📉 Short selling

Good morning. Monsoon season is upon us - drenching fields, flooding streets, and keeping both farmers and forecast apps on high alert. Enjoy 🌧️ ☕️ 

Ruchirr Sharma & Shatakshi Sharmaa  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 📉 Short selling

• 🤖 Zuckerberg goes all-in on AI

• Bite-sized summaries

  • 📊 Retail inflation lowest in 6 years

  • 🧑‍🏭 India’s job boom moves to small cities

• 🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

MARKETS

🇮🇳 India

• The Indian stock market closed mixed, with major indices closing lower amid widespread selling. IT and financial stocks led the losses, while realty and media sectors showed some resilience. Broader markets outperformed, but overall sentiment remained cautious due to persistent global trade tensions, foreign fund outflows, and uncertainty over tariffs and earnings.

🌍️ International

• US markets closed modestly higher, with the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all posting gains despite ongoing concerns over new tariff threats and trade tensions. Real estate, consumer discretionary, and industrials led sector gains, while health care and consumer staples lagged. Investors remained watchful as global trade developments continued to influence sentiment.

FINANCIAL MARKETS

📉 Short selling

India’s stock market has a long-only bias - and that’s becoming a problem.

Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath is sounding the alarm on the lack of short selling in Indian equities.

His concern? Without an easy, scalable way to bet against stocks, market prices aren't telling the full truth.

Let’s break it down:

• Short selling lets investors profit when stocks fall.

• But in India, borrowing stocks to short them is still a clunky, mostly offline process.

• While futures and options exist, they cover just 224 stocks - leaving most of the market off-limits. Add to that monthly expiries and rollover costs, and you’ve got a system tilted heavily toward optimists.

The result? Distorted prices, poor accountability, and a market that isn’t as efficient as it could be. Kamath likens short sellers to janitors - unpopular but essential for cleaning up market garbage.

Zerodha, like other brokers, technically offers stock lending and borrowing (SLB), but even they require a phone call. Kamath hopes to take it online by year-end, but industry-wide reform is still needed.

The broader implication: In a fast-growing market like India’s, deeper participation and better price discovery are critical. Without robust short-selling infrastructure, investors could be flying blind - and bubbles may quietly be forming.

If India wants world-class capital markets, it can’t afford to ignore the other side of the trade.

Read more: Economic Times

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

🤖 Zuckerberg goes all-in on AI

Mark Zuckerberg is going big - really big - on AI.

On Monday, the Meta CEO announced that the company will pour hundreds of billions of dollars into building massive AI data centers, part of a bold push toward creating superintelligent machines that can outthink humans at most tasks.

This isn't just a side project:

• Meta has restructured its entire AI division under a new banner, Superintelligence Labs, and is building a global footprint of energy-guzzling data centers - each potentially larger than anything the world’s seen before.

• The first of these, Prometheus, is expected to go live in 2026. Another, Hyperion, could eventually scale up to 5 gigawatts.

To put that in perspective: a single gigawatt can power a million homes. Meta wants multiple of those, all focused on training AI.

Backing this spend-fest? Meta’s still-mighty ad business. Zuckerberg emphasized that the company has the cash to fund the moonshot, even as investors raise eyebrows over the unclear payoff timeline.

Meanwhile, Meta has been in full talent-hunt mode - nabbing top AI minds like Alexandr Wang (Scale AI) and Nat Friedman (ex-GitHub) to lead Superintelligence Labs. It's also acquired a chunk of Wang and Friedman’s fund via a tender offer.

Meta’s bet is simple: whoever builds the best brains wins the future. With OpenAI and Google racing ahead, Zuckerberg just stepped on the gas - hard.

Read more: Economic Times

GENERAL OVERVIEW

🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

📊 Retail inflation lowest in 6 years - India’s retail inflation dropped to 2.10% in June 2025, its lowest in over six years, driven by falling food prices and favorable base effects. This is the fifth consecutive month inflation stayed below the RBI’s 4% target. Food inflation turned negative at -1.06%, with sharp drops in vegetable, pulse, and cereal prices. Core inflation remained mild, and economists expect FY26 inflation to undershoot RBI’s 3.7% forecast. The data follows a recent repo rate cut, but the RBI is expected to hold rates steady for now, monitoring global risks and supply-side challenges. Easing inflation raises hopes of further monetary policy support.

🧑‍🏭 India’s job boom moves to small cities - India’s job market is seeing a major shift, with Tier 2 and 3 cities like Udaipur, Vizag, Indore, and Mysuru outpacing metros in hiring. Strong infrastructure, remote work, and cost advantages are fueling growth across sectors—IT, BFSI, manufacturing, and retail. Job openings in smaller cities jumped over 40%, double that of metros. Companies like IBM, Infosys, and HDFC are tapping local talent and enabling reverse migration. Global firms are also expanding to these cities, drawn by skilled workers and lower costs. As digital infrastructure improves, small cities are becoming the new talent hubs driving India’s decentralised economic growth.

HEADLINES

🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

What’s happening in India (and around the world 🌍️)

• Ola Electric doubles down on rare earth-free motors to sidestep China curbs.

• Elon Musk's xAI announces suite of AI models for US government.

• Bengaluru auto rickshaw fares to be hiked from August 1.

• Trump reiterates claim that he stopped conflict between India and Pakistan.

• India narrows mobile internet speed gap with US, China.

CULTURE

🍿 Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment

• India vs England Test cricket series - 3rd test summary:

  • England beat India by 22 runs.

• First look at HBO's Harry Potter series revealed 🧙‍♂️