Mumbai: The monetary policy review meeting by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) kept the repo rate unchanged at 5.25% and retained a neutral stance while raising inflation projections, largely due to the rise in oil prices on account of the West Asian crisis.

Fund managers believe that fixed income investors should position their portfolios to invest a bulk of their money in corporate bonds with a tactical bet on long tenure gilt funds.

“High rated corporate bonds of two-four year maturity have a spread of 100-120 basis points over GSecs, presenting an attractive opportunity,” says Vikas Garg, head-Fixed Income, Invesco Mutual Fund. Corporate bonds will help investors earn an accrual income of 7.5-7.7% compared with an interest of 6.5% that an investor earns on a three year bank deposit.
Over the last couple of months, the global macro environment has weakened largely due to the prolonged West Asia conflict, resulting in higher prices of crude oil and other commodities and a rise in global inflation risk. In the coming quarters, the RBI will use a data-dependent, wait and watch approach to counter global headwinds and domestic risks.

The government removed both long-term and short-term capital gains taxes, along with withholding tax on interest income for foreign portfolio investors (FPI) investing in government bonds with an aim to attract foreign capital. Analysts believe these measures are aimed at supporting capital inflows to stabilise the rupee and address the balance of payments deficit and lead to inclusion in global Indices.
“With FPI route getting tax benefits due to taxation, inflows could improve. Investors can take a tactical bet on gilt funds,” says Sandeep Yadav, head-Fixed Income, DSP Mutual Fund“As we see FPI flows in Gsecs, spreads could compress,” says Garg. Fund managers believe investors could opt for longer tenure GSecs as the spread between a 10 year G sec and 30 year Gsec is 60 basis points. As long tenure Gsec yields head down, investors could earn a capital appreciation, in addition to the coupon, which will boost their overall returns.

Wealth managers believe retail investors in gold mutual fund schemes will not be affected, after three large asset management companies announced restrictions on purchase of large quantities of gold by investors.

Three AMCs namely HDFC MF, ICICI Prudential MF and Nippon Life India AMC have announced temporary restrictions on their gold schemes. All three AMCs announced subscription transactions of large investors who directly transact with them and invest a minimum of 25 crore will not be accepted. In addition, in the case of both HDFC Gold ETF FoF and Nippon India Gold Savings Fund, lump sum purchases will be restricted to a limit of 10 lakh per month. Also for Nippon India Gold Savings Fund, SIPs or STPs will continue with a limit of 50,000 per investor per day.

“Restrictions will apply only to large investors, while AMCs will continue to create units for market makers, without any restrictions,” said a ETF head at a domestic fund house. As units are created, there will be enough liquidity available to investors who can buy and sell these units at prevailing market prices.

Wealth managers believe the current move by fund houses is in line with the prime minister’s message to reduce overall imports.

“This is an attempt to slow down purchase of gold and reduce pressure in imports, after the strong inflows into the yellow metal over the last one year,” says Saket Kumar, Co-Founder, ETF Junction.

Gold has been one of the best performing assets in recent times, and saw a sharp run up returning 56.08% in the last one year, while over a three year period it returned an annualized 35.89%. However over the last three months it lost 3.59%.
“With prices stabilizing over the last three months, there is no longer a frenzy to buy gold. Most investors now allocate 5-10% to the yellow metal in line with their asset allocation largely through SIPs,” says Nikhil Gupta, Founder, Sage Capital.Gold ETFs saw net sales of 71,914 crore in the last 12 months and mutual funds now managed gold assets worth 1.78 lakh crore as of April 30, 2026, a rise of 290% in the last 1 year.

Gas-X capsules sold across the country are being recalled over potential chemical contamination because of a machine leakage during packaging, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Haleon issued a voluntary recall last week after discovering that the medication may have been contaminated with a coolant when a machine leaked during packaging.

“The lots are being recalled due to potential contamination with a diluted propylene glycol-based coolant from a machine leakage during the packaging process,” the company’s announcement reads.

The recall affects four lots of 125 mg Gas-X Extra Strength Softgels in pill bottles of 120 ct. and 72 ct.

SPACE HEATERS SOLD AT COSTCO, OTHER MAJOR RETAILERS FOR YEARS RECALLED OVER FIRE HAZARD

The company said 120 ct. bottles with lot numbers TL8K, YH9X and YH9Y and 72 ct. bottles with lot number X78N are impacted by the recall. These affected products all have an expiration date of Nov. 30, 2028.

The impacted capsules were distributed on or around April 13.

The ingestion of the Softgels contaminated with the coolant could lead to adverse events such as nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea, the company warned.

Haleon said it has not received any reports of adverse events in connection with this recall. Anyone who has experienced problems that may be related to taking this product should contact their physician or healthcare provider.

Gas-X Softgels are typically taken to quickly break up gas bubbles in the digestive tract and relieve pressure, bloating, and discomfort. The green capsules are packaged in boxes with green, blue and gray bands.

Haleon is notifying its distributors and customers by letter, email and phone. The company is arranging for the return of all recalled products.

POPULAR PRODUCT SOLD AT TARGET RECALLED DUE TO CONTAMINATION CONCERNS

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Customers who purchased products matching the lot numbers are urged to stop taking the pills immediately and contact the company for a return and reimbursement.

“Consumer safety and product quality are our utmost priorities at Haleon. The root cause of the contamination has been identified and repaired. Corrective and preventative actions have been implemented to prevent future recurrence,” the company said.

Haleon is also the maker of other popular medicines, including Advil, Theraflu and Tums.

India’s fraud enforcement regime has entered a new phase, with market regulator Sebi resetting the legal bar for what counts as fraud in securities law.

The shift draws on the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Reliance Industries vs Sebi case. In this case, the court ruled that demonstration of investor injury is itself sufficient ground to establish fraud.

Where no injury or loss can be quantified, wrongful intention must instead be inferred from surrounding circumstances.

It is this intent element that Sebi applied in its last week’s ex-parte interim order against Rajesh Exports. While no direct investor loss was established, Sebi held that investors were induced to invest on the basis of a misleading picture of the gold refiner’s financial position.

“Going forward, Sebi’s investigations on fraud will be guided by the supreme court’s interpretation,” said a person familiar with the development.

Shruti Rajan, partner, financial regulatory, Trilegal, said the court had “crystallised two tenets — where you cannot prove intention, you must prove injury, and where you can prove intention, injury is irrelevant.” With Sebi applying the court’s observations in Rajesh Exports, Rajan said “it is a sign that the regulator is looking to create more consistency in precedent making across its enforcement process.”
Sandeep Parekh, managing partner of Finsec Law Advisors, said the court had “reaffirmed that intention and act of injury are necessary ingredients of fraud, and that a breach of position limits is by itself a reporting default and not deceit.” Drawing an analogy, he said driving above the 60 kmph speed limit on a highway does not make it an attempt to murder someone, “specially if no one was hit and even more so when the highway did not even have any pedestrians. Conversely, hitting someone deliberately, even at 30 kmph, could still be murder.”In its Rajesh Exports order, Sebi observed that financial statements of a listed company are the primary documents that investors rely upon to take informed decisions and must be free from any misstatement or misrepresentation — a principle it held Rajesh Exports had breached, with revenues aggregating to 15.15 lakh crore, or 99.80% of total revenue between FY21 and FY25, found to be falsely stated.

ET Intelligence Group: A better than expected growth in corporate profits for the March 2026 quarter has prompted analysts to upgrade the earnings estimates of majority of the NSE 500 companies, according to the data from Bloomberg. For a sample of 335 companies where analysts have predicted earnings in each of the past five quarters, 304 or four out of every five companies reported earnings upgrades at the end of the March 2026 quarter, the highest since the March 2025 quarter when the number of upgrades was 307.

In the previous quarter, 118 companies had received a positive earnings revision. In addition, the quantum of earnings revision was greater for more companies this time around. As many as 241 companies received earnings revision of 10% or more compared with seven a quarter ago and 83 in the previous year’s March quarter.

India Inc delivered a multi-quarter high net profit growth for the March quarter aided by non-operating components. ET had earlier reported that the aggregate profit for 2,956 companies grew by 25.5%, the highest in at least nine quarters. Revenue grew by 10.8%, marking a second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. The upbeat performance has prompted analysts to undertake earnings upgrades.

Banking and finance, capital goods, healthcare and power were among prominent sectors to receive upgrades. Additionally, though the information technology sector (IT) was battered due to rising clout of artificial intelligence driven solutions, each of the 28 sector companies in the sample showed an earnings upgrade after the latest March quarter results. Cheaper valuations compared with historical averages, strong order pipeline, and a depreciating rupee against major currencies that improves sales realisations of exporters have helped analysts raise earnings forecasts.

Among the companies, IndusInd Bank, Eternal (earlier Zomato), and Tata Motors PV reported over five times increase in their one-year forward earnings estimates. On the other hand, analysts reduced estimates for the three state owned oil marketing companies including Indian Oil Corp (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL), and Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) by 71-75% citing the impact of West Asian geopolitical crisis on the marketing margins.