Seven Sessions Down, Then a Rescue Nobody Was Watching For — The US Treasury Changed a Bond-Buyback Schedule and India’s Longest Losing Streak Since September 2025 Ended the Next Morning; Nifty −0.47% to 24,252, Sensex −0.60% to 77,541

Key Points This Week

• 1
  THE WEEK WAS A SEVEN-SESSION SLIDE AND A TWO-SESSION RESCUE. The Nifty 50 closed at 24,252.00, down 0.47% (−114.00 points) from the verified prior close of 24,366.00, and the Sensex at 77,540.83, down 0.60% (−468.42 points) from 78,009.25 — a second straight down week. Every session reconciles: Monday 24,287.65 (−78.35), Tuesday 24,154.90 (−132.75), Wednesday 24,078.30 (−76.60), Thursday 24,231.85 (+153.55) and Friday 24,252.00 (+20.15), summing exactly to −114.00; on the Sensex, −281.09, −492.70, −325.78, +628.04 and +3.11 sum exactly to −468.42. By Wednesday’s close the Nifty had fallen for seven consecutive sessions — its longest losing streak since September 2025 — surrendering 2.1% from its 10 August close, with the Sensex 1,099 points below where it began the week. Thursday’s rebound (+153.55 on the Nifty, +628.04 on the Sensex, its best session in weeks) and a flat Friday erased four-fifths of it. The Bank Nifty rose 0.47% to 57,761.95 and the Fin Nifty 0.18% to 26,261.00 — banks finished an equity down-week higher.
• 2
  THE THING THAT TURNED THE WEEK WAS A US BOND-BUYBACK SCHEDULE. On 19 August the US Treasury confirmed that outstanding public debt had passed $40 trillion for the first time, having doubled in a decade and arrived months earlier than forecast; the 30-year Treasury yield touched a 19-year high above 5.3% on Tuesday, its highest since 2007, and equity markets everywhere sold off in sympathy. Then the Treasury did something that was on no calendar: it announced it would at least double the size of its buybacks of longer-dated government debt, raising the per-operation maximum from $2 billion to at least $4 billion in the 10–20 and 20–30 year sectors. Yields fell, risk assets turned, and Asia opened higher the following morning. That is the entire explanation for Thursday’s 628-point Sensex rebound. Wall Street still finished the week lower — the S&P 500 fell 1.43% to 7,674.37, the Nasdaq Composite 2.05% to 26,180.46 and the Dow Jones 0.85% to 53,277.01, each reconciling exactly against the closes published here a week ago, despite a strong Friday (Dow +517.81). India, down 0.47%, outperformed all three. Treasury yields ended at 4.73% on the ten-year and 5.27% on the thirty-year.
• 3
  THE RBI’S MINUTES WERE THE HAWKISH PART OF A DOVISH DECISION. On Wednesday 19 August the Reserve Bank published the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting held 3–5 August — the one at which the repo rate was left unchanged at 5.25% with a neutral stance, and to which the Nifty responded by moving 9.75 points. The minutes were considerably sharper than the decision. Members warned that persistent headline or core inflation could force a policy recalibration despite resilient growth, and Deputy Governor Poonam Gupta recorded that no further easing is possible from here and that a case for a rate hike could emerge during 2026–27. The projections behind that view matter more than the language: retail inflation is expected to average 5% across FY27, running at 4.7% in the second quarter, peaking at 5.9% in the third and easing to 5.5% in the fourth, while the MPC nudged its FY27 real GDP growth forecast up to 6.7% from 6.6%. India’s ten-year government bond yield ended the week at a two-month high. The next MPC meets 5–7 October.
• 4
  THE SECTOR SPLIT WAS UNUSUALLY CLEAN, AND THE BROADER MARKET WON AGAIN. Metals and realty each rose roughly 1.9% on the week, media 1.4% and private banks 1.0%, while the damage concentrated in IT and FMCG, both down about 2%, and PSU banks fell 1.3% — technology punished by the rise in US long-bond yields, staples sold to fund the rebound. Among Nifty constituents the biggest weekly gains were HDFC Life (+3.54%), Eternal (+2.98%) and Kotak Mahindra Bank (+2.98%); the biggest falls were Tata Motors Passenger (−4.96%), HCL Technologies (−4.23%) and Infosys (−4.12%). Below the headline index the picture was better still: the Nifty Midcap 150 finished flat while the Smallcap 250 and Microcap 250 both rose about 0.7%. Year to date the Microcap 250 is up roughly 16% while the Nifty 50 is down about 7% — a gap of some 23 percentage points between the index everyone quotes and the corner of the market almost nobody does. Sectors on which our sources disagreed, including auto and pharma, are deliberately not quoted.
• 5
  OIL ROSE AGAIN ON A SENTENCE, AND PRECIOUS METALS HAD THEIR BEST WEEK IN MONTHS. On Tuesday 18 August President Trump said no talks were under way or scheduled with Tehran and that he had told his envoys to stop their conversations — a reversal of the optimism that had pulled Brent toward $82 at the start of the month — and Brent rose to roughly $92 by Wednesday, finishing near $93 for a weekly gain of about 7%, corroborated by MCX crude’s 7.13% rise to ₹8,305 a barrel. On the same day the United Arab Emirates suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran, a hard turn from a state that has long been Tehran’s most important commercial back door. Precious metals did better still and for the opposite reason: a sliding dollar and $40 trillion of US debt sent gold to a three-month high near $4,660 and silver above $70 for the first time since mid-June, each up around 5%. On the MCX, gold rose 5.31% to ₹1,59,802 per 10 g and silver 5.12% to ₹2,45,458 per kg — both reconciling exactly against the levels published here last Saturday. The rupee was quiet near ₹95.74 against ₹95.64 a week earlier.
• 6
  DOMESTIC MONEY DID THE HEAVY LIFTING, AND THE FEAR GAUGE DID NOTHING AT ALL. On Friday 21 August foreign institutions sold ₹542.71 Cr of Indian shares in the cash segment while domestic institutions bought ₹2,124.14 Cr — very nearly four rupees of domestic buying for every rupee of foreign selling, a ratio repeated across most sessions this year and underwritten in large part by monthly SIP flows now approaching ₹32,000 crore. India VIX eased to 11.20 from 11.30 through a seven-session losing streak, which is a market that is not frightened so much as unbothered. As in recent weeks a verified five-day FII/DII total was not available and is therefore not published, and an August month-to-date FPI figure is omitted because our sources conflicted on it. In the primary market, Milky Mist Dairy Food listed on 18 August and Shiprocket on 19 August, both reported to have opened well above issue price, while Tempsens Instruments opened its mainboard offer on 20 August; listing-day gains came from a single source and are not quoted. Bitcoin rose about 22% to roughly $77,230 from $62,837 on the same Treasury news, its best week in at least two years, with some $4 billion of short positions liquidated over two days.
• 7
  SOMEBODY ALLEGEDLY TRIED TO RIG THE CLOSING PRICE — AND THE SYSTEM CAUGHT IT IN SIX DAYS. Three weeks ago this commentary reported that India’s Closing Auction Session went live on 3 August, so the closing price of every F&O-eligible stock, and therefore the level at which a fund’s net asset value is struck, is now set by a 20-minute auction from 3:15 PM. The obvious question was whether a short, concentrated window would prove easier to push around than a full trading session. On 19 August SEBI issued an interim order barring Copthall Mauritius Investment, a unit of JPMorgan Chase, and Mansi Share and Stock Broking from the securities market and impounding roughly ₹3.67 crore of alleged unlawful gains, finding that on 13 August — a Sensex weekly expiry day — the two entities placed large, aggressive and subsequently cancelled orders that moved the Sensex Indicative Equilibrium Price by 362.02 points in two seconds, 132.67 points in twelve and 405.08 points in twenty-eight, while holding index options expiring the same afternoon. Copthall alone accounted for 86.6% of the gross buy value in Sensex constituents during the auction, on gross purchases of ₹191.29 crore. The allegations are prima facie and remain to be adjudicated. Separately, at AMFI’s 31st Annual General Meeting on 21 August, SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey noted that industry assets have grown from about ₹15 lakh crore in July 2016 to ₹86 lakh crore in July 2026 and set investor outcomes as the regulator’s next priority, while AMFI revised the procedure for claiming units after a unit holder’s death to make transmission simpler for nominees.