Billionaire investor George Soros Tuesday predicted a slower recovery for economy of the United States, saying fears of inflation will drive up interest rates and choke off growth. “As markets revive, fear of inflation will drive up interest rates, which will choke off recovery,” he said.

Rising U.S. Treasury yields have driven mortgage rates back up, threatening a recovery in the housing market and a refinancing boom that has helped preserve the still-fragile health of recession-weary households and the banks that lend to them. The rise in bond yields and mortgage rates may also act to check the huge recent rally in global stock markets of the past three months, with the Federal Reserve trying to end an 18-month recession and yet not spur inflation.

Soros went back into retirement earlier this year after leading his self-named firm through the 2008 crisis. He made about $1.1 billion last year, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha Magazine.

Soros, who made his fortune targeting currencies in tightly controlled markets, said international financial markets need global regulation, even while being critical of regulators and calling for minimal government intervention.

“The idea of self-correcting markets is a misconception,” he said. What governments need to do, he said, is recognize they cannot prevent bubbles but instead try to control them from getting bigger.

“You cannot prevent bubbles from forming but prevent them from self-reinforcement,” Soros said. “The regulators will always be wrong,” he said. “They should interfere as little as possible.”

Regulators, he said, typically try to control money supply and then let free markets take care of everything else, but that is a fallacy.

By the same token, Soros said that efforts by regulators and governments to stop bubbles bursting for more than 25 years gave rise to the most recent “super bubble.”

Soros cautioned that the U.S. government may be making some serious missteps in dealing with the current credit crunch and recession. Massive stimulus spending and bank bailouts have pumped up the U.S. government’s own balance sheet.

He also warned that while the worst of the 2008 crisis is past, investors do not appear to have learned their lesson.

“People want to pretend the crisis never happened,” he said. “They want to go back to business as usual.”

Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd has fixed the issue price at Rs 300 per share for its initial public offering of 92,65,275 shares of Rs. 10 each. The 100% book-built issue opened on June 23 and closed on June 26.

The price band was fixed between Rs 275 and Rs 325 per equity share. The size of the issue stood at Rs 301.12 crore at the upper end of the price band and Rs 254.80 crore at the lower end of the band.

The issue was subscribed 9.8 times with QIB portion subscribed around 12.83 times; HNIs around 11.01 times and Retail around 3.3 times. At the top end of the price band (i.e. Rs. 325) the overall issue was subscribed 7.13 times with QIB bucket 8.56 times, retail investors’ portion 3.36 times. The issue received bids for 9,08,33,800 shares as against issue size of 92,65,275 shares, as per data available on the NSE website.

“I am delighted with the overwhelming investor response which demonstrates acceptance of the product concept and the business model of the company and faith in the Mahindra Group Management,” said Arun Nanda, Chairman, Mahindra Holidays.

The issue had been assigned 4 out of 5 IPO grading by Fitch Ratings reflecting ‘above average fundamentals’ of the Issue relative to other listed equity securities.

Wind energy major Suzlon posted a net loss of Rs.4.69 billion in the last fiscal compared to a profit of Rs.12.65 billion in the previous fiscal, the company said Monday. The total income of the company grew 5.12 percent to Rs.74.12 billion for the year ended March 31 from Rs.70.51 billion in the previous period.

The company recognized the poor performance to the external economic environment.

“FY2008-09 has been a challenging year for all industries, and the wind sector is no exception,” said Tulsi Tanti, chairman and managing director of Suzlon Energy Limited.

The group, along with its subsidiaries, posted a net consolidated profit of Rs.2.36 billion in 2008-09, a decrease of 77.04 percent from Rs.10.3 billion for the year ended March 31, 2008.

The total income of the group stood at Rs.265.3 billion for the period under review, up from Rs.139.47 billion in the previous fiscal.

Hospital chain Fortis Healthcare today said its consolidated net profit stood at Rs 6.69 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2009. The company had a net loss of Rs 10.56 crore in the same period ended March 2008.

Total income of the company rose to Rs 172.75 crore during the quarter from Rs 132.85 crore in the same period last year, it said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange. For the financial year 2008-09, the company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 24.06 crore. It had a net loss of Rs 59.98 crore in the previous fiscal.

“In FY’09, our focus was on the growth in revenues across all the hospitals with continued focus on quality patient care and service excellence,” Fortis Healthcare Chief Executive Officer Bhavdeep Singh said.

Further, Singh said that the hospital chain will file letter of offer with SEBI for its Rs 1,000 crore rights issue by the July-end. “Our plans to raise Rs 1,000 crore through rights issue are intact and we are soon filing the letter of offer with SEBI by the end of July.”

By March 2009, the group has a network of 27 hospitals having total capacity of 6000 beds.

Shares of Fortis Healthcare were trading at Rs 96.25 on BSE, down by 3.89 per cent.

Rejecting offer for talks, Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries on Tuesday told Anil Ambani group firm RNRL that it would not sign any agreement on the gas supply issue without approval of the government. RIL, which is believed to be preparing to move the Supreme Court early next month, in a communication to RNRL noted that it had been advised that there was lack of clarity in the judgment on the aspect of the government’s role in the issue, sources in the know said quoting the letter.

“We cannot sign any agreement without approval of the government on price, quantity and tenure,” the letter said, adding that RIL was still in the process of legal consultation and shall revert.

Yesterday, RNRL officials had waited in vain for a meeting they had proposed vides a letter dated June 25 with their counterparts in RIL. The Bombay High Court had on June 15 given the two companies a month’s time to work out firm gas volumes, price, timelines and other commercial details for sourcing the fuel from Krishna-Godavari basin fields.

The Court had also ruled that RIL should honor its commitment in the family split agreement to supply gas to RNRL

FII and DII activity that was seen on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 is shown below. The report shows that FII were net buyer of Rs 107.88 crore where as DII saw buying of Rs 197.98 crore.

Yesterday: Indian Stock market went up but profit booking was seen at level of around 15000 for sensex, which is a strong resistive zone.

Today: Indian Stock Market is expected to open positive and may cross the level of 15000 for Sensex.  If market sustain above that level, than we will soon see next level of 15500 for sensex.

Note: Stocks to trade for intraday, short-term delivery, long term delivery, short selling and Futures and when to exit those stocks would be sent to paid subscribers live during the market hours through SMS.

BSE Sensex: (14785) The support for the Sensex is 14700-14500 and the resistance to the up move is at 15000.

NSE Nifty: (4390) The support for the Nifty is at 4300 and the resistance to the up move is at 4418-4483.

F&O Cues: FII were net sellers of 150crore in Index Future and seller of 392 crore in stock futures.

FII and DII activity that was seen on Monday, June 29, 2009 is shown below. The report shows that FII were net buyer of Rs 292.44 crore where as DII saw buying of Rs 143.84 crore.

Last Trading Session: As we said, Sensex closed up by around 416 points on last Friday.

Today: Now Indian Stock Market is expected to see positive trends till the budget. We would suggest all to remain invested. Some downtrend may be seen but overall market looks up till budget and until Nifty breaches 4250 towards downside. Our target for Nifty till Budget is 4600.

Note: Stocks to trade for intraday, short-term delivery, long term delivery, short selling and Futures and when to exit those stocks would be sent to paid subscribers live during the market hours through SMS.

BSE Sensex: (14765): The support for the Sensex is 14475 and the resistance to the up move is at 14850-15000.

NSE Nifty: (4376): the support for the Nifty is at 4250-4300 and the resistance to the up move is at 4420-4500.

Fundamentals of Stock Market: Tutorial-4

Introduction to technical analysis

Earlier as we mentioned there are two methods to determine the price of stock: fundamental analysis and technical analysis. Fundamental analysis involves analyzing the characteristics of a company in order to estimate its value. Technical analysis takes a completely different approach; it doesn’t care one bit about the “value” of a company or a commodity. Technical people are only interested in the price movements in the market.

Despite hundreds of tools, technical analysis just studies supply and demand in a market in an attempt to determine what direction, or trend, will continue in the future. In other words, technical analysis attempts to understand the emotions in the market by studying the market itself, as opposed to its components. If you understand the benefits and limitations of technical analysis, it can give you a new set of tools or skills that will enable you to be a better trader or investor.

In this tutorial, we’ll introduce you to the subject of technical analysis. It’s a big topic, so we’ll just cover the basics, providing you with the foundation you’ll need to understand more advanced concepts down the road.

Definition of technical analysis

Technical analysis is a method of evaluating securities by analyzing the data generated by market activity, such as past prices and volume. Technical analysts do not attempt to measure a security’s fundamental value, but instead use charts and other tools to identify patterns that can suggest future activity.

Just as there are many investment styles on the fundamental side, there are also many different types of technical traders. Some rely on chart patterns; others use technical indicators and oscillators, and most use some combination of the two. In any case, technical analysts’ exclusive use of historical price and volume data is what separates them from their fundamental counterparts. Unlike fundamental analysts, technical analysts don’t care whether a stock is undervalued - the only thing that matters is a security’s past trading data and what information this data can provide about where the security might move in the future.

The field of technical analysis is based on three assumptions:

1.     The market knows everything

2.     Price moves in trends.

3.     History tends to repeat itself.

4.     Market predicts the real economy before few months

1. The Market knows Everything

A major criticism of technical analysis is that it only considers price movement, ignoring the fundamental factors of the company. However, technical analysis assumes that, at any given time, a stock’s price reflects everything that has or could affect the company - including fundamental factors. Which means market knows the fundamental of the companies also it knows what’s going on inside the company. Technical analysts believe that the company’s fundamentals, along with broader economic factors and market psychology, are all priced into the stock, removing the need to actually consider these factors separately. This only leaves the analysis of price movement, which technical theory views as a product of the supply and demand for a particular stock in the market.

2. Price Moves in Trends

In technical analysis, price movements are believed to follow trends. This means that after a trend has been established, the future price movement is more likely to be in the same direction as the trend than to be against it. Most technical trading strategies are based on this assumption.

3. History tends to repeat itself

Another important idea in technical analysis is that history tends to repeat itself, mainly in terms of price movement. The repetitive nature of price movements is attributed to market psychology; in other words, market participants tend to provide a consistent reaction to similar market stimuli over time. Technical analysis uses chart patterns to analyze market movements and understand trends. Although many of these charts have been used for more than 100 years, they are still believed to be relevant because they illustrate patterns in price movements that often repeat themselves.

Not Just for Stocks Technical analysis can be used on any security with historical trading data, this includes stocks, futures and commodities, fixed-income securities, forex, etc. In this tutorial, we usually analyze stocks in our examples, but keep in mind that these concepts can be applied to any type of security. In fact, technical analysis is more frequently associated with commodities and forex, where the participants are predominantly traders. Nowadays Institutes are spending billions of dollars on mathematical modeling which use various math techniques like regression, Curve fitting n differential equations to predict the market movements. Mathematical models are the future of technical analysis.

Now that you understand the philosophy behind technical analysis, we’ll get into explaining how it really works. One of the best ways to understand what technical analysis is (and is not) is to compare it to fundamental analysis. We’ll do this in the next section.

Visit EP Knowledge Center to gain full knowledge about basics of Stock Market and Technical Analysis.

India: BSE Sensex, rebounded about 1.7% last week as expectations from the budget is on height. EquityPandit.com expects Indian Stock Market to see positive trends till budget as the strong resistance of 14600 has been breached.

Other Asian Market: Key indices of Hong King, China and Singapore also lead the package of gainers as government stimulus is likely showing some impact in the emerging markets of Asia. This was seemingly on the back of a general optimism that the global economy is witnessing a rebound after last few quarters of extreme credit crunch that tipped the world’s largest economies into recession.

Major Global Markets: In developed economies like the US, the UK, Europe, and Japan – remains grim as consumer spending shows no sign of improving. US, UK, and France Markets saw signs of weakness.

Tata Steel Ltd, declared its result on Thursday which missed forecasts with a 60 percent drop in consolidated net profit for the fiscal year ended March and said 2,045 jobs in Europe units were at risk.

Tata Steel reported a net profit after minority interest and share of profit of associates of 49.5 billion rupees ($1.02 billion) in 2008/09, compared to a consolidated net profit of 123.5 billion rupees reported a year ago.

Consolidated net sales for the year rose to 1.46 trillion rupees from 1.31 trillion rupees reported a year earlier.

That compared with a forecast for net profit of 84.23 billion rupees, on net sales of 1.5 trillion in a Reuters poll of six brokerages. Tata Steel did not release quarterly figures. A Reuters calculation showed it suffered a consolidated loss of about 45.4 billion rupees in the January-March quarter.

Nine month consolidated profit stood at 94.86 billion rupees, on net sales of 1.2 trillion.

Shares in Tata Steel ended down 2.1 percent at 397.95 rupees, ahead of the results, in a Mumbai market that fell 0.5 percent. The shares are up 85 percent so far in 2009 after tumbling 77 percent in 2008.

The net profit of TVS Motor company remained flat at Rs 31.08 crore in the year ended March 31, 2009 ( on stand alone basis) against Rs 31.77 crore in the previous year. Net sales increased by 14 per cent to Rs 3670.92 crore ( Rs 3219.50 crore). Other operating income came to Rs 65.75 crore ( Rs 50.71 crore) and other income Rs 3.02 crore ( Rs 21.20 crore).

The board, which met at Hosur on Friday, declared an interim dividend of Rs 0.70 per share absorbing Rs 19.46 crore.

The consolidated results which included that of subsidiaries and associates\JVs showed a loss of Rs 63.20 crore ( Rs 28.25 crore).

In a statement, the company said it crossed several important milestones last year despite the challenges brought on by the global economic meltdown. The Mysore plant rolled out the one millionth scooty pep + and the Apache bike crossed three lakh mark. New models were introduced in the premium bike and scooter segments.

The company also expanded its presence in the three wheeler market, adding CNG to the already launched LPG and petrol versions. Besides, it expanded its global foot print to 55 countries and strengthened its dealership network in Indonesia. Last year, it recorded a five growth in overall sales at 13.42 lakh units ( 12.77 lakh units). Exports jumped to 1.95 lakh units ( 1.36 lakh units).

Glenmark Pharmaceuticals on Friday said its consolidated net profit for the financial year ended March 2009 stood at Rs 193.47 crore, while it had a consolidated net profit of Rs 632.11 crore in the same period ended March 2008.

“The net profit figures are not comparable due to out-licensing revenue received in the last financial year 07-08 amounting to Rs 240.27 crore and one time write offs taken in this financial year 08-09,” Glenmark Pharma said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange

“Due to the global financial crisis which impacted every market in the world, one-off extraordinary items and delay in product approvals by USFDA, the overall business got impacted severely in the financial year.

“Having said that, we began taking corrective measures in the fourth quarter itself and you will see the impact of these initiatives in this financial year,” Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, CEO & MD Glenn Saldanha said.

Revenue increased to Rs 2,121.53 crore for the period ended March 2009, from Rs 19,82.06 crore in the same period last year.

Glenmark Generics Inc, USA, posted revenue of Rs 733.77 crore for FY’09 against revenue of Rs 564.02 crore, a growth of 30 per cent over the previous year. The board of directors of the company proposed a dividend of Rs 0.40 for the financial year 2008-2009 subject to the approval of the shareholder

Tata Motors reported its first annual loss in eight years as it was hit by weak demand and losses at the Jaguar and Land Rover unit it bought in 2008.The firm, which controls 60 percent of the world’s fifth-biggest truck and bus market, said it was looked to cut costs. Tata Motors said Jaguar Land Rover unit posted a net loss of 281 million pounds ($463 million) in the 10 months of the fiscal year to March 2009

Tata Motors reported a consolidated net loss for the year to March 2009 of 25.05 billion rupees ($520 million) versus net profit of 21.68 billion rupees a year ago. Net sales rose to 703.70 billion rupees versus 354.09 billion rupees.The numbers are not comparable as year-ago numbers did not include that of Jaguar and Land Rover, or other assets that Tata Motors bought and sold in the year.

Last month, the company reported net profit from Indian operations fell 50.7 percent to 10.01 billion rupees for 2008/09.Shares in the firm have more than doubled so far this year compared to a 51 percent rise in the benchmark index. The shares fell by three-quarters in 2008