The 2,000-Point Crash That Never Happened — Five Minutes Inside India’s New Closing Auction, and a Week in Which Everything That Moved Your Money Was Decided in America; Nifty −0.31% to 24,176, Sensex −0.36% to 77,265

The Nifty 50 fell 0.31% to 24,175.65, down 76.35 points from the previous Friday’s 24,252.00, and the Sensex lost 0.36% to 77,264.51 — a third consecutive down week, and the shallowest of the three, which in sequence read −0.83%, −0.47%, −0.31%. Monday drifted, Tuesday rallied 115.50 points, Wednesday and Thursday gave back more than all of it, and Friday recovered 84.80. The week’s defining moment came on Thursday’s monthly expiry and never reached the closing price: at 3:18 PM the Sensex’s indicative equilibrium price inside the new Closing Auction Session fell more than 2,000 points, and by 3:30 PM had recovered nearly all of it. The printed close was 76,933.59, down 539.35 or 0.70% — an ordinary bad Thursday. Since 3 August that 20-minute auction has set the closing price of every derivatives-eligible stock, and therefore the level a fund’s NAV is struck at; the indicative price it broadcasts along the way is an estimate no unit is ever transacted at. Elsewhere the week belonged to America. Nvidia’s $96.2 billion quarter, up 106% year on year, sent Nifty IT up 3.51% on Friday — India’s best sector move of the week — with TCS +4.16% and Infosys +2.99%, while Wall Street posted a fourth straight up week. Then, after Indian markets had shut on Friday, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh used his first Jackson Hole keynote to call inflation too high, and bond markets moved to roughly 50% odds of a September rate hike; gold futures fell 3.25% on the week. MCX crude eased 3.94% to ₹7,978 as Iran and Oman floated a shipping corridor through the still-closed Strait of Hormuz, and the rupee firmed to about ₹95.4. For a third week running the broader market beat the index. India’s June-quarter GDP lands on Monday 31 August.