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It’s time to get realistic about the worsening energy situation. A power shortage is approaching and few alternatives to bridge the green transition exist right now. Nuclear is re-emerging as a front-runner, as are doubts and skepticism around its safety as memories of past accidents loom large along with haunting images of mushroom clouds. South Korea, though, shows why nuclear isn’t just a pipe dream — or a fuel to fear.

The country’s worries — like those of many others — aren’t just people feeling cold this winter, or rising prices. It’s the lack of electricity that will ultimately hamper everything from industrial production of goods and food to electric vehicles and the infrastructure to charge them — industries account for over half of the nation’s consumption. South Korean firms that supply high-tech goods to the rest of the world, including cars, batteries and chips, seem to have come to that realization. These energy-intensive sectors won’t run on wind, solar and biofuels alone because the actual capacity just isn’t enough and for large-scale operations, it isn’t consistent. If power starts becoming an issue, so will their profits and global technological heft.

Powering Up

In South Korea, nuclear generation, a baseload source, accounts for over a quarter of electricity production.

To deal with it, South Korea’s biggest companies are putting their weight behind nuclear power plants, which contribute to about 27% of electricity there — an astute move. Samsung C&T Corp., the trading and construction arm of the Samsung empire, is working with NuScale Power Corp. to construct the first small modular reactor, or SMR, in the US and in eastern Europe. Meanwhile, Doosan Enerbility Co. has also tied up with NuScale to supply equipment. The US firm is the first and only to have had its SMR design receive certification — after a rigorous review process by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The one-two punch of rising US interest rates and a strengthening dollar is making investors crave spicy yields. Markets were in turmoil last week when 10-year UK gilts struggled to find takers even at 4.5% — and only calmed down when the Bank of England stepped in as a buyer. However, it isn’t just British fare that’s getting passed up for being too bland. Look at a large emerging economy like India, which has tried for three years to get asset managers to commit to its $1 trillion government bond market. But they’re stalling. Why aren’t 7%-plus yields hot enough for them?

FTSE Russell said Thursday that it would continue to keep Indian government bonds on its watch list for possible inclusion in its emerging markets debt index until March 2023, when the next assessment is due. Separately, Reuters has reported that India’s much-desired entry into a similar benchmark maintained by JPMorgan Chase & Co. may also get pushed out to next year. A decision is expected in the coming days. (Bloomberg LP is the parent of Bloomberg Index Services Ltd., which administers indexes that compete with those from other service providers.)

Foreigners own just $17.8 billion, or 2%, of Indian government bonds. By contrast, overseas ownership is more than a third in Indonesia and nearly 10% in China. In 2019, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi flirted with sovereign dollar debt, but dropped the inaugural $10 billion issuance when it drew flak. And rightly so. It would have been risky for a government that has always struggled with high budget deficits to borrow in a currency the country is often short of, thanks to its heavy energy imports. The revised aspiration since then has been to get as much as $40 billion over two years (in rupees, not dollars) by pushing for India’s inclusion in global bond indexes.

That’s the right way to go, but pesky taxation issues have come in the way. New Delhi imposes up to a 30% capital-gains levy on listed bonds sold within one year. There is also a 5% withholding tax on interest income for foreign portfolio investors.

With Russia going off the benchmarks, asset managers would welcome the yield kick India would offer. However, they’re hoping that in its desperation to find a new source of capital ahead of further rate increases by the Fed, the Modi administration will blink first and offer tax concessions. Hence, the standoff. That any trading in rupee bonds may have to be settled onshore, and not on an international platform like Euroclear, isn’t the showstopper it’s often made out to be. As Bloomberg News noted last week, even Indonesian and Chinese bonds aren’t on Euroclear but are part of the JPMorgan Index. The real issue is that the operations people at large asset managers are balking at the idea of getting a tax certificate ahead of settling each trade onshore in India.

What will break the impasse and when? Apart from some simplification of processes and taxation, a lot will depend on the Reserve Bank of India’s policies, especially on exchange rates.

While the relentless surge in the dollar is putting pressure on economies across Asia, responses by individual nations have been “eclectic,” as Nomura Holdings Inc. noted recently. The Philippines, China and South Korea have taken a more hands-off approach to depreciation, while India, Thailand and Indonesia have intervened more heavily and sold a larger number of dollars from their official coffers to shore up their local currencies. The RBI’s reserves, which were as high as $641 billion last September, are down to $537 billion and falling. The question before investors is, how long before the RBI switches tracks? In 2013, when India got dragged into the Fed’s taper tantrum, its hard-currency war chest was enough for six months of imports. In Nomura’s estimates, the current coverage is adequate for a little over eight months.

A more laissez-faire approach to the exchange rate won’t be an easy choice. The risk is that the rupee becomes a sitting duck for speculators trying to pull it down in one-way bets. In that case, no investor — equity or bond — will venture near India. The outlook for next year’s economic growth, already uncertain because of cratering global demand, will become more dicey.

Maybe the trick is to just suspend the ambition of landing $40 billion in foreigners’ money until the Fed is finished tightening. Right now, an investor gets virtually no additional kick by giving up on three-year US Treasury yields of 4.2% and exploring options half a world away. In the foreign-exchange market, the cost of insuring against rupee deprecation eats up almost the entire 3 percentage point extra yield offered by Indian government debt of similar maturity. By that yardstick, the three-year British gilt yields are even less appetizing — which is why analysts mostly agree that the Bank of England will have to keep raising rates. India, too, increased its policy rate by half a percentage point for a third straight time last week to 5.9%; economists expect the RBI to be done only when it reaches 6.5%.

A combination of high yields and a sufficiently-weakened currency could finally convince global investors to bite. For now, though, it looks like they may work up an appetite only by next year.

Credit Suisse Group AG is in a tight spot, but it isn’t “on the brink,” as the fevered typists of social media imagined over the weekend. The Swiss bank, however, is going through its darkest hours at exactly the worst time, when markets are volatile and everyone is nervous about what’s around the corner. Disappointment is still more likely than disaster.

The terms of trade in financial markets are worsening for all players. This is a new era of higher volatility as policymakers raise interest rates to battle inflation, increasing trading costs and risks. It’s a time when missteps by politicians or central banks can suddenly expose surprising concentrations of risk — just look at last week’s entanglement between the UK government bond market and Britain’s pension funds.

Unfortunately for Credit Suisse, this is going to encourage companies, investors and savers to do more business at banks with the strongest balance sheets and most stable business models, making speed crucial for Chairman Axel Lehmann to complete the bank’s strategic review and get its restructuring underway. On the one hand, the Swiss lender is just suffering a more exaggerated version of the travails of its peers. But the collapse in its share price and sharp rise in the cost of buying insurance on its bonds are making its turnaround harder. And there’s another three weeks until it’s scheduled to tell investors how it will cut back its investment bank to focus more on wealth management.

The bank has more than enough capital to run its business. It just isn’t making good enough returns. To change that picture quickly, it needs money to pay for a restructuring — analysts estimate potentially $4 billion through asset sales or capital raising. Without that, the less it can change and the longer its troubles will last. The weaker it appears, the costlier it’ll be to raise any money and the harder it will get squeezed by potential buyers of any of its assets. Markets feed on desperation, and you’ll find fewest friends when you’re most in need.

But this is a story of relative decline, not one of bank runs or existential crisis. This is well known to investors and analysts who follow Credit Suisse but not so much to the broader market. That’s why the sharp rise in the cost of protecting Credit Suisse bonds against default in derivatives markets spooked some finance professionals as well as social media.

Senior Credit Suisse executives spent time reassuring clients and counterparties over the weekend about the health of its balance sheet, the Financial Times reported. In the US, some investors began to fret about contagion to the banking system there from problems at a large European bank. Citigroup Inc. banks analyst Keith Horowitz was moved to pen a note to clients reassuring them that the “current situation is night and day from 2007.”

Investors and traders are jittery because the cost of protecting bank debt against default using credit default swaps (CDS) is rising everywhere. Some are starting to see a harbinger of bank failures, but that’s wrong. A lot of this rise is a function of how banks manage the risks of trading with each other — and of how their clients also manage that risk.

When banks trade with each other, there is always a risk that one bank fails to fulfil its side of the bargain – that is called counterparty credit risk. The world of over-the-counter derivatives, those that aren’t traded on an exchange or through a clearinghouse, are one big source of counterparty risk. Just how much is involved depends on the size of your trading book but also how volatile is the underlying market. High volatility often means more — and more frequent — collateral calls, as Britain’s pensions industry showed last week.

Banks (and their clients) also need to look at the financial strength of their trading partners as they work out what risk they present: Credit Suisse’s collapsing share price makes it look riskier than some rivals. This is a real problem because it makes the bank a costlier counterparty and less competitive. Deutsche Bank went through a similar thing around the final months of 2016, when its capital base was weak and it faced a potentially existential fine from US authorities. Credit Suisse isn’t in such dire straits as Deutsche Bank was then, but losing revenue will still be painful.

There is a further nuance worth noting that explains why the headlines about Credit Suisse are worse than the reality. Without laboring the technicalities too much, many European banks have two kinds of CDS that refer to senior debt: One is riskier and less widely traded than the other. These exist because different creditors get different treatment under bank resolution rules: Depositors and derivative counterparties typically are more likely to get their money back if a bank gets wound up than are bondholders.

Long story short, and slightly simplistically: There is a CDS for senior bonds and a less risky CDS for counterparty credit risk. The former version is often more volatile, the latter is more important for competitiveness and revenue. For Credit Suisse, it’s the more volatile, riskier version that has gone wildest in recent days and become a popular chart for Twitter’s excitable storm chasers.

Credit Suisse is still priced as a riskier counterparty than Deutsche Bank or Barclays Plc, for example, but it’s not in existential peril today. It is at a business disadvantage and faces another hurdle to its restructuring . Nothing that has happened in markets or been communicated by the bank since it launched its review in the summer has been helpful. Financial markets aren’t getting any friendlier. The quicker that Credit Suisse’s board can complete its strategic plan and end the uncertainty the better.

The biggest merger & acquisition (M&A) deal in the Indian financial technology space has fallen through, with Prosus-backed PayU calling off the acquisition of BillDesk. The acquisition, for a total consideration of $4.7 billion, had been announced on August 31, 2021.

In a statement issued on Monday, Prosus said: “Closing of the transaction was subject to the fulfilment of various conditions precedent, including approval by the Competition Commission of India (CCI). PayU secured CCI approval on September 5, 2022. However, certain conditions precedent were not fulfilled by the September 30, 2022, long stop date, and the agreement has terminated automatically in accordance with its terms and, accordingly, the proposed transaction will not be implemented.”

On August 31, 2021, Prosus had announced that an agreement had been reached between PayU Payments Private Limited (PayU), a subsidiary of Prosus, and the shareholders of the Indian digital payments provider BillDesk.

While the deal got a go-ahead from the CCI only in September, it was yet to receive the approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The process was to take at least 45 days.

Prosus, a long-term investor and operator in India, has invested close to $6 billion in Indian technology companies since 2005. It said it remained committed to the Indian market and growing its existing businesses within the region. Some of its other investments include Meesho, Byju’s, DeHaat, Mensa Brands and Good Glamm Group.

This acquisition would have made PayU the biggest player in the digital payment (B2B) segment. At the time of acquisition announcement, PayU India head Anirban Mukherjee had told Business Standard that the synergies of both the companies would lead to more new products being launched in the market.

“We do know where some of the synergies are. For instance, they are very strong in bill payments in the government and financial services.

We are much more focused on e-commerce and SMEs. There are synergies where their products apply to our customers and vice versa. Like LazyPay can go into their checkout pages. The bigger conversation will happen once we close this deal. I feel this type of scale can drive a different level of innovation and access to the market. We have a lot of complementary strengths and I am hoping that we will have lots of ideas on taking this to drive digitisation of the last mile much faster in India,” he had said.

Increased demand during the ongoing festival season has caused airfares on major routes across the nation to increase by 20 per cent to 30 per cent, reported The Hindu Businessline.

Research by ixigo, an Indian AI-based online travel portal, shows that typical airfares have increased by 20–30 per cent this year on popular routes as a result of the increase in aviation turbine fuel (ATF). Around Durga Puja and Diwali, EaseMyTrip has also seen a surge in airfares on metro routes.

Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO & Co-founder of the IPO-bound OTA ixigo said to The Hindu Businessline, “With Dussehra and Durga Puja just around the corner, excitement for the festival season is at its peak. Flight searches have risen 25-30 per cent for leisure travel for Dussehra week compared to last year.”

Cleartrip’s data also revealed 23 per cent higher bookings in the same period.

Patna, Mumbai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Pune, Goa, Bagdogra and Dehradun are among the top 10 leisure destinations for travel between October 01 and October 24, found the ixigo’s data.

Customer confidence has now increased as the majority of eligible citizens of India have received their booster vaccinations and the virus's impact has decreased.

This has encouraged airlines to make up for the lost revenues over the previous two years, which is supported by the raising of the airfare cap on August 31.

Ixigo has predicted that due to increasing demand for travel, last-minute prices for well-travelled routes will experience a sharp increase in airfares. For instance, on travel dates shortly before Diwali, one-way rates for routes like New Delhi to Patna, which are typically approximately Rs 5,000, might reach as high as Rs 8,000-13,000.

However, there is a decrease in airfare between Durga Puja and after Diwali in an effort to prevent further financial hardship for its consumers. Along with this, online travel agencies (OTAs) and airlines are providing their clients with flash bargains and offers.

According to Cleartrip spokesperson, there are sectors where prices have dropped and there are expensive fares too.

India's manufacturing activity lost some momentum in September, with S&P Global's Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) edging down to 55.1 from 56.2 in August, data released on October 3 showed.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in activity, while a sub-50 print is a sign of contraction.

This is the 15th consecutive 50-plus print for the manufacturing PMI.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk showcased his much-touted humanoid robot 'Optimus' at the electric vehicle maker's "AI Day" event on Friday.

The billionaire has said a robot business will be worth more than its cars, hoping to expand beyond self-driving cars that have not yet become a reality despite his repeated promises.

A prototype of the robot walked on stage and waved to the seated audience. A video of the robot carrying a box, watering plants and moving metal bars in the automaker's factory was shown.

"Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible," Musk said at the event being held at a Tesla office in Palo Alto, California.

Musk is also expected to discuss Tesla's long-delayed self-driving technology. In May, Musk said that the world's most valuable carmaker would be "worth basically zero" without achieving full self-driving capability, and it faces growing regulatory probes, as well as technological hurdles.

"There will be lots of technical detail & cool hardware demos," Musk wrote on Twitter late on Wednesday, adding the event was aimed at recruiting engineers.

Tesla's live demonstration record is mixed. Launches typically draw cheers, but in 2019 when Musk had an employee hurl a steel ball at the armored window of a new electric pickup truck, the glass cracked.

The key test for the robot is whether it can handle unexpected situations.

Musk announced Tesla's plan for humanoid robots at its AI day in August last year and delayed this year's event from August to have its robot prototype working, with a plan to start production possibly next year.

Tesla teased the unveiling of the bot on social media with an image of metallic robotic hands making a heart shape. But building human-like, versatile hands that can manipulate different objects is extremely challenging, said Heni Ben Amor, a robotics professor at Arizona State University.

Initially, Optimus, an allusion to the powerful and benevolent leader of the Autobots in the Transformers media franchise, would perform boring or dangerous jobs, including moving parts around Tesla factories or attaching a bolt to a car with a wrench, according to Musk.

"There's so much about what people can do dexterously that's very, very hard for robots. And that's not going to change whether the robot is a robot arm or whether it's in the shape of a humanoid," Jonathan Hurst, chief technology officer at Agility Robotics, a humanoid robot firm, told Reuters.

Musk has said that in the future robots could be used in homes, making dinners, mowing the lawn and caring for the elderly, and even becoming a "buddy" for humans or a sex partner.

He is due at Friday's event to give updates on Tesla's much-delayed plan to launch self-driving cars, and on its high-speed computer, Dojo, which was unveiled last year and the company has said is integral to its development of self-driving technology.

Musk has said he expects Tesla will achieve full self-driving this year and mass produce a robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedal by 2024.

At an "Autonomy" event in 2019, Musk promised 1 million robotaxis by 2020 but has yet to deliver such a car.

Vikas Garg, Head of Fixed Income at Invesco Mutual Fund

Year 2022 is proving to be yet another year dominated by unprecedented events causing heightened volatility across global financial markets. While the year started on a positive note with many countries moving out of Covid-led disruptions, it was soon eclipsed by un-anticipated Russia-Ukraine conflict leading to a significant surge in global commodity prices and multi-decade high inflationary pressures in many developed countries.

Central bank US Fed has embarked upon aggressive monetary policy tightening led by steep policy rate hikes and quantitative tightening to tame inflation, thereby triggering massive dollar rally and forcing many other so-called safe haven currencies to go into tailspin.

Other key central banks are also undertaking fast paced rate hikes to control domestic inflation/currency. Consequently, global interest rates have remained extremely volatile during the year with an upward bias as market participants have struggled to gauge the inflation trajectory.

India has also seen a paradigm shift in interest rates during the year. RBI has already undertaken 190 basis point rate hike in policy repo rate and has withdrawn systemic liquidity to a great extent in response to the elevated inflation trajectory. Debt investors have been adversely impacted with high mark to market hit as domestic interest rates have hardened sharply during the year with a flattening bias.

Global backdrop continues to worsen with more rate hikes expected by the US Fed over the next few months. Indian fixed income has remained largely insulated to global spillovers on the strength of domestic stability, although the safety cushion has depleted rapidly with forex reserve falling to $524.52 billion and as India’s current account deficit remains high.

Further with FPI outflow of more than Rs 2 lakh crore year-till-date, rupee has depreciated sharply and crossed 83 against USD for the first time even as the RBI intervened to smoothen forex volatility. Much awaited inclusion of Indian G-Sec into global bond indices will now be reviewed by index providers in 2023 only as some of the operational aspects still need to be resolved with the India government.

RBI Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has clearly articulated its concern on inflation which is reflected in retention of inflation forecasts at 6.70 percent for FY23. Domestic CPI inflation touched the 7 percent mark again in August 2022 compared with 6.71 percent in July, marginally higher than market expectations led by sharp rise in select food items such as cereals, pulses, and milk.

Core inflation remained elevated and came in at 6.1 percent YoY versus 6 percent in previous month. Supply side disruptions, geopolitical tensions, erratic rainfall, commodity prices & improving domestic demand conditions pose risks to inflation outlook, while growth seems to be fairly supported by domestic factors.

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Led by global monetary policy tightening as well as still elevated inflationary pressures, we expect MPC to continue with more rate hikes and reach a terminal policy repo rate closer to 6.25 percent or 6.50 percent by early 2023.

With challenging global backdrop as many central banks tighten the monetary policies to tame inflationary pressures, huge fiscal supply and RBI’s expected rate hikes, we expect interest rates to remain volatile with an upward bias.

Nonetheless, risk-reward is looking favourable for the investors as absolute yields have risen considerably over the past 6 months and now give a reasonable safety cushion to absorb mark to market volatility. For instance, a 3 – 4 year G-Sec at 7.30 percent - 7.40 percent levels is up from the lows of 4.75 percent in December 2020 and is now similar to the levels last seen almost 4 years back.

Also read - RBI rate-setting panel plans unscheduled meet on November 3

Against the backdrop of still many uncertainties, we prefer using the conventional wisdom to contain interest rate risk with a moderate overall duration of debt investment portfolio. A much flatter yield curve gives an opportunity to investors to cut down on duration risk and still continue to maintain high accrual.

The 2 to 4 year segment of the yield remains well placed from carry perspective for medium to long investors, as it has already priced in more aggressive rate hikes and also lesser impacted by the rate volatility.

Credit environment remains healthy, however, current narrow spreads of AA / AA+ over AAA bonds do not provide favourable risk adjusted reward opportunities and we expect illiquidity premium to increase sharply over a period of time thereby posing mark to market challenges for this segment.