By: Dr K C Gupta, YBB Personal Finance

CONTRARIAN INDICATORS

AAII Bull-Bear Spread -0.7% (below average; Survey unusually bipolar)
CNN Fear & Greed Index 62 (greed)
NYSE %Above 50-dMA 65.53% (positive)
SP500 %Above 50-dMA 57.40% (positive)

ICI Fund Allocations (Cumulative), 7/31/25
OEFs & ETFs: Stocks 61.23%, Hybrids 4.14%, Bonds 17.51%, M-Mkt 17.12%

INTEREST RATES

CME FedWatch
Cycle peak 5.25-5.50%
Current 4.25-4.50%
FOMC 10/29/25+ cut
FOMC 12/10/25+ cut

Treasury

T-Bills 3-mo yield 4.03%, 1-yr 3.60%; T-Notes 2-yr 3.57%, 5-yr 3.68%, 10-yr 4.14%; T-Bonds 30-yr 4.75%;
TIPS/Real yields 5-yr 1.25%, 10-yr 1.75%, 30-yr 2.47%
FRNs Index 3.944%
Bank Rates www.depositaccounts.com/

Stable-Value (SV) Rates, 9/1/25
TIAA Traditional Annuity (Accumulation) Rates
Restricted RC 5.00%, RA 4.75%
Flexible RCP 4.25%, SRA 4.00%, IRA-101110+ 4.00%
TSP G Fund 4.250% (previous 4.375%)

NEW – India Fear & Greed MMI 78.41 (extreme greed)
Weekly ETFs: INDA +1.49%, INDY +1.10%, EPI +1.76%, INDH +1.02%, SPY +1.24%
The data above are as of Sunday preceding the publication date.

IT/TECH

US OpenAI wants some Stargate (US multinational AI project) activities in India in cooperation with Reliance Industries, Sify Technologies, Yotta Data Services, E2E Networks & CtrlS Datacenters.

ECONOMY

H-1B visas between 9/21/25 – 9/21/26 will require $100K fees & this requirement can be extended.

Indian/Asian grocery, general merchandise, sari/apparel & jewelry stores & restaurants in the US point out that 50% tariffs on imports from India have hurt their businesses worse than the Covid pandemic. Prices will rise a lot & some stores with small margins may have to be shut.

SPECIAL TOPICS

US private-equity firms (Warburg Pincus, TA Associates) are bidding for private medical-devices/supplies Romsons Group.

Jindal Steel (60.5% owned by Jindal Group) is among the bidders for German Thyssenkrupp’s steel business.

US logistics/ warehousing company Prologis/PLD is developing facilities in India. Big companies in this space in India include Indospace, Horizon Industrial Parks (owned by US Blackstone/BX), etc.

Mining equipment & processing company Tega Industries buys 77% stake in US Molycop (owned by US AIP – American Industrial Partners); US Apollo Global/APO will buy 23%. Molycop is not to be confused with the defunct rare earths company Molycorp.

Serentica Renewables (backed by US KKR) will buy the solar power business (1.5 GW) from Statkrafts-India. Norwegian Statkraft is exiting India to refocus on European markets – it also sold its hydropower business stake in Malana Power to LNJ Bhilwara & is seeking bids for 2 other hydropower projects.

SENTIMENT & MARKET INDICATORS – INDIA MMI
MMI – MARKET MOOD INDEX

MMI is a “Fear & Greed (F&G)” indicator based on 6 indicators for the Indian stock market. There are F&G indexes for various markets – e.g. US CNN F&G Index, crypto F&G index, etc. MMI components:

FII ACTIVITY – open interest by foreign investment institutions (FII) in the NSE indexes.

VOLATILITY & SKEW – Indian market VIX is based on 30-day options for the Nifty 50 index (market-cap-weighted). Skew is based on relative volatilities of calls & puts for the Nifty 50 index.

MOMENTUM – uses {(90-dEMA – 30-dEMA)/90-dEMA} for Nifty 50 index. EMA is exponential moving average that has higher weights for more recent data, so is more reactive than simple moving average (MA). 30-dEMA is 30-day EMA.

MARKET BREADTH – It’s a modified Arms Index obtained as AD Ratio/AD Volume Ratio, where AD Ratio = #Advancers/#Decliners & AD Volume Ratio = Advancing Volume/Declining volume.

PRICE STRENGTH – calculated as (%52wHighs – %52wLows).

DEMAND FOR GOLD – 2-week TR for gold minus TR for Nifty 50 index.

For each indicator, the 45-day moving average (45-dMA) & standard deviation (SD) are calculated. Based on the deviation of current indicator value relative to average as multiple of SD (like the z-score), the indicator is assigned a value in 0-100 range. Then, an equally-weighted average of the 6 indicators provides the overall MMI value that is interpreted with the following scale.

Scale: Extreme Fear 0-30, Fear 30-50, Neutral 50, Greed 50-70, Extreme Greed 70-100.

At any time, various indicators may be at different levels & may even provide contrary signals. So, MMI overcomes this issue by blending 6 indicators. But this may also become a drawback, especially when MMI is near the neutral value (50).

Starting with this issue, India MMI will now be shown in the data panel at the top. Note that its construction is quite different from the CNN Fear & Greed Index for the US market that is also shown in the top data panel.

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