Business News at 09:30 am on 19th October 2023

Let’s begin – The benchmark domestic indices settled in the negative territory on Wednesday. The NSE Nifty 50 fell 140.40 points or 0.71% to settle at 19,671.10, while the BSE Sensex shed as much as 551.07 points to 65,877.02. Midcaps stocks were the leading laggards among the broader indices. The Bank Nifty index shed as much as 520.80 points or 1.17 to settle at 43,888.70. Among the other sectoral indices, Banking, Financial Services, Realty, and IT stocks faced sharp corrections, while Pharma and Media added gains. The volatility index settled up 2.82%.

Up next – US President Joe Biden touched down in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the Ben Gurion Airport to receive the US President. The visit comes amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. President Biden expressed his solidarity with Israel as he embraced Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog on the tarmac. A large security contingent was present at the airport. The leaders spoke briefly at on the tarmac before departing in a convoy. Biden’s visit comes a day after 500 people were killed in a blast at a hospital in Gaza city. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to X expressing his anguish over the attack on Gaza hospital.

Moving on – Indian Railways is conducting intensive ticket checking across all its zones to deter ticketless or irregular travel in trains. The move aims at enhancing the overall travel experience and ensuring compliance with ticketing regulations. It will also curb ticketless and irregular travel in order to provide comfortable travel and better services to all ticket-carrying rail users. In this context, Central Railway deserves special mention. The zonal railway has launched an intensive ticket checking in all its Suburban, Mail, Express, Passenger and Special trains across the five divisions – Mumbai, Bhusawal, Nagpur, Solapur and Pune. The Mumbai Division has earned Rs 57.37 crore so far in the current fiscal through this initiative.

In another development – The capital spending of 13 major state governments is expected to display a surge of 29% on a year-on-year basis to Rs 6.2 trillion in FY2024 from Rs 4.8 trillion in FY2023 while modestly missing the FY2-24 Budget Estimate of Rs 6.7 trillion, said ICRA. With revenues likely to trail the budgeted targets, ICRA added, the revenue and fiscal deficits of the sample set are estimated at Rs 2.1 trillion and Rs 8.3 trillion, respectively, in FY2024. This exceeded the budgeted of Rs 1.4 trillion and Rs 7.7 trillion respectively. Moreover, the leverage level of the sample states is estimated to rise to 30% of the Gross State Domestic Product in FY2024 from 28.9% of GSDP in FY2023.

Meanwhile – Microsoft in a new study has found that OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model is more trustworthy than its predecessor, GPT-3.5, but it is also more vulnerable to jailbreaking and bias. The research discusses the use of Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models, particularly GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, in sensitive applications such as healthcare and finance. The study highlights that while these models have shown significant capabilities, there are concerns about their trustworthiness. The study focuses on evaluating the trustworthiness of these models from various aspects, including toxicity, stereotype bias, adversarial robustness, privacy, machine ethics, fairness, and more. It points out that GPT-4, while generally more trustworthy in standard benchmarks, may be more vulnerable when subjected to certain manipulations or misleading instructions.

In other news – Shares of L&T Technology Services declined 4 per cent on Wednesday after the company lowered its revenue growth guidance for the current fiscal. The stock fell 4 per cent to Rs 4,429.15 on the BSE. At the NSE, it dropped 3.97 per cent to Rs 4,430. L&T Technology Services on Tuesday posted a 5 per cent increase in September quarter net profit at Rs 315.4 crore but lowered its revenue growth guidance for the current fiscal. The engineering services company had reported a net profit of Rs 300 crore in the year-ago period. Its revenue grew 4.6 per cent to Rs 2,386.5 crore from the year-ago period’s Rs 2,281.7 crore. The same stood at Rs 2,301.4 crore in the quarter-ago period.

Lastly – X, formerly known as Twitter, will start charging users in New Zealand and the Philippines $1 (Rs 84) a year. The company is trying out a new subscription method called “Not a Bot” for people in New Zealand and the Philippines to use their service. This is not for existing users; it’s only for new users who sign up. The company says that this test is to make the platform better by reducing spam, fake accounts, and automated bots that cause trouble. To do this, X is asking new users to pay a small fee when they create an account. For people who already use the platform, nothing will change for them. This test is only for new users in those two countries.