The Nifty50’s November futures contract traded on the Singapore Exchange were up 0.4 per cent or 69.1 points at 17,916.2 points suggesting that local equities could start the auspicious Muhurat trading session on a positive note.

Experts regard the phenomenon as a form of gambling addiction, noting similarities with Wall Street traders whose investments have spun out of control.

Private lender ICICI Bank seems to be the crowd favourite, recommended by as many as five brokerages out of 12-odd we interviewed. Analysts are banking on its superior growth potential vis-à-vis peers.

The benchmark FTSE 100 index gained 0.3% by 0820 GMT, with miner Glencore, oil major Royal Dutch Shell and telecommunications company BT Group among the best performers.

"GARI has been designed to empower the creator community with content monetisation opportunities. The token is built on Solana - one of the biggest & rapidly growing blockchains globally," the company said in a statement.

The Fed, as widely expected, announced on Wednesday that it would begin reducing its $120 billion in monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $15 billion per month, with a plan to end the purchases altogether in mid-2022.

Market reaction immediately after the announcement was muted, with the dollar falling while U.S. stocks gained. Investors said that may not be sustained long-term.

Srivastava uses a handful of Indian trading apps, including Zerodha and Upstox, and often gets his financial advice from YouTube. The ambitious 20-year-old hopes to build a diverse investment portfolio and then retire by 45.

The hashtag "StockTok" has 1.7 billion views and counting, while "FinTok" (financial TikTok) has more than 500 million. Variations on "investing" rack up millions or even billions of views depending on the language.

The bank posted a 21% fall in third quarter profit and said it expected to report a net loss in the fourth quarter as it writes off its remaining investment bank-related goodwill for a one-off charge of around 1.6 billion Swiss francs.