U.S. stocks ended sharply up on Thursday, with the S&P 500 approaching record highs as AI optimism drove gains in Nvidia and other chipmakers. U.S.-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) soared nearly 10% after the world's largest contract semiconductor maker projected 2024 revenue growth of more than 20% on booming demand for high-end chips used in AI applications.

HDFC Bank was the most-owned stock in the Indian mutual funds industry until December. While the stock has been being part of the top 5 holdings of many equity oriented schemes, some schemes have pruned exposure to the stock over the last few months. Twenty-seven schemes, or 6 percent, of the actively managed schemes that held HDFC Bank shares have exited the stock in the last six months.

Top PMS fund manager Saurabh Mukherjea, whose firm Marcellus handles HNI money worth around Rs 10,000 crore, has picked 4 new smallcap stocks in his Little Champs portfolio. Other than that, in his bank-focused Kings of Capital portfolio Home First Finance has been replaced with MAS Financial Services while SKF India is the new stock pick in midcap-heavy Rising Giants portfolio.

BSE and NSE will shift to a disaster recovery site for a live session on January 20. The first session will start at 9:15 AM and end at 10:00 AM. The second session will commence at 11:30 AM and conclude at 12:30 PM. During this special live trading session, all futures contracts will be subject to an operating range of 5%.

The public issue of EPACK Durable is set to open for subscription on January 19. The stock’s grey market premium (GMP) has jumped to 13 percent from 6 percent in the last two days. Several analysts have assigned a ‘subscribe’ rating to the issue owing to reasonable valuation, decent financial performance and dominance in the RAC ODM space.

Canada Proposes New Crypto Rules for Public Investment FundsCanadian securities regulators have proposed new rules aimed at providing greater clarity and risk mitigation measures for public investment funds dealing with crypto assets. The proposed changes to regulations would restrict what public investment funds can do regarding cryptocurrencies and set the standards for holding of crypto assets.

📌Bank of America upgraded Apple to "Buy" and said the stock has upside potential of 23%. 📌The bank believes AI technologies will drive a significant upgrade cycle for the iPhone in 2025 and 2026. 📌"Apple should continue to see upgrade demand from older device owners, especially as AI enabled Apps will require higher processor power."

Shares of IndusInd Bank fell nearly 2% to the day's low of Rs 1,582.40 on Friday following the bank's December quarter earnings which were broadly in line with the Street's expectations. However, slippages were up in the reported quarter which appeared to have displeased investors when the stock resumed trade today.

Fuelled by the government's spending spree, shares of railway companies have been firing on all cylinders for the past year. 10 stocks from the sector have turned multibaggers since last year's Budget on February 1. IRFC, Ircon, Texmaco Rail & Engineering, Oriental Rail Infrastructure, Jupiter Wagons, and Railtel Corporation Of India have tripled investors' money, rising between 209-367%.

Shares of software company Oracle Financial Services Software (OFSS) soared over 27% on Thursday to all-time highs as traders mounted bullish derivative bets after the company's third-quarter results beat expectations. Though the stock may be overbought, analysts remain optimistic about the company's prospects of record deal wins in a global economic environment.

Shares of Shree Marutinandan Tubes Ltd listed at a 46 percent premium after the company's public issue was subscribed over 47 times last week. The stock opened at Rs 200 a share on the BSE SME platform from its issue price of Rs 143 a share. At 10.05am, the stock was trading at Rs 210 on the BSE SME, up 46.85 percent from its issue price.

Shares of Home First Finance Company soared nearly 8 percent in early trade on January 19 to scale a 52-week high of Rs 1,061, a day after it posted strong growth in its Q3 net profit and assets under management (AUMs). The NBFC's net profit for the October-December quarter surged 34.2 percent on-year to Rs 79 crore.

Konstelec Engineers Limited's Rs 28.7-crore initial public offering (IPO) will open for subscription on January 19. Purely a fresh issue, the IPO will close on January 23. Founded in December 1995, the firm offers a range of services including engineering and drawings, procurement, operations and maintenance, project management and construction and commissioning.

Shares of iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) fell 14.2% on Thursday as investors speculated over the implications of an upcoming meeting of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) pending acquisition of the home-robotics specialist. After the regular session closed, however, iRobot stock plummeted another 40% in after-hours trading.

YouTube said in a statement Thursday that it isn’t planning to launch a new app for the Apple Vision Pro, nor will it allow its longstanding iPad application to work on the device — at least, for now. YouTube, like Netflix, is recommending that customers use a web browser if they want to see its content: “YouTube users will be able to use YouTube in Safari on the Vision Pro at launch.”