Indian equity benchmarks fell for a second straight session on September 29, 2026, with the Sensex closing at 72,529.07 (down 242.65 points) and the Nifty 50 at 22,716.20 (down 64.05 points). The bigger story is the seven-week stretch behind it: the Nifty has now declined for seven consecutive weeks, matching its longest losing streak since the 2020 Covid crash, and is down 5.8%, or about 1,430 points, over that period.
The immediate triggers are crude oil above $107 a barrel, US bond yields at multi-year highs, growing expectations of an RBI rate hike at its October policy meeting, and sustained foreign investor selling. None of this is happening only in India: US and Asian markets have been falling in the same sessions.
Today's numbers
Sensex 72,529.07 (-242.65 points), Nifty 50 22,716.20 (-64.05 points) at the September 29, 2026 close, the second consecutive losing session after Monday's sharper 1.5%-plus fall.
Monday, September 28, was the harder session of the two: the Sensex fell 1.52% to 72,771.72 and the Nifty fell 1.56% to 22,780.25, its lowest close in five months, since early April 2026. Tuesday's decline was smaller in percentage terms, but it kept the index in the red for a second straight day, and the broader market showed similar weakness, with the Nifty MidCap 100 down 0.99% and the Nifty SmallCap 100 down 0.81%.
Seven straight weekly losses, matching the 2020 Covid streak
What makes this decline notable isn't any single day's fall, it's the duration. The Nifty has now closed lower for seven consecutive weeks, a losing streak that matches its longest run since the Covid-19 market crash of March 2020. Across those seven weeks the index has shed 5.8%, or roughly 1,430 points, and it now sits around 12% below its record peak of 26,300, which it reached in September 2024.
What analysts initially called a healthy consolidation after two years of strong post-pandemic gains has stretched into a genuinely extended correction. Markets are "under renewed selling pressure... with the rise in Brent crude remaining a major concern," according to Sachin Gupta, vice-president of research at Choice Broking, who also points to "elevated global bond yields" making dollar-denominated investments more attractive relative to emerging-market equities.
Why the market is falling: the six drivers
No single factor explains this decline on its own. It's the combination of rising input costs (oil), a genuine alternative for global capital (US yields), a domestic policy risk (an RBI hike), and a currency and flows story that all reinforce each other at the same time.
Crude oil and the West Asia standoff
Brent crude futures have climbed above $107 a barrel, with WTI crude past $94, as hopes for a quick resolution to the US-Iran standoff continue to fade. The conflict, now in its seventh month, has kept oil markets on edge; the US president has denied reports of offering Iran sanctions relief in exchange for nuclear concessions, even as officials from both countries held separate talks with mediators. Continued disruption risk around the Strait of Hormuz, a critical corridor for global oil shipments, is a major reason prices have stayed elevated rather than easing.
For India specifically, this matters more than for most economies. India imports close to 90% of the crude oil it consumes, so a sustained rise in prices directly widens the trade deficit, adds to the import bill, and feeds into inflation, well beyond just petrol and diesel. Higher fuel costs raise the price of transporting food and goods, push up airline fares, and increase input costs for anything made from petroleum derivatives, plastics, chemicals, paints, tyres, and packaging among them. Companies either absorb that cost, cutting into profit margins, or pass it on to consumers, stoking the inflation the RBI is already watching closely.
US bond yields at multi-year highs
The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note has climbed toward 5%, its highest level since 2007, just before the global financial crisis, and the 30-year Treasury bond has touched 5.48%, its highest since 2004. Rising yields make dollar-denominated government debt a genuinely more attractive, lower-risk return for global investors than putting money into emerging-market equities like India's.
That shift matters directly for Indian markets: when the safer alternative starts paying more, global capital has a real incentive to move out of riskier assets and into US Treasuries, adding to the outflow pressure that oil-driven inflation concerns were already creating.
RBI rate hike expectations for the October MPC meeting
Around 60% of economists polled by Reuters (35 of 61) expect the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee to raise the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50% at its October 5-7, 2026 meeting, which would be the first rate hike since February 2023.
The case for a hike has strengthened alongside the oil price spike: retail inflation accelerated to 4.82% in August 2026, above the RBI's 4% medium-term target for a third consecutive month, driven largely by sharply higher energy and food costs. Rising inflation, the crude oil spike, and rate tightening among other global central banks have together tilted the balance toward a hike at this specific meeting. Economists broadly expect the tightening cycle to be shallow rather than aggressive, a combined 50 to 75 basis points across the October and December meetings, with a slim majority (29 of 53 in the same poll) expecting a further 25 basis point hike in December too.
The rupee at a two-month low
The Indian rupee has weakened past 96 per US dollar, its weakest level in two months, as the continued rise in oil prices heightened concerns about the impact on a net energy-importing economy. A weaker currency compounds the pressure on foreign investors in two ways: it raises the real cost of India's oil imports, and it eats into the dollar-converted returns of any foreign investor holding Indian assets, giving them one more reason to reduce exposure rather than add to it.
Foreign selling vs domestic buying
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) remained net sellers of Indian equities through the latest sessions, offloading shares worth more than Rs 5,353 crore in a single day according to provisional NSE data, and roughly Rs 25,682 crore over the course of September alone. FIIs were net sellers in 15 of the 19 trading sessions so far this month. For the full year, FPIs have sold approximately Rs 2.45 lakh crore, around $30 billion, worth of Indian equities, already well above the Rs 1.66 lakh crore they withdrew during the whole of 2024.
Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) have been the market's real counterweight through this stretch. They have poured roughly $177 billion into Indian equities over the past two years, against about $56 billion pulled out by foreign investors over the same period, a genuine cushion that has kept this correction from being sharper than it already is. When overseas investors have been net sellers, Indian institutions have consistently been net buyers on the other side of those trades.
Which stocks are hit hardest
Seven Nifty 50 companies touched fresh 52-week lows in the latest session: Reliance Industries, Jio Financial, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Consumer Products, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, Hindustan Unilever, and Wipro. Separately, companies more directly exposed to fuel and crude-linked input costs came under their own specific pressure: IndiGo, as investors priced in higher aviation turbine fuel costs, and Asian Paints along with tyre manufacturers, given their reliance on petroleum-based raw materials. Bajaj Finance was among the session's biggest individual losers on the Sensex, down around 2%.
This isn't an India-only story
Dalal Street's weakness is tracking a genuinely global risk-off mood, not a domestic problem in isolation. US markets closed sharply lower in the prior session, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 0.9% and the S&P 500 down around 0.8%. Asian markets moved together with India: Japan's Nikkei dropped more than 1%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng and South Korea's Kospi each declined by close to 1%.
What analysts say happens next
Views on where this goes from here are genuinely split, not uniformly bearish. Motilal Oswal Financial Services argues that the correction since the 2024 peak has made valuations meaningfully more attractive, with large-cap stocks now around 29% cheaper and mid-caps around 27% cheaper than their peaks, and points to continued strong corporate earnings growth, including a robust 7.6% first-quarter GDP print, as reasons the "risk-reward" picture has improved for Indian equities even as the near-term picture stays difficult.
Others are more cautious in the near term. Raamdeo Agrawal, chairman of Motilal Oswal Financial Services, has separately said that "if the currency remains weak, FIIs will not have the confidence to come back," tying any real recovery in foreign flows directly to rupee stability. Sonam Srivastava, founder and fund manager of Wright Research, offered a specific conditional path forward: "If crude prices ease and the rupee holds near current levels, I would expect FPI flows to turn positive again by the December quarter."
What investors are weighing
A seven-week decline like this is exactly the kind of period where a SIP genuinely does its job: buying a fixed rupee amount regularly through both the ups and the downs lowers your average purchase cost compared to only ever investing when the market feels comfortable. If you have a lump sum you were already planning to deploy, a lumpsum calculator can help you see what today's lower entry point could mean for a long enough holding period, though the same swing factors above (oil, yields, the RBI decision) could just as easily mean more downside before any recovery.
None of this is personalised investment advice, and market commentary from named analysts in this article reflects their own views, not a recommendation from Fermor. Any decision to buy, hold, or sell should account for your own financial goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance, not a single article read the day of a market fall.
Frequently Asked Questions
Note: Market levels, yields, and flows change by the minute; the figures here reflect the sessions and sources cited at the time of publication and may no longer be current. Views attributed to named analysts and brokerages are their own opinions, not Fermor's, and nothing here is personalised investment advice. Verify current levels on NSE, BSE, or your own broker before acting on any number in this article.