Happy Friday. The story running under almost everything today is energy prices, and how they are quietly reshaping forecasts, currencies and corporate results even for readers nowhere near the Gulf. It is worth thirty seconds to see how it connects.
In today's newsletter: two top forecasters cutting India's growth outlook for the same reason, Iran's retaliation spreading to three more Gulf countries, and TCS opening earnings season with a surprisingly strong quarter.
Closing levels · 9 July 2026
Sensex 76,741.82 UP 0.31% |
Nifty 50 23,962.80 UP 0.34% |
USD/INR 95.55 DOWN 59 paise |
Brent Crude $78.59 UP 0.7% |
Equities shrugged off the Gulf escalation for a second day, but the rupee did not. It slid to a fresh low as oil held above $78 a barrel, and that gap between calm stocks and a nervous currency is worth watching into the weekend.
Two top forecasters just cut India's growth outlook, and both blame the same thing
The Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund trimmed their India growth forecasts this week, and neither one is being subtle about why. The ADB cut its FY27 estimate to 6.6%, down from 6.9% projected in April.
The IMF's own number now stands at 6.4%, and both institutions point to the same drag: elevated oil and transport costs eating into household budgets just as private demand was starting to firm up.
The ADB also raised its inflation forecast for the year to 5.2%, up from 4.5% in April, citing costlier oil and food alongside a weaker rupee. In plain terms, the war in the Gulf has stopped being a headline that stays in the Gulf. It is now showing up directly in the growth number that decides how much India can spend, hire and lend over the next nine months.
This forecast cut did not happen in a vacuum. It landed the same week Iran's retaliation against US strikes spread to three more Gulf countries, which is exactly the kind of shock that shows up first in oil prices, then in the rupee, and only later in growth numbers like this one.
Buried in the same ADB release: its FY28 forecast was left unchanged at 7.3%, still higher than the IMF's own FY28 number. Both institutions are treating this as a temporary energy shock to absorb, not a structural slowdown to worry about.
Iran's retaliation hits three more Gulf countries as the ceasefire falls apart
A second straight night of US strikes on Iran was followed by a retaliation that went well beyond Iranian soil. Iran's military launched drone and missile attacks on US-linked sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, hitting a fuel storage facility, an air defence battery and a satellite site.
Kuwait's defence ministry said it intercepted most of the incoming fire, and separately, Jordan shot down eight missiles fired toward its own airspace, a sign of how far the conflict has spread beyond its original combatants. The interim ceasefire that briefly held earlier this week is now effectively dead.
For India, the immediate read-through is the one already showing up in this morning's markets: an oil price that will not settle down, and a rupee that has to absorb it. Four Gulf economies now directly touched by the fighting also means four more places where nearly nine million Indian expatriates and India's energy contracts sit exposed.
TCS opens earnings season with the number Indian IT badly needed
Indian IT stocks have lost close to half their value from 2024 peaks on fears that AI will hollow out the outsourcing model, so the sector needed its biggest company to open earnings season on a good note. TCS delivered a 14% rise in revenue to ₹72,275 crore for the June quarter, with net profit up 5% to ₹13,349 crore.
More striking than the headline numbers was the order book. TCS signed $9.5 billion in new deals, including a marquee AI transformation contract with SKF, and said its AI business is now running at a $2.6 billion annualised revenue pace. The company also declared an interim dividend of ₹12 a share.
This is the first hard data point in a story that has so far been mostly analyst speculation. Infosys, HCLTech and Wipro report through the rest of the month, and TCS just raised the bar for how convincingly they need to show that AI is a business they are winning from, not losing to.
Breaking.exe
Meta's AI image backlash. Meta's new Muse Image tool lets anyone remix another user's public Instagram photos into AI-generated content, and it is drawing criticism for not notifying people when their own images are used this way. |
Meta starts charging for AI. Meta Superintelligence Labs opened a public preview of Muse Spark 1.1, its first AI model developers will have to pay to access, a notable shift for a company that built its AI reputation on giving models away for free. |
Microsoft's AI bug hunter. Microsoft said it is now using an AI system called MDASH to hunt for security flaws across the entire Windows codebase, a change that means more frequent patches, not a sign that Windows has gotten less secure. |
Pangaea Revisited
Britain's next PM takes shape. Nominations formally opened for Labour's leadership race, and Andy Burnham has already locked in support from over 80% of Labour MPs, putting him on a clear path to succeed Keir Starmer as prime minister. |
Balochistan violence escalates. Pakistan's security forces said they killed 54 militants after coordinated attacks left 42 soldiers, police and civilians dead, with Islamabad again accusing India of backing the insurgency, a claim New Delhi has consistently rejected. |
A monster storm bears down. Typhoon Bavi is on track to be the largest storm to hit Taiwan since 1987, with authorities warning of up to 900mm of rain before it makes landfall on the Fujian-Zhejiang coast this weekend. |
Also, Also, Also
Series lost in England. England sealed the five-match T20I series 3-0 with a win in Bristol, their first ever series win over India in the format, with one dead-rubber game still to play. |
New on streaming. Pati Patni Aur Woh Do, starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan, premieres today alongside a crowded Friday slate of new Hindi and regional releases. |
Mercedes' best-ever run. Mercedes-Benz India posted its highest-ever first-half sales, with electric vehicles doubling their share of the mix and AMG performance models up 50%. |