Itc buys 22% of happiest minds & takes its it arm public

Tuesday, 1 September 2026 · pre-open edition · overnight moves, fresh filings & what should matter in today's session

Snapshot · commodities, rates & macro

The big picture: Iran is back in the price of oil, & a 7.8% GDP quarter is the counterweight

• What happened overnight. The US military struck Iranian positions on Larak Island, a small island inside the Strait of Hormuz where, per US Central Command, rocket launchers were being readied to carry sea mines into the waterway; Iran answered with attacks on US bases in Jordan. That was the first direct exchange in about a month, & it landed just as the 60-day ceasefire window expired with no deal. Brent rose 2.7% Monday to close above $90 & is at $91.05 this morning; a tanker leaving Hormuz reported being struck by three projectiles overnight, with no casualties.
• How Wall Street took it. US indices fell but not dramatically: the Dow lost 0.7%, the S&P 500 fell 0.33% to 7,686 & the Nasdaq slipped 0.12%, closing out a winning August. The larger move was in rates: hawkish remarks from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to ~4.70% & markets now discuss a September rate hike. That combination, dearer oil plus dearer money, is what pushed gold roughly $250 off its recent high, because a non-yielding asset suffers when yields rise faster than fear.
• Asia this morning & our open. Nikkei -0.46%, Kospi flat with a negative bias, ASX -0.47%. GIFT Nifty at ~24,189-24,200, about 50-60 points below fair value, signals a modestly lower open. Remember Monday's close: Sensex 76,957 (-0.40%), Nifty 24,080 (-0.39%), though midcaps (+0.24%) & Nifty Bank (+0.92%) rose; mid & smallcaps have now logged a fifth straight monthly gain.
• The Adani optics, explained. Adani Enterprises fell 9.8% & Adani Ports 6.7% on Monday, the group losing roughly $15 billion of market value. The driver was largely mechanical, not a fresh disclosure: Monday was the MSCI index-rebalancing date, & India's closing auction (the session after 3.30 pm where index funds transact at one price) carried unusually large volumes, producing sharp swings in the affected names. When a stock falls 10% on a rebalancing day with no news, the honest reading is flow, not fundamentals, though flows this large tell you how crowded index positioning has become.
• The counterweight. India's June-quarter GDP grew 7.8%, released Monday evening, with manufacturing at +9.2% & investment growing 11.9%. A war-quarter economy growing 7.8% is the single strongest argument for buying Indian capex-linked businesses on weakness, & it is directly relevant to EPC & capital-goods names. The tension: strong growth also strengthens the case for a rate hike, which is why the 10-year G-sec is at a 16-month high.
• One structural note on volatility. Nifty's August trading range was the second-narrowest monthly band in three years. NSE's own three-year data shows that after such compressions the monthly band has widened to ~6%, & up to 12%, within the following four months. Quiet markets do not stay quiet; position sizes should assume the band widens from here.

Global & overnight markets: a losing Monday inside a winning August

• US close. Dow 53,185.90 (-374 points, -0.7%), S&P 500 7,686.14 (-0.33%), Nasdaq 26,370.89 (-0.12%). All three still finished August with gains, a turbulent but winning month. US futures are marginally higher this morning (+0.1%), so the selling has not extended.
• The chip story of the morning: Nvidia puts $3.5 billion into MediaTek. Nvidia will invest $3.5 billion in Taiwan's MediaTek via convertible bonds, its largest direct investment outside the US, alongside a partnership in which MediaTek uses Nvidia's NVLink Fusion & new NVHBM technology to design custom AI chips for hyperscalers that stay inside Nvidia's ecosystem. Why it matters: the big cloud companies have been designing in-house chips to escape Nvidia's pricing; this deal pulls the custom-chip route back into Nvidia's orbit. MediaTek's stock hit its 10% daily limit in Taipei this morning. For India there is no direct listed player, but the AI-infrastructure theme (GPU clouds, data centres) gets a sentiment lift, & one Indian company announced its own GPU contract overnight (E2E Networks, below).
• Asia & currencies. Nikkei -0.46%, Kospi flat-to-lower, ASX -0.47%, most of the region absorbing the oil move & the US rate repricing. The rupee, unusually, strengthened 0.36% Monday to 95.15/$; the RBI's forward-book data (below) explains part of the firepower behind that.
• Commodities beyond oil. Copper rose to ~$6.62/lb this morning, up ~45% in a year & near record levels: LME inventories have nearly halved since mid-May, a major Congo mine flooded, & smelters are short of concentrate. Aluminium is ~$3,245/tonne. This is directly relevant to the copper-wire makers leading today's market scans section. Gold ~$4,457/oz & silver ~$66/oz are both off their highs for the rate reasons above.

Macro: the 7.8% quarter, read properly

• The headline & its composition. Real GDP grew 7.8% in April-June (Q1 FY27), against 6.9% in the same quarter last year & 8.6% in the March quarter. Gross value added, which strips out taxes & subsidies & better measures actual activity, grew 8.2%. The strength was in the secondary & tertiary sectors: manufacturing +9.2% (vs 8.3% last year), construction +7.7% (vs 5.2%), services +10%. The soft spots: agriculture +3.6% (vs 4.4%) on a below-normal monsoon, & mining contracted.
• The expenditure side is the more interesting half. Private consumption grew 7.1%, better than last year but below the headline, while investment grew 11.9% against 5.8% a year ago, the only demand component growing faster than GDP for four straight quarters, & capital formation's share of GDP rose to 34.3%. In plain terms: this is an investment-led quarter, not a consumption-led one. That is the single most supportive macro fact for EPC, capital goods & industrial names.
• Why growth held up despite a war quarter. This was the first full quarter after the Iran conflict shut the Strait of Hormuz in late February. Crisil's economists describe the mechanism: the supply shock became a price shock, absorbed by government, producers & consumers, while diversified energy sourcing & inventories eased physical shortages. Corporate revenue data agrees: RBI's study of listed non-financial companies shows sales growth of 19.4% in the quarter, up from 13.9%. On the strength of this, Crisil raised its FY27 GDP forecast to 7.0% from 6.6%.
• The rate consequence, stated plainly. Strong growth plus elevated crude plus a wide gap between producer & consumer prices equals pass-through inflation risk. Newspaper editorials draw the conclusion the bond market has already priced: interest rates may need to RISE in coming months. The India 10-year at 6.95%, a 16-month high, & the US 10-year at 4.70% with rate-hike talk, are the same story on two continents. For equity valuations, dearer money compresses multiples; for NBFCs it raises funding costs; for banks it can help margins.
• The RBI's record forward book. Separately on Monday, RBI data showed its net forward dollar position hit a record $136.77 billion in July, driven by measures attracting overseas deposits. What is a forward book? Commitments to buy or sell dollars at future dates; a large forward position is ammunition the RBI has pre-committed to support the rupee without draining spot reserves. It worked Monday: the rupee firmed to 95.15 even as oil rose. The catch: forwards eventually mature, so this is borrowed stability unless flows improve.
• Due today. August manufacturing PMI (10.30 am), August GST collections (during the day), & monthly auto dispatches. None were out pre-open.