News digest: Budget 2019, options trade, artificial intelligence, and more

Finance Commission report to determine stance on medium-term fiscal forecast

Budget may stick to fiscal rectitude

 

The 2019-20 interim Budget, which will be Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s last before the 2019 general elections, will serve as a vision document for the Narendra Modi government’s economic policy approach as it looks to secure a second term in power. It will also continue the theme of fiscal consolidation, which has been seen in all of this administration’s Budgets. Read more

 

Options trade gains pace as elections near

 

Market participants have begun taking positions in the derivatives market to protect their portfolios from any adverse election outcome. Options contracts expiring in June 2019 are seeing a rise in activity as investors look to hedge their positions in case stocks slide after the results. Read more

 

Order inflows up 30% for infra, capital goods firms

 

The year 2018 has been a good one for infrastructure and capital goods companies, with 30 per cent growth in new order inflows. Nearly all the growth was fuelled by government and public sector orders, while private sector orders were conspicuously missing. Read more

 

The year of artificial intelligence

One of the first things that Kalyan Krishnamurthy did after assuming office as chief executive officer at Flipkart in January last year was to tell his team of top engineers that they needed to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) across all functions of the e-commerce company in order to stay relevant in the industry. Read more

 

Now, It’s hashtag rural as Twitter prepares for polls

 

As social media sites fight it out to emerge as the biggest platform in the run-up to the general elections, Twitter has set sights on the 190-million strong rural internet user base in India. Read more