Good morning. It has been a choppy few weeks for Indian markets, caught between global oil jitters and sudden bursts of relief on the currency front. Away from the trading floor, the courts have been busy too, handing out some consequential rulings for anyone who owns a home or watches the banking system closely.
In today's newsletter: the rupee's best day in months on a massive RBI-engineered forex push, and the Supreme Court's relief for NOIDA homebuyers stuck with their developers' unpaid dues.
Closing levels · 2026-09-03
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Sensex 76,152.86 DOWN 417.49 (0.55%) |
Nifty 50 23,873.45 DOWN 41.00 (0.17%) |
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USD/INR 94.29 RUPEE STRONGER |
Brent Crude $95.25 DOWN 0.40% |
Equities slipped for a fourth straight session as IT and auto stocks dragged, even as the rupee had its best day in months on heavy central bank dollar sales.
The rupee just had its best day in months, and it had nothing to do with the stock market
The rupee surged 67 paise to a two-month high of 94.29 against the dollar on Thursday, its biggest single-day gain since June, as the Reserve Bank of India leaned hard on state-run banks to sell dollars and a wave of foreign currency deposits landed in the banking system.
The trigger was the RBI's FCNR-B window, a scheme that lets non-resident Indians park foreign currency deposits with local banks. It has pulled in more than $136 billion in inflows, giving the central bank the firepower to defend the currency at a moment when elevated crude prices and global bond yields have kept traders nervous. Even so, Sensex and Nifty extended their losing streak to a fourth session, dragged by IT and auto stocks that are more exposed to global demand than to the currency.
A stronger rupee going into the RBI's rate decision in October gives the central bank more room to manoeuvre. A weaker currency makes imported oil costlier and complicates the inflation math right when the Hormuz standoff is already pushing crude higher, so every paise the RBI can defend now is a paise of headroom later.
A currency rally engineered through central bank intervention and deposit schemes is not the same thing as investor confidence. Equities fell on the very day the rupee had its best session in months, a reminder that the two markets are being pulled by different forces right now.
Supreme Court says homebuyers can't pay for a developer's insolvency, or a developer's default
The Supreme Court set aside orders that treated NOIDA's time-extension charges as insolvency resolution costs in two stalled Greater Noida high-rise projects, ruling that homebuyers and the new resolution applicant cannot be made to pay penalties for the original developer's default.
In its order in Alpha Corp Development vs GNIDA, the bench held that authorities like NOIDA cannot recover penal charges for delays they themselves allowed to drag on. The ruling is being read as a template for other stuck Noida and Greater Noida projects, where thousands of homebuyers have waited years for possession while insolvency proceedings against their builders dragged through the courts.
Breaking.exe
ISRO's imaging launch. ISRO's GSLV-F17 rocket successfully placed the EOS-05 earth observation satellite in orbit before dawn, India's first imaging satellite launched from a geosynchronous platform, aimed at sharper disaster warning and agricultural monitoring. |
Apple's September date. Apple confirmed its "Surprise and Shine" event for September 9, the first iPhone launch under new chief executive John Ternus, with a foldable iPhone expected to headline the lineup. |
OpenAI's risky model. OpenAI launched Astra, the first of its models to cross a "critical" cybersecurity capability threshold, an AI system capable of finding and exploiting unknown security flaws without step-by-step human guidance. |
Pangaea Revisited
Nepal flood deaths climb. The confirmed Nepal-Tibet flood deaths crossed 1,100, up from just over 1,000 the day before, with nearly 3,900 people still listed as missing and tens of thousands of rescue personnel still searching the Himalayan border region. |
Iran toll climbs. Donald Trump threatened more strikes on Iran as the death toll from the latest US bombing run climbed to 19, after a strike hit a wedding party in the coastal city of Kuhestak, which Tehran has called a war crime. |
Netanyahu's Gaza claim. In a surprise visit to the front line, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel now controls 60 percent of the Gaza Strip and would not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed. |
Also, Also, Also
NEET-PG plea junked. The Supreme Court dismissed a plea seeking a re-test of NEET-PG 2026 with a cost of ₹25,000, calling out the petitioner's lawyer for a "social media driven" filing after a power outage disrupted the exam for around 2,500 candidates in Jaipur. |
Banks win SARFAESI call. The Supreme Court ruled that banks can invoke the SARFAESI Act to recover loans they acquired from NBFCs, even when the original lender was never covered by the Act, a decision the RBI backed as it clears the way for a bigger secondary market in stressed debt. |
Tamil Nadu's seats returned. The Union government told the Supreme Court it will return all unfilled NEET-SS super-speciality seats to Tamil Nadu, ending a standoff over seats that had been merged into the all-India counselling pool. |