Business News

A "surprisingly bad outcome" in national elections, and any changes in capital gains tax in upcoming July budget could act as triggers for a near-term correction in Indian markets, Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies said.While a shock BJP defeat in 2024 elections is "extremely unlikely", markets could correct even more than the 17% fall in two sessions after the election results in 2004, Wood said.India's national election results are due on June 4 with the ruling BJP is expected to return to power.Wood added a bigger risk to markets could be potential changes in capital gains tax, which could be announced in the union budget in July."The issue is whether tax rates will be raised or whether the period to qualify for long-term capital gains, or a combination of both," said Jefferies.Currently, short-term capital gains are levied at 15% and long-term gains at 10% with the holding period defined as one year.Woods notes another proposal would be to increase capital gains tax for retail investors but not for mutual fund investors.

Series and movies from India clocked over 1 billion views on Netflix in 2023, the streaming service said on Friday in its second engagement report. The report, titled "What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report", presented the streaming service's viewership data for the period of July to December 2023. Subscribers across the world watched about 90 billion hours of content on Netflix in the second half of 2023. From India, Sujoy Ghosh's "Jaane Jaan" was the most watched movie on Netflix with 20.2 million views, followed by Shah Rukh Khan's "Jawan" with 16.2 million views and Vishal Bhardwaj's "Khufiya" with 12.1 million views. The other popular titles include "OMG 2" (11.5 million views), "Lust Stories 2" (9.2 million views), "Dream Girl 2" (8.2 million views) and true-crime documentary "Curry & Cyanide" (8.2 million views). From the series that were launched on Netflix, "The Railway Men", starring Kay Kay Menon, Babil Khan and Divyenndu, turned out to be the top title. The series, set against the backdrop of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak, attracted 10.6 millions views, followed by Suvinder Vicky and Barun Sobti-starrer "Kohraa" (6.4 million views), Raj and DK's "Gun and Gulaabs" (6.4 million views) and "Kaala Paani" (5.8 million views). Globally, non-English shows and movies are very popular with Netflix subscribers, making up nearly a third of all viewing, according to the report. This includes Korean (with 9 per cent of viewing), Spanish (7 per cent) and Japanese (5 per cent) language stories captured the biggest share of viewing outside of English. The report highlighted stand-outs titles like "Dear Child" (53 million views) from Germany, "Forgotten Love" (43 million views) from Poland, "Pact of Silence" (21 million views) from Mexico, "Mask Girl" (19 million views) from Korea, "Yu Yu Hakusho" (17 million views) from Japan and "Berlin" (11 million views) from Spain. The most watched movie title on Netflix was "Leave the World Behind", starring Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts, generating 121 million views, followed by Adam Sandler's animated film "Leo" (96 million views). From the series side, anime-inspired live action series "One Piece" attracted 72 million views. The report also highlighted that fan favourites original titles "Wednesday", "Red Notice" and "Squid Game" continued to bring in millions of views in 2023, long after they premiered on Netflix.