Transcription
A very good morning, Baga Sir. For the 13th consecutive day, America is continuing its attacks on Iran. What are your thoughts, as we are moving towards the weekend? Could something big happen? Yes, Swati Ji, and you very correctly predicted yesterday that the dollar-brand would cross. It happened yesterday itself. So, it is quite bad news for the world's economies. The brand is at 100, and we are also seeing its biggest impact on the Indian economy. We are also seeing it on Indian markets. Overall, what is happening is that approximately 25% of the world's oil is now in crisis because the Strait of Hormuz was already closed. Now, rebels have also set fire to two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, so the oil coming from there is also likely to stop for a while. And thirdly, the Black Sea port in Russia on the Caspian Sea, from where Kazakh oil was coming, has also been closed for the fourth day. About 1.6 million barrels were evacuated from there daily, which has stopped because Ukraine attacked two tankers five days ago, so there is a shortage of oil. Secondly, yesterday we again saw an AI sell-off. We saw a decline in the market capitalization of Tesla and Google's parent Alphabet by approximately $500 billion, and the Nasdaq went down heavily by 2.5%, by 550 points. So, we also saw weakness yesterday in the AI momentum that was driving global markets. And thirdly, a very important thing is, what is Trump doing? Trump has again given a very big warning to Iran yesterday that a massive attack is coming on Iran. Secondly, he said that for any ships or tankers that Iran damages, compensation will be recovered from the money that America has withheld from Iran. Thirdly, we see Marco Rubio attacking Iran quite a lot these days. So, he again said that Iran is not ready for peace talks, and we are seeing that JD Vance, who is seen as being in favor of peace, is silent these days, and through Marco Rubio, Trump is verbally attacking Iran. And one more thing that came out yesterday was that Trump's tariffs were ending today. The special 10% tariffs imposed for 150 days were supposed to end today. In contrast, Trump has now imposed 12.5% tariffs on 60 countries. The good thing is that on India, it is 10%, so India has comparatively lower tariffs at 10%, but globally, 12.5% tariffs have been imposed. The European Central Bank, as expected, held rates but said that inflation is increasing. So, from this, it appears that there is a possibility of a 25 basis point rate hike by the European Central Bank in the September meeting, which comes after the summer holidays. Yes, Swati Ji, we will thank Ajay Bagga Sir once again for speaking with us.