Oh Dear...again!

My last post on this topic was about 45 days ago and again, its the same story now.

The Central Bank of India, RBI has increased the CRR and the Repo Rate by .5 & .25% respectively on Saturday. The markets, as expectedly have had a blood bath so far. The top private banks in India, ICICI and HDFC Bank have already announced the hike in lending rates and revision of the existing one's. All this for curbing the inflation rate that stands at an astounding 6.5% as on 19th March, 2007.

Floating rates for home loans are as high as 12% and fixed, a whopping 14%. Almost double in a couple of years. This is certainly going to hit a gamut of industries like automobile, real estate, cement and ofcourse banking. Money is going to be more expensive than before and consumers will have to think more, to be precise, carefully before going in for loans.

CSE = Cricket Stock Exchange

It wouldn't be Infosys and Wipro here at the CSE but Tendulkar's and Lara's. Formed by whizkids from IIT and IIM, the virtual cricket stock exchange will be on till the end of the Cricket World Cup 2007. Having started with the IPO's, it is all set to launch the secondary market operations from 11th March when the real battle in West Indies begins :-)

According to the developers, virtual cash will be allocated for every participant and each of them are expected to invest it rightly to make more money. It could be IPO, Cash or F&O. The same rules as in a real stock exchange but the essence is learning the basics (or even the advanced) of stock markets without losing money :o)