It gives us immense pleasure to share with you the September edition of our monthly “Charts That Matter” series. Some very interesting charts and observations in this edition.

I have been getting a lot of queries from anxious investors on helicopter money and understandably so. Does it entail that governments and central banks will literally throw bundles of cash from helicopters into the hands of public? Well not exactly.

I am pleased to share the July edition of “Charts That Matter”(CTM) series. As with the earlier editions, I have tried to keep the charts interesting and diverse. A look at the lending pattern of Indian banks throws up a very diverse pattern between private and state-owned banks. While the state-owned banks are cutting down on lending to new projects citing thin capitalization apart from weak demand, they seem to have no problems in deploying find capital towards retail lending. There is no running from the fact that Indian banks are amongst the most thinly capitalized in the world in terms of reported Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio.

I am pleased to share the latest “Charts That Matter” series. The most discussed topic these days is about Indian monsoons – both within and outside the investment community. Skymet & IMD have forecasted strong monsoons this year. At 109% of normal monsoons, are we in for a deluge? After two successive deficient monsoons, we do need a good year. The latest GDP numbers paint a very rosy picture but I believe that the devil is in the details.

This is the 5th edition of the monthly “Charts That Matter” (CTM) series. The CTM series only gets interesting with every subsequent month! This edition I have begun with a chart on how “currency in the hands of public” is surging even in a low inflationary and positive real interest rate environment. This is very counter intuitive.

This is the 5th edition of the monthly “Charts That Matter” series. We are going through dynamic times and such periods of volatility often throw up some very interesting perspectives. For example, take the example of how India stands to benefit from low crude prices. Im pretty sure we all know the benefits. But did you know that India’s inward remittances dipped 7.4% YoY in 3Q FY16 which has been the worst performing quarter since Mar-09? The correlation between crude prices and inward remittances to India is quite strong; actually stronger than I anticipated until I plotted the graph myself.

India’s Finance Minister, Mr. Arun Jaitley presented the 2016-17 Union Budget yesterday where he chose macro stability over short term growth tactics, earning credibility on fiscal discipline and empowering the bottom of the pyramid. The budget clearly outlined the government’s thrust on the rural economy while taxing urban and the top of the pyramid consumption. This is a budget for the masses not the classes! It was about credibility and character, presented amidst heightened global volatility and economic upheaval.

This is the third edition of my monthly ‘charts that matter’ (CTM) series where I have tried to stitch together charts which paint a picture of all that is relevant in the investment world today. With so much happening around, I could not restrict my slides to 5 this time and therefore this edition of CTM is bulkier than the previous two editions. Honestly, I just could not cull any of these charts so finally I decided to include all of them! I hope it makes for a crisp and informative presentation. Would welcome feedback/questions/discussions.

I have tried to stitch a collection of 5-6 well explained charts which in my opinion are the most important charts affecting the global investment world today. The idea behind “Charts That Matter” is to filter macro-economic information and data points and present the most relevant charts. I want the presentation to be interesting but at the same time crisp and non-verbose which is why I have chosen to limit the charts to 5-6 in number. I believe that they sum up almost everything important in the investment world.

This newsletter has my views on the important developments in the investment world in 2015 and the outlook for 2016. Indeed we are in a very dynamic global environment and volatility is abound. One of the most important developments in 2015 was the depletion of global forex reserves held by central banks and asset sales by petro dollars funded sovereign wealth funds.

In the last 15 years, emerging economy central banks have been busy accumulating forex reserves to build a buffer against external shocks after having learnt their lessons in the Asian financial crisis, adding more than $10tn in this period. The swing in global foreign exchange reserves is one key measure of the global liquidity tap flow. However, we are witnessing a reversal of reserve accumulation, something last seen at the height of the global financial crisis for a brief while.

Inflation expectations has played an important role in the monetary policy framework of RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. But this seems to be changing; in its interest rate easing path, RBI has cut policy rates twice on high and rising household inflaitonary expectations including the 50 bps bazooka rate cut which Dr. Rajan delivered in his last monetary policy meeting in September 2015. Is the RBI abandoning inflationary expectations in its monetary policy framework?