Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: It looked, for the first hour, like a rout. The Sensex gapped down more than 600 points at Monday’s open and sank to an intraday low of 76,857.43 as the Hormuz scare and firmer crude unsettled sentiment. By the closing bell it had turned the day around entirely, settling 47 points higher at 77,616.40 — a recovery of roughly 759 points off the low, and a small but telling gain. The Nifty 50 ended at 24,211. It was a wobble, not a rout, and the market’s shock absorbers did their job.
The steadying force was information technology, helped by a weaker rupee that flatters exporters’ earnings. Shares in the sector led the rebound after Tata Consultancy Services opened the June-quarter results season on a firm note, with TCS, HCLTech and Tech Mahindra among the day’s biggest gainers. A late-afternoon data release added the day’s second headline: retail inflation for June came in at about 4.4%, up from 3.93% in May and above the Reserve Bank of India’s 4% target for the first time in some sixteen months.
When a market falls 600 points at the open and closes higher by the bell, the story is resilience — a risk-premium wobble absorbed, not a trend reversed.
At a Glance
Sensex close: 77,616.40, up 47 pts (+0.06%)
Intraday low: 76,857.43 — recovered ~759 pts
Nifty 50: 24,211 (+0.02%); IT led the bid
June CPI: ~4.4% (May 3.93%) — first above 4% since Jan 2025
The inflation tick is best read by its composition. The move was led by food and by the pass-through of May’s fuel-price revisions rather than by demand: core inflation, the demand-sensitive gauge that strips out food and fuel, is seen holding below target. That makes June’s number a supply-side story — exactly the kind of pressure the RBI’s framework is designed to look through — even as an uneven monsoon and the fresh crude spike bear watching in the months ahead.
The durable point for the long-term saver is that India’s market case still rests on fundamentals — sector-leading growth, near-target inflation and a deepening base of domestic investors — rather than on any single stormy morning. Volatility driven by events abroad is the price of admission; breadth, quality and patience remain the reply, and Monday’s close was a quiet demonstration of all three.
