By: Dr K C Gupta, YBB Personal Finance

CONTRARIAN INDICATORS

AAII Bull-Bear Spread +10.3% (above average; bipolar)
CNN Fear & Greed Index 29 (fear)
NYSE %Above 50-dMA 36.01% (negative)
SP500 %Above 50-dMA 38.40% (negative)

ICI Fund Allocations (Cumulative), 8/31/25
OEFs & ETFs: Stocks 61.38%, Hybrids 4.13%, Bonds 17.45%, M-Mkt 17.05%

INTEREST RATES

CME FedWatch
Cycle peak 5.25-5.50%
Current 4.00-4.25%
FOMC 10/29/25+ cut
FOMC 12/10/25+ cut

Treasury

T-Bills 3-mo yield 4.02%, 1-yr 3.60%; T-Notes 2-yr 3.52%, 5-yr 3.65%, 10-yr 4.05%; T-Bonds 30-yr 4.63%;
TIPS/Real yields 5-yr 1.30%, 10-yr 1.75%, 30-yr 2.41%
FRNs Index 3.888%

Bank Rates www.depositaccounts.com/

Stable-Value (SV) Rates, 10/1/25
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 pending (previous 4.250%)

India Fear & Greed MMI 64.64 (greed) 
Weekly ETFs: INDA +0.61%, INDY +0.86%, EPI +0.58%, INDH +0.73%, SPY -2.42%
The data above are as of Sunday preceding the publication date.

MARKETS

IT/TECH

US cybersecurity firm Absolute Security is entering the Indian market.

SPECIAL TOPICS

Danish Scan Global Logistics (SGL) is entering the Indian market. Much bigger Danish Maersk also operates in India.

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) will sell its Finland-based agricultural, farm & forestry machinery unit Sampo Rosenlew to Finland’s Tera. Sampo was a small part of M&M & many of its technologies have been integrated into M&M product lines. The original idea of expanding Sampo operations in Europe also didn’t work out.

JSW Paint has an offer to buy 74.76% of AkzoNobel-India (only liquid paint/ coating businesses) from Dutch multinational AkzoNobel. Subsequently, JSW Paint will make open market offer for the remaining public shares. Several institutions have bought or increased stakes in AkzoNobel-India. AkzoNobel will retain powder coating/ paint businesses & the R&D center portion of AkzoNobel-India.

Selected Indian sovereign bonds may be included in Bloomberg global bond index; J P Morgan/JPM is the only firm to do so now. Indian bonds were included in EM bond indexes in 2024 by several firms.

SOFTWARE & SEMICONDUCTORS

US denial of most advanced Cray supercomputer to India in 1987 (it could buy a less advanced version) was responsible for starting India’s push for domestic computer industry. In Indian history, this has been seen time & again – India cannot rely exclusively on imports in critical areas. Some advanced technologies cannot be bought but must be developed domestically.

In the aftermath of EU sanctions on Indian refinery Nayara, US Microsoft/MSFT abruptly blocked Nayara’s access to all online products & Azure cloud – access was restored only after a court fight. Now, German SAP has restricted Nayra’s access to ERP (enterprise resource planning) software & the matter is in court. There are also interruptions in Nayara’s crude oil supply & refined product sales. Nayara’s has been operating only at half-capacity.

There should be domestic alternatives for IT office, business & social-media software (evolving – Zoho, Titan, etc) & cloud services (evolving – CtrlS, HCLTech, Tata Commumications, Utho, etc) even though those are available now from several multinationals.

A huge hole has been for semi chips – as of mid-2025, India produced NONE. The big news about iPhones produced in India for export relates only to their final assembly with most parts imported from elsewhere. While India has a highly developed IT/software industry & an educated IT workforce, it simply cannot go on without a functioning semi chip manufacturing/ fabrication (“fab”) industry.

A national crash program has been launched by MEITy (Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology) to catchup in chip testing, packaging & fabs. These semi fabs require very high capital expenditures (capex). The first Indian commercial chips may be available by late-2025 or 2026. Some early chips may be low-end, mature node chips used in many electronics & industrial products. After a few years, India may catchup to the most advanced chip produced by fabs in US, Taiwan, S Korea, Japan – the state of the art in 2025 is 2 nm semi chips & that will keep advancing.

Where global sourcing is necessary, it’s important to have access to multiple vendors located in different countries so that India isn’t at the whims of any one foreign corporation or government. There is already a push by GoI for some localization of software & storage that has been met with resistance from multinationals.

While beyond the scope of this discussion, this general self-sufficiency theme also applies to telecom, EVs, aerospace, rare-earths, nuclear power, etc.
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