Daily Market News Update — 15th-16th July 2026

Midnight News Update: 15-16 Jul 2026

The second phase of India Semiconductor Mission (ISM-2.0) is likely to catalyse investments of up to $50 billion into the semiconductor ecosystem in India. In the process, about 3 lakh skilled jobs will also get created. While the outlay is about $14 billion, it is likely to catalyse investments to the tune of 3.0X to 3.5X. The idea is to establish support for fabs, advanced packaging, chip design, R&D, talent development, and domestic chip supply chain. Global semiconductor spends are likely to touch $230 billion by year 2028 on robust demand from high-end artificial intelligence needs.

The IPO of SBI Funds Management got subscribed 2.77X at the end of Day-2 of the IPO. The IPO closes for subscription on 16-July. The ₹9,813 crore IPO has already seen robust participation by anchor investors and the company had also done a pre-IPO placement to institutions ahead of the IPO. The SBI Funds Management IPO is entirely an offer for sale (OFS) with SBI and Amundi selling part of their stake in the AMC. Against the net offer of 12.45 crore equity shares, bids for 34.54 crore shares have already come in. NII led at 6.58X, followed by retail at 1.61X and QIBs 1.50X.

For the first quarter of FY27 ended June 2026, Groww reported 66% higher revenues at ₹1,501 crore, while net profits were higher by 94% yoy at ₹735 crore. The growth was triggered by rapid expansion in the commodity derivatives and margin trading business. Groww is already the biggest stock broker in India in terms of number of clients serviced. In the commodity derivatives segment, Groww has already captured a market share of 29%. MTF already contributes nearly 8% to the revenues of Groww in Q1FY27. Net margins were robust at 47.5% in the first quarter.

SEBI adopted a stricter code of conduct for board members of SEBI. The new code envisages stricter conflict-of-interest norms, curbs on direct stock investments by WTMs, post-retirement restrictions, and enhanced disclosure. The idea is to restore trust in the system. WTMs holding prohibited investments have to either liquidate the investments or freeze them for their tenure at SEBI. They cannot exercise voting rights on such frozen shares. WTMs have to make detailed disclosure of family ties, financial investments, immovable properties, and rental contracts.

For the month ending June 2026, the cash levels of mutual funds fell to a 19-month low. This is a good sign as fund managers are making all attempts to remain fully invested. The cash holdings of MFs stood at ₹1.84 trillion. The apparent easing of war tensions has induced most fund managers to go aggressive in stock picking. Cash holdings as a share of AUM has come down to 4.0%, from a high of 4.9% in December 2025. However, out of the 54 mutual fund AMCs in India, 23 AMCs still increased their cash holdings. Quant MF, Nippon and ICICI Pru increased cash holdings.

RBI has approved the appointment of Rajiv Kumar as the interim chairman of HDFC Bank. The bank was thrown into a mini-crisis after its former chairman, Atanu Chakraborty, resigned citing ethical differences with the board. As a stop-gap arrangement, housing finance veteran, Keki Mistry, was appointed as chairman, who will now be replaced by Rajiv Kumar. He was formerly the Election Commissioner. Keki Mistry will continue to be a non-executive director of HDFC Bank. Rajiv Kumar is an IAS officer of the 1984 batch, and he retired as Finance Secretary in 2020.

As part of its rewired growth strategy, Bharti Airtel will put greater focus on areas like financial services, cloud, and data centres as their next set of growth drivers. Airtel is significantly expanding its digital infrastructure network. Bharti Airtel has already got approval from the RBI to operate as a non-deposit taking NBFC. Among the units of Airtel, NXTRA is building data centre capacity, while Airtel Cloud offers sovereign cloud solutions. Bharti Airtel has already invested close to ₹3.30 trillion to build its digital infrastructure. It is now look at growth engines beyond mobile.

Vedanta group is charting an ambitious expansion plan. Among other plans, Vedanta group will give a $5 billion push to oil & gas exploration. It also plans to double its aluminium capacity in 3 years, boost production of lead & zinc, and enhance its iron & steel production to 15 million MTPA. These plans will reinforce the position of Vedanta group globally as one of the leading producers of multiple commodities. It may be recollected that very recently, Vedanta had split the India business into distinct verticals, and listed each of them as a separate business entity.