Infosys (NSE: INFY) (NYSE: INFY) shares are up 1% or so on the Indian exchanges today. As a piece of happenstance Rishi Sunak is the British Prime Minister and his wife, Akshata Murty, is the daughter of the founder of Infosys. As a result she has a 1% (OK, 0.92^) shareholding in Infosys the company. Infosys has a market capitalisation of around $70 billion (OK, $69 billion today) so that means that Murty just made $70 billion times 1% times 1% - $7 million (OK, $69b times 1% times 0,92% - $6.3 million) on here shares on the day. Which is an interesting little bit of trivia but not much more than that.
For Infosys is also just about level on 5 days, down nearly 10% (a $70 million loss!) on 30 days and 30% down on 12 months. We should not read too much into the changes in Ms. Murty's fortune based upon a 1% movement in one day. Unless, of course, we're great fans of that newly idiotic taxation system being proposed, where the rich have to pay income tax upon unrealised gains. Which would mean that Ms. Murty owes lots of tax today but gets a truly vast tax refund for the year. Nonsense is the best way to describe that proposed taxation system therefore.
Infosys share price from NASDAQ
As to the 1% move in the Infosys price itself there's no particular nor specific news to explain it. The next set of results are another two weeks and more away (April 13th) and it's a bit early to be getting antsy about those. Other than that there just isn't anything company specific to report. So, we should go with the idea that this price move is simply because Infosys is a large cap, large cap stocks often do move with more general market sentiment rather than for corporate specific reasons. Well, obviously they do - large caps are, by definition, the majority of the market after all. As and when those corporate results do arrive we might well have something interesting to say about the company itself. But for the moment it's likely to track, roughly enough, the whole market.
