Sensex Nifty Today, Stock Market LIVE Updates: Stock to buy today: CESC (₹148) – BUY

■ Our fourth theme for Midweek Masala is a macro update. We present a series of charts under six sections: Growth/consumption, Investments, Financial Markets, Global Macros, Inflation/Employment, and External Sector. We wrap this up with a monthly tracker.

■ Barring a few outliers, we do not see signs of a meaningful growth/consumption recovery. Some data points like tractors and Port Cargo are improving, but major concurrent indicators like loan growth and auto sales continue to be weak.

■ Financial markets are mixed. Pressure on the rupee and forex is easing, with reserves stabilizing, the rupee weakness paused (at least for now), and the DXY having significantly corrected from the peak. Domestic liquidity however remains weak despite aggressive measures from the RBI – we see this as seasonal, and expect a recovery from Apr-25.

■ Our outlook is unchanged. We see an economic recovery in FY26 led by consumption – this will be enabled by a recovery in white collar employment and acceleration in retail lending. The investment cycle should moderate more toward normal levels, keeping pace with nominal GDP growth. We see the liquidity situation improving rapidly, leading to lower interest rates and better deposit growth.

Interesting read of the week – Tokenization of private assets

John Crabb discusses the possibilities of tokenization of private asset classes in Institutional Investor (link). This, he argues, will allow greater retail access to private markets, including alternate assets like art through fractionalization. Of course, this will need regulation changes from the SEC. Our view: giving retail investors access to illiquid private assets carries several unknown risks. The broader issue that resonates with India is that the options for domestic investors are now limited to the two ends of the spectrum – low-risk debt assets or equities/gold/real estate. There is a need for more products with intermediate risks that bridge this gap, as we discussed in our report on household savings in Dec-24 (link).

Market view

The market is showing signs of stability. As we mentioned last week (link), much of the valuation froth has subsided and most indices, including SMIDs, are trading below LTA P/Es. FPI selling has also abated. The sustainability of this rally will be determined by how well FY26 earnings forecasts hold up during the Apr-25 earning season. We believe that the Nifty EPSg forecast of 13.6% has little downside risk to it, fueled by a discretionary consumption recovery. In the short term, BFSI should outperform as liquidity easing and investors bottom-fish. In the medium term, however, we prefer consumer discretionary, healthcare and real estate.