Hrkg’s Weblog

This is continuation of the first page with heading “Investing In Stock Market”.

Some other important factors which could affect stock markets are the crude price, the status of other stock markets such as the US markets, European markets or the Asian markets, the status of currency exchange rates etc.

The fluctuation of crude price seems to have reasonable, and drastic at times, impact on stock markets in macro as well as micro levels. A lower crude price means cheaper fuel and thus comparatively cheaper commodities which in turn is a boost to the economy. For countries like India this means a lot as it has to import substantial amount of crude. A lower crude price implies hefty savings in the import bills as well as cheaper commodities in the domestic markets due to lesser transportation or production costs. This is a boon to the overall economic status which in turn is reflected in the stock market sooner or later. In fact, certain stocks are directly related to crude price, specially the stocks of refining or crude exploring companies. A higher crude price seems to have a positive and a negative impact in the stocks of crude refining and the producing companies respectively and vice versa. The movement of crude price is thus an important factor to keep an eye on for traders or investors. Crude prices can be found from newspapers, business TV channels, websites etc.

Some of the weblinks which track movement of crude prices among host of other information are www.oil-price.net, www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/energyprices.html,  www.wtrg.com/daily/crudeoilprice.html etc. Besides getting the latest price one could also track the way crude price has been moving in live charts published by some websites. One may use these information in trading crude also besides having an idea of its impact on the overall market prospects.

The latest status of stock markets of other countries gives important global cues. In the era of globalisation economies of many countries have moderate to major influences on each other. Many economies are closely related to each other due to matters like export, import etc., thus influencing each other in a subtle or obvious ways. Besides, fund managers from other countries may have substantial exposure in the markets of some other countries. Thus economic conditions of the countries highly influence the investment decision making processes and thus the inflows and outflows of money to and from the countries. If most of the world markets are in red in a particular day or over a particular period, the market of a country has good reason to open and be in the red unless some others domestic factors are weighing heavily in favour of it. Hence, keeping an eye on influential markets of the world is relevant. For example the status of the US stock markets like Dow Jones or Nasdaq etc. tend to influence the stock markets of many other countries like India because of the abovementioned reasons. Stock markets of some other countries too give important global cues to the Indian market.

Some of the websites which show the latest status of various world markets are www.en.stockq.org,  www.tdd.lt/slnews/Stock_Exchanges/Stock.Exchanges.html,  www.money.cnn.com/data/world_markets, www.finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=asia etc. etc. All these weblinks would lead one to host of other information too which are relevant to economy and stock market.

The status of currency exchange rates also may have reasonable impact on the stock markets, specially the exchange rate of the currency of a particular country versus the US dollar. For example the status of the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Indian Rupee could have noteworthy impact on the overall economic scenario of India as most of the external monetary dealings including the oil import bills are settled in terms of US dollars. Companies in India which procure plenty of business from other countries like US etc. are very much affected by the exchange rate fluctuations. A stronger rupee means more revenue for these firms and vice versa. Thus a gradually strengthening rupee tends to leave gradual positive impact on the stocks of such companies and weakening rupee tends to erode their values to an extent. Keeping an eye it could pay well in the process of investment, especially in such stocks. Few popular links for this purpose are www.xe.com/ucc,  www.x-rates.com, www.exchangerate.com,  www.finance.yahoo.com/currency?u  etc. etc.