Stock Market LIVE Updates: Hong Kong shares rally at open

Asian shares tracked Wall Street gains on Thursday after the US central bank raised interest rates by 50 basis points but sounded a less hawkish tone than some had feared, lifting investor sentiment and sending the dollar lower.

Hong Kong stocks started Thursday with a healthy advance after the Federal Reserve lifted interest rates but played down any chance of a huge 75 basis-point lift in the near future.

The government will soon make it mandatory for two-wheeler EV manufacturers to undertake stringent quality checks of batteries and the cells in the batteries as well, measures aimed at ensuring safety and restoring confidence in such vehicles.

Home loan rates of the existing borrowers, whose rates are linked with repo rate, will automatically increase by 0.40 percentage points, which will increase their EMIs by around 3.25% if they want to keep their repayment tenure unchanged.

Policyholders of life insurance behemoth LIC rushed in in large numbers to apply for its shares on the first day of the IPO with the Rs 21,000-crore issue subscribed over 67% on Day 1. At close of bidding for the day, the portion reserved for LIC’s policyholders was subscribed 2 times while the Employee portion was also fully subscribed, data from BSE showed.

Nearly 90,000 reassessment notices that were issued by the income tax (I-T) department after April 1, 2021 under the provisions of the unamended section 148 have been held as valid by the Supreme Court (SC).

The sensex slumped by 1,307 points to 55,669 as Dalal street investors were unnerved by the shock mid-policy hike of 40 basis points (100bps = 1 percentage point) in interest rate by the RBI on Wednesday. Rate-sensitive stocks along with Reliance Industries led the slide, BSE data showed.

The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by half a percentage point, the biggest jump in 22 years, and said it would begin trimming its bond holdings next month as a further step in the battle to lower inflation.

In a surprise move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday announced an increase in key interest rates by 40 basis points, the first increase since August 2018 and the sharpest in nearly 11 years, as it shifted gears to tame surging prices.

An interest rate increase was always on the cards after retail inflation jumped to a 17-month high of nearly 7% and wholesale price inflation soared to a four-month high of 14.6% and has stayed in double-digits for 12 months in a row.

Australian shares climbed on Thursday, as miners advanced on strong underlying commodity prices and tech stocks tracked Wall Street higher after the US Federal Reserve delivered a widely expected interest-rate hike. The S&P/ASX 200 index was up 0.6% at 7,348.0, with all sectors except financials trading in positive territory. The benchmark fell 0.2% on Wednesday.

US stocks ended sharply higher on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve delivered a widely expected interest-rate hike, and the S&P 500 recorded its biggest one-day percentage gain in nearly a year.