News Roundup: Nifty's losing streak is now the longest since 2001, as RBI eases bank rules and TCS buys Best Buy's India unit

Duration versus depth — two different ways a decline can be "bad". The current eight-week losing streak is the longest in duration since 2001, but at an 8.7% decline, it's shallower than every other comparable streak this century — less than half the fall of the 2008 financial crisis (-22.1% over seven weeks) or the 2020 pandemic crash (-33.3% over seven weeks). That combination matters: a long, shallow decline usually reflects a grinding accumulation of separate worries (oil, global bond yields, a weak monsoon, FII selling) rather than one acute shock forcing a sharp repricing. It doesn't make the experience of sitting through eight red weeks any more pleasant, but it is a meaningfully different kind of market stress than 2008 or 2020 investors lived through.

• What's actually driving it, per today's coverage: FII selling tied to elevated global bond yields (the US 10-year near 5.3% makes dollar assets more attractive), crude oil volatility (Brent near $98-99, pressuring India's import bill), a rupee that's crossed 96/USD, and India's own 10-year yield rising to 7.20% — its highest since April 2024.

• The post-streak statistic is informative, not predictive: Historical data showing ~11% average returns a month after similar streaks, and ~39% over the following year, is a real pattern worth knowing — but it's an average across very different underlying situations (2001's dot-com unwind, 2008's credit crisis, 2020's pandemic shock), and analysts are explicit that it's not a mechanical signal to buy. Past patterns are context, never a guarantee.

• The RBI's October 5-7 meeting is now a genuine swing event: After four straight unchanged meetings holding the repo rate at 5.25% with a neutral stance, today's coverage frames the upcoming decision as a live question rather than a formality — several analysts (SBI Research, EY) have flagged a real chance of a 25-basis-point hike to 5.50% on persistent inflation concerns, tied to a weak monsoon's effect on food prices and elevated crude oil costs.

• RBI eases bank-shareholding rules for exactly the institutions that run mutual funds: Effective immediately (notified October 1), SEBI-registered mutual funds, PFRDA-registered pension funds and IRDAI-registered insurers can now get one-time approval for subsequent bank-share acquisitions up to 10%, instead of needing fresh RBI approval each time their stake dips below 5% and is rebuilt. This directly affects how institutional money — including mutual fund houses — can manage bank-sector holdings going forward.

• A look back at an earlier RBI move: banks' FX trading losses from the spring: Separately, today's reporting surfaced that Indian banks faced nearly $500 million in foreign-exchange trading losses in the first half of 2026, after the RBI's March directive capped banks' net open currency positions at $100 million, forcing a rapid unwind by April 10. Banks have since recovered roughly $400 million of that as positions normalised — a reminder that regulatory tightening, even when well-intentioned, can have real short-term costs for the institutions it targets. (Sources: Business Standard, CNBC-TV18, Mint)

• TCS takes over Best Buy's India technology centre: TCS is acquiring 100% of BBY Services India LLP — Best Buy's roughly 450-person Bengaluru global capability centre — for a nominal ₹1 lakh, tied to a larger ₹2,000 crore multi-year technology services agreement. TCS plans to develop the unit into an AI-native capability centre, merging the team's retail-sector expertise with TCS's own AI and engineering capabilities.

• Accenture's results offer a modestly encouraging signal for Indian IT: Accenture's fiscal Q4 revenue came in at $18.7 billion, beating its own guidance, and the company projected 3-6% growth for FY27 — up from the 2-5% range it had guided for the year just completed. Since Accenture is a close global peer and bellwether for the same IT-services demand environment Indian firms (TCS, Infosys, HCLTech) operate in, stronger guidance here is a reasonable, if not conclusive, positive signal ahead of Indian IT's own Q2 earnings season — where large-cap firms are otherwise expected to post their weakest growth in three years, with midcaps seen outperforming.

• Kotak Mahindra Bank — early analyst reaction to the new CEO: Following Wednesday's announcement that the RBI approved Anup Kumar Saha as Kotak Mahindra Bank's next MD & CEO, Jefferies reportedly sees another 10% upside in the stock, framing growth, deposits and faster decision-making as what await the incoming CEO — a constructive early read on the leadership transition this edition flagged earlier this week.

• Bajaj Finance announces a large capital raise: Bajaj Finance's board approved an ₹11,700 crore fundraise via QIP (qualified institutional placement), alongside a ₹5,800 crore warrant issue to parent Bajaj Finserv — a significant capital-raising move from one of India's largest NBFCs.

• A counterpoint worth keeping in view: record IPO/equity fundraising despite the slump: Even with the secondary market's eight-week slide, Indian companies raised a record $25 billion in equity in H1 — a reminder that primary-market capital-raising activity and secondary-market index performance don't always move together, and that corporate India's ability to raise growth capital hasn't shut down alongside the Nifty's decline. (Sources: Business Standard, Mint, Deccan Herald, CNBC-TV18)

• French bond risk premiums at their highest since 2011: France's 10-year bond risk premium — the extra yield investors demand over safer debt — surged to levels last seen in late 2011, during the eurozone debt crisis. Combined with the US 10-year's 24-year-high yield, this week's global bond pressure looks genuinely synchronized across major markets, not isolated to any one country.

• Asian shares fell as US jobs data looms: Asian markets traded lower today as investors awaited US employment data that will shape expectations for the Federal Reserve's next move, with Treasury yields already at multi-decade highs adding to the cautious mood.

• Gold heads for a second weekly fall: Gold prices are on track for a second consecutive weekly decline as the same US jobs data and Fed rate-path uncertainty that's weighing on equities is also affecting the traditional safe-haven trade — a reminder that "flight to safety" doesn't automatically mean every traditionally defensive asset moves the same way at the same time.

• India's driest monsoon in a decade adds a domestic inflation thread: Separate reporting this week highlighted India's driest monsoon in roughly a decade, threatening crop yields, food prices and rural spending — directly feeding the inflation concerns now cited as part of the case for a possible RBI rate hike next week.

• Anthropic's reported IPO plans draw attention: Reports today suggest AI company Anthropic's IPO could come as soon as November, at a valuation reportedly around $2 trillion — a figure drawing considerable scrutiny given the scale, and a useful data point for anyone tracking how richly the AI infrastructure buildout is being valued globally, the same theme that helped lift Indian IT stocks earlier this week. (Sources: Economic Times, CNBC-TV18, Mint)

• The monthly figure confirms the pattern this edition has tracked daily: September's ₹35,860 crore net FII outflow is the monthly total of exactly the daily selling this edition reported session by session through the month — useful now as a single, final number for anyone assessing the month as a whole rather than day by day.

• No new daily flow data today: With NSE and BSE both closed, there's no new FII/DII cash-segment print for October 2 — the next fresh daily flow figure will cover Monday's session, reporting Tuesday.