and 23,411 respectively.

At 9:45 am, Sensex was at 76,703, up 9 points and Nifty was at 23,293, up 4 points.

Broader markets are in an uptrend. The Nifty midcap 100 was up 230 points or 44 per cent, at 53,425 and the Nifty smallcap was up 133 points or 0.78 per cent, at 17,349.

India volatility index (India VIX) is at 17.09, up nearly one per cent.

Among the sector indices, PSU Bank, fin service, realty, energy, and pharma are major gainers. Pvt bank, metal and IT are major laggards.

In Sensex pack, Powergrid, Ultratech Cement (NS:ULTC), Axis Bank (NS:AXBK), NTPC (NS:NTPC), Nestle (NS:NEST), Reliance (NS:RELI), SBI (NS:SBI), Bharti Airtel (NS:BRTI), and Tata Motors (NS:TAMO) are major gainers and Tech Mahindra (NS:TEML), Wipro (NS:WIPR), Infosys (NS:INFY), HCL Tech (NS:HCLT) and Titan (NS:TITN) are top losers.

“It is important to understand that the major driving force in this bull market is the Indian retail investors including HNIs. Big selling by FIIs is getting eclipsed by the aggressive buying of DIIs and retail investors,” experts said.

They added that the fact that retail investors bought equity for Rs 21,179 crores on June 4th, the day Nifty tanked 5.9 per cent, indicates the buying power and optimism of the retail investors.

Mixed trading is taking place in Asian markets. Tokyo and Shanghai are in the green, while the markets of Seoul, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Jakarta are trading in the red. American markets closed in the red on Friday. Crude oil benchmark Brent crude is at $79 and Brent crude at $75.

AGENCIES

South Korea’s exports to the United States exceeded those to China so far this year, data showed Monday, raising the possibility that the U.S. could be the top export destination for South Korea for the first time in 22 years.

Outbound shipments to the U.S. amounted to $53.3 billion from January through May 2024, compared with South Korea’s export value to China of $52.69 billion, according to the data from Statistics Korea and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

If the current trend continues, the U.S. will be the No. 1 export destination for South Korea for the first time since 2002.

Last year, China was the largest export destination for South Korea with the export value of $124.81 billion, followed by the U.S. with $115.71 billion. The gap was the smallest in 19 years.

Exports by South Korean large conglomerates to the U.S. already surpassed those to China for the first time in 20 years in 2023.

South Korea’s exports to the U.S. have been on a constant increase in recent years. They advanced 5.4 percent on-year to reach a record high last year on the back of growing exports of cars and rechargeable batteries.

But exports to China had fallen for two years in a row after hitting an all-time high of $162.91 billion in 2021 amid China’s sagging manufacturing sector.

In a recent report, the Bank of Korea said that exports to the U.S. are forecast to continue an upturn driven by solid consumption among U.S. consumers and the expansion of South Korean entities’ investment in the U.S.

But there have also been signs that the Chinese economy is recovering gradually, which could boost its demand for South Korean goods and services.

Global credit appraiser Moody’s Investors Service recently revised up its forecast for China’s economic growth rate for this year to 4.5 percent from its previous estimate of 4 percent.   AGENCIES

 Venture capitalist Viney Equity Market on Monday announced that it co-led a Rs 715 crore investment in solar panel manufacturers and power companies Vikram Solar and contributed Rs 12 crore to the funding round, alongside participation from multiple investors.

The funding will provide Vikram Solar with the resources to strengthen its capital base, improve its ability to borrow money for working capital and finance the expansion of its solar PV module manufacturing facility.

“We are impressed by their commitment to innovation and their track record of success. This investment aligns perfectly with our philosophy of supporting companies that are driving positive change in the world,” Anant Aggarwal, Founder of Viney Equity Market LLP, said in a statement.

According to the company, these initiatives will allow Vikram Solar to meet other general corporate purposes and solidify its position as a leader in India’s clean energy sector.

Vikram Solar is a provider of comprehensive solar energy solutions, specialising in efficient photovoltaic module manufacturing and engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services.

With a global footprint across 32 countries, Vikram Solar is committed to accelerating the adoption of solar energy to create a sustainable future for all.  AGENCIES

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday thanked Microsoft co-founder and billionaire

the record third time, saying, “We value our partnership for promoting innovation for the benefit of humanity”. 

Responding to Gates’ congratulatory post on X, PM Modi, said, “Deeply appreciate your message @BillGates”.

The Prime Minister also expressed deep appreciation for their past conversations highlighting the transformative role of technology in governance, healthcare, and India’s commitment to climate change and sustainable development.

“Recall our very positive and engaging conversation a few months ago, including on the transformative role of technology in governance and healthcare, and India’s commitment to climate change and sustainable development,” he wrote.

Gates, in his message, extended congratulations to PM Modi and expressed anticipation for a continued partnership “to enhance the lives of people across India and the world”.

He also praised India’s progress as a hub for innovation and emphasised the possibility of further collaboration.

In March, the philanthropist visited India and met PM Modi and discussed Artificial Intelligence, technology, healthcare, and more.  AGENCIES

 A shooting at a rooftop party in Wisconsin left at least 10 people injured, including teenagers, police said.

Nine people were injured by gunfire and another was injured by broken glass at the party at a high-rise apartment in downtown Madison, Xinhua news agency reported.

All injured were taken to local hospitals, and none had injuries considered to be life-threatening. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 23, officials said.  AGENCIES

‘ONDC will become a formidable e-commerce player in near future’

The government-run Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is set to become a formidable e-commerce player in the near future, said ONDC MD and CEO T Koshy on Monday.

In an interview with IANS, Koshy said that the good traction the platform received in the last 15 months proves that ONDC has the potential to completely transform the e-commerce landscape.

“We definitely will become a formidable e-commerce player in the near future. We will have the complete transformational capability of commerce whether in supply chain or distribution channels, whether it is B2B or B2C,” said Koshy.

He said that ONDC will cover all segments, and not just focus on ecommerce. The diversity of the kind of participation can be seen with FinTech companies like Paytm (NS:PAYT), Phone Pay, and Ola.

“For example, a consumer might be able to order food, consumer products, fashion goods or hail a taxi. I see that e-commerce, as we know, will undergo significant change, with no more walled gardens, but a very, very democratic place,” Koshy said.

“The single objective of ONDC is democratisation of the e-commerce industry”, he said adding that “the idea is to give everybody a market share”.

The ONDC Chief said that a very broad array of enterprises from various segments are expected to join the network and it aims to “collectively work” to sustain both small and big enterprises.

The network currently has five and a half lakh merchants. Koshy said that the platform is getting traction from various ministries including the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), ministries of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Youth Affairs, etc.

He added that ONDC is also working with larger organisations like HUL and ITC, and even entities like SIDBI and NABARD, etc.

“There is a willingness from a large cross-section of people to participate from the government, the private sector to philanthropic organisations, CSR. I believe it will become like a movement, which spans across the country and domains,” Koshy said.

AGENCIES

 Australia will attend an international conference on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the government has confirmed.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong on Monday announced that Anne Aly, the minister for early childhood development and minister for youth, will represent Australia at the conference in Amman, Jordan, that has been convened by Jordan, Egypt and the United Nations (UN), Xinhua news agency reported.

Wong said that Egyptian-born Aly was chosen because of her lived experience and understanding of the conflict in the Middle East.

They said in a joint statement that Australia has been clear that Israel must comply with the orders of the International Court of Justice and allow the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance to Gaza and reiterated calls for the war to end.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic. Over 1 million Palestinians are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, and around 1.7 million people have been displaced, many several times over. Humanitarian access remains grossly inadequate,” Aly said.

Since the beginning of the conflict on October 7, 2023, the Australian government has committed 62.5 million Australian dollars (41.1 million US dollars) in humanitarian assistance to the region, including 41 million Australian dollars (27.0 million US dollars) to address urgent needs in Gaza.

AGENCIES

The death toll in the Israeli military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip late last week has risen to 274, with 698 injured, Hamas-run health authorities said in a press statement.The statement on Sunday noted that some victims remained under the rubble amid heavy bombardment and a lack of rescue crews, Xinhua news agency reported.

During the operation, Israeli forces rescued four hostages from the refugee camp, namely Noa Argamani, 25, Shlomi Ziv, 40, Almog Meir Jan, 21, and Andrey Kozlov, 27, all of them among the about 250 Israelis abducted last October by Hamas while attending the Nova festival, an outdoor music event, in a rural area near the Gaza-Israel fence.

After the Hamas rampage, which killed about 1,200 according to Israeli tallies, Israel launched a retaliatory large-scale offensive in Gaza, which so far has killed 37,084 and injured 84,494 others, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

AGENCIES

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he will dissolve the Parliament and hold snap elections, following his party’s clear defeat by the far-right National Rally in European Parliament elections earlier in the day.

Elections to the National Assembly are to take place in two rounds on June 30 and July 7, Macron added.

He said the challenges faced by France required clarity and the people deserved respect.

“At the end of this day, therefore, I cannot pretend that nothing has happened,” he added.

“The decision is serious and difficult, but it is above all an act of trust, trust in you, my dear compatriots,” the President said, adding that he trusted the French people to make the best decisions in their interest and that of future generations.

The National Rally in France is set to beat Macron’s Renaissance by a wide margin in the country’s European Parliament elections, according to broadcasters’ projections after voting had ended.

The populist, eurosceptic National Rally party, whose figurehead is Marine Le Pen, received 31.5 to 32.3 per cent of the vote, while Macron’s pro-European camp only received around 15.2 to 15.4 per cent, broadcasters France 2 and TF1 reported on Sunday after the polls concluded.

“Emmanuel Macron is a weakened President tonight,” National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said earlier on Sunday evening, calling for new elections.

“This unprecedented defeat for the ruling power marks the end of a cycle and the first day of the post-Macron era,” he added.

The Socialists came third with 14 to 14.2 per cent, just behind Macron’s centrist bloc, according to the projections.

The extreme right-wing Reconquete (Reconquest) party was at 5.3 to 5.5 per cent.

Voter turnout was higher than five years ago at around 52 per cent.

Sunday’s voting also sets the scene for presidential elections in 2027.

Macron, who won a run-off election against Le Pen twice, will not be able to run again after two terms in office.

It is unclear who the centre-right forces will send into the race and who will stand a chance against Le Pen.

Sunday’s results are a huge blow to Macron’s government, which has already lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower House of Parliament.

National Rally’s landslide victory entrenches a trend that already emerged in 2019 when the party came narrowly ahead of Macron’s camp in the last European elections.

Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the movement’s far-right founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has successfully rebranded the party initially known as the National Front, presenting a far more moderate image in recent years to increase its appeal to centre-right voters.

Elections to the European Parliament have taken place across the 27-country bloc over the past four days, with nearly 360 million people called upon to vote.

While the vote does not directly impact national politics, as it only determines who sits in the EU legislature, domestic political issues tend to dominate voters’ choices.  AGENCIES

 The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) has won the European Parliament elections with 184 seats, provisional results from the EU legislature show, with all polls closed on Sunday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen now stands a stronger chance of securing a second term with her EPP group, which she campaigned for, performing so well, despite far-right gains, and losses among liberal and green parties.

In a speech welcoming the result, von der Leyen said that she would work with political groups from the centre-left and liberals that originally backed her to win reappointment.

“This platform has worked well. It was constructive, it was effective,” von der Leyen said, in a signal that she would not immediately seek support from parties further to the right.

Earlier von der Leyen had said that, together with other parties, she wanted to form “a bulwark against the extremes from the left and the right,” adding: “We will stop them.”

During campaigning von der Leyen did not rule out cooperating with more extreme right-wing parties, in particular, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist Brothers of Italy (FdI) party.

Liberal parties fell from 102 seats to 80 seats while Green parties are also projected to lose a large number of European Parliament seats, down from 71 to 52, according to provisional results released by the EU at 2:45 a.m. on Monday.

The result, based on provisional figures from 23 EU countries and estimates and pre-electoral data for the remaining four, fends off a challenge from the far-right groups in the Parliament that polled an estimated 131 seats, a gain of some 13 seats compared to the last elections in 2019.

The centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) are projected to hold on to their 139 seats, while the more extreme The Left group is projected to lose one, going from 37 to 36.

There are 720 seats up for grabs in the EU legislature, meaning von der Leyen needs 361 seats for a majority. Together with the EPP, S&D and the liberals, von der Leyen is projected to have 403 votes supporting her.

Preliminary results show the far right made significant returns in Germany, France and Italy.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is set to win an estimated 14 seats despite a string of recent scandals and polled second to the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU).

The Social Democrats (SPD) of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were projected to gain a similar number of seats to the AfD despite gaining about 1.5 per cent less votes.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron decided to dissolve Parliament, announcing new national elections, after his party lost to the far-right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen.

The National Rally received about 31.5 per cent of votes, according to the provisional results, while Macron’s pro-European camp only received around 14.5 per cent.

Von der Leyen needs to gather together support from a range of political groups, extending from the centre left to the centre right, to have her appointment backed by the European Parliament.

A new avenue of cooperation opened with the Green parties when Bas Eickhout, a senior Dutch election candidate, signalled a willingness to cooperate with the victorious EPP in a speech in the European Parliament.

“What we need to do now is create a stable majority in the centre of the European Parliament,” he said.

In Hungary, a former ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Peter Magyar, caused a stir this year by resigning from Orban’s Fidesz party to take the helm of an obscure centre-right party called Respect and Freedom (TISZA).

Preliminary results suggest TISZA has won seven of Hungary’s 21 European Parliament seats; Fidesz is projected to have won 10, with its domestic coalition partner the Christian Democrats (KDNP) winning one.

EPP leader Manfred Weber has made explicit overtures for TISZA to join his group’s ranks. Fidesz was expelled from the EPP in 2021 — having been suspended since 2019 — but the KDNP remains a member of the group.

A potential kingmaker role for Italy’s Meloni is still also on the table after her party topped the poll with an estimated 28.6 per cent of the vote and secured about 23 seats, an influential bloc of votes.

Continent-wide elections for the European Parliament had their last day of voting on Sunday, with 360 million people across the 27 EU member states eligible to cast their ballots over four days.

AGENCIES

 Germany’s centre-right CDU/CSU alliance has won the European Parliament elections, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) coming in second, the national electoral authority confirmed early Monday after all votes were counted.

The preliminary results were in line with earlier projections.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition suffered at the polls, with his Social Democrats (SPD) and his primary coalition partners domestically, the Greens, both trailing the AfD.

The Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who are in opposition domestically, combined garnered 30 per cent, translating to 29 seats. That is the same seat tally as in the current outgoing European Parliament.

The anti-immigrant, eurosceptic AfD made significant gains, receiving 15.9 per cent of the vote, up from 11 per cent in the 2019 European elections, giving them 15 seats.

That put the far-right party ahead of Scholz’s SPD, which posted 13.9 per cent (14 seats) in what was the worst showing in a democratic nationwide election in more than a century for the centre-left party, which has historically been one of the dominant parties in German politics.

The Greens slipped to 11.9 per cent (12 seats), significantly down on their 2019 result of 20.5 per cent, while junior coalition partner FDP, known for its business-friendly stance, received 5.2 per cent (five seats).

The newly founded populist party Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) hit 6.2 per cent for six seats, while the far-left The Left party tumbled to just 2.7 per cent or three seats.

In the AfD strongholds of eastern Germany, the party led the field.

A record-high 64.8 per cent of those eligible to vote in Germany did so, the highest turnout in an EU vote since reunification, Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand said as provisional official results for the country were announced.

As in many other EU countries, observers had expected a significant boost in support for right-wing parties in the European Parliament elections in Germany. Some opinion polls had put support for the AfD at more than 20 per cent a few months ago, but those figures fell significantly in the wake of several recent scandals involving the party.

AGENICES