Good morning listeners,

Welcome to Top of the Morning by Mint, your weekday newscast that brings you five major stories from the world of business. It's Friday, March 29, 2024. My name is Nelson John. Let's get started:

Markets continued to pick up on Thursday. Benchmark indices Nifty and Sensex increased by around 0.90 percent each. Power, auto, and metal stocks led the surge during yesterday's trading session.

Despite yesterday's good news, the markets have been volatile of late. Much of this volatility can be attributed to smallcap stocks, which suffered a crash after the markets regulator warned investors of the possibility of a smallcap bubble. The BSE Smallcap index is flat for the year, and down 4.5% in March. Mint's corporate writer Varun Soo unpacks one of the reasons behind this volatility: offshore funds. After a long investigation, Varun discovered that three men at the helm who were involved in dozens of smallcap stocks. They have been accused by the Enforcement Directorate of operating a "hawala" scam and manipulating stocks. This is an excellent read if you want to understand how smallcap stocks operate.

Thursday was also the last trading day of the financial year for 2024. For the last 12 months, Nifty and Sensex have increased by 31 and 27 percent respectively. Small and midcap stocks increased by more than 65%, despite the recent volatility. Mint’s markets correspondent Dipti Sharma brings you a summary of the equity markets’ performance in the past financial year.

You might have made some gains on a stock, but earlier you still had to wait two working days for the proceeds to be deposited to your account. This changed to one day. Now, you can realise your gains instantly: the markets regulator Sebi has approved same-day settlement on a trial basis. This process is called the T+X system, where X is the number of days taken to process a transaction. A limited number of brokers and a set of 25 stocks are currently following the T+0 system. Sebi is going to assess the results in 3 and 6 months from now, before deciding if a universal rollout is possible. Dipti Sharma explains the T+0 model, and how it might change equity investing forever.

Recently, the Reserve Bank of India asked Federal Bank and South Indian Bank to stop issuing new co-branded credit cards. Usually, these tie-ups are either with retail outlets or fintech companies. Mint's banking correspondent Gopika Gopakumar writes that these partnerships came under the RBI's scanner after it found that banks were sharing their risk assessment models with the companies they tied-up with. These assessments are supposed to be done in-house by the banks, which contain sensitive information about a user’s financial data. The RBI also wants to prevent the rapid rise in credit cards issued — about 99 million such plastic is currently in circulation in India.

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