The government has relaxed some rules allowing farmers to pay for seeds with old cash, while RBI issued new guidelines for people to withdraw upto Rs. 2.5L for wedding expenses. Withdrawing additional money for weddings however, will require jumping through several hoops, including furnishing a wedding card, advance bills, names of people to whom money is being paid, and signed statements from vendors receiving that they lack bank accounts.

Asian stock markets including the Sensex are seeing a rally today, although the length of the recovery is still uncertain with signs that institutional investors are in a wait-and-watch mode until Trump announces his economic team. Trump had made a statement on Youtube, announcing among other things that the US would 'investigate abuses of work visas' - such a move would affect Indian IT companies like TCS and Infosys, which rely on H1B visas to send Indian workers onsite temporarily for US projects.   

An investigation by India's IT department has potentially uncovered a Rs. 38,000 crore penny stocks scam, where trading in penny stocks of 84 BSE listed companies were used to launder black money. The brokers involved were posting fake capital gains for their clients, allowing black money to be documented as legitimate earnings.  

Stock in spotlight: Cairn India has seen steady gains over the last three months, and with a rising Technical Score at 71+ is on the verge of moving into bullish territory. 

Photo of the day: Professor Kevin Warwick has implanted a chip in his arm that allows him to control a bionic hand, using his nervous system. The Guardian/David Vintiner