Market Pulse — 30 October 2026

Benchmarks

Closing levels, 30 Oct 2026 · Source: NSE / BSE

Sectoral scorecard

NSE sectoral indices, ranked best to worst

Movers

Nifty 50 constituents · NSE last traded prices at the close

Trent was the session's best Nifty 50 performer at +5.44% — the same stock that was the index's worst at -1.79% on 29 October, the day its Q2 numbers came out. Shriram Finance was the weakest. Market-wide breadth is withheld: only one wrap carried a count (hdfcsky: 1,311 advances, 2,862 declines and 170 unchanged, exchange unstated), and the standing rule here is to publish breadth only when two sources agree exactly. Note hdfcsky also quoted Nifty Pharma at +1.8% against the exchange feed's +1.55%; the feed figure is the one in the table above.

Midcap movers

Nifty Midcap 100 constituents

Source: upstox's closing gainers-and-losers piece for 30 October, whose quoted Nifty Midcap 100 close of 57,301.25 matches the exchange feed to the paisa. Percentages only; closing prices were not published alongside the list.

Smallcap movers

Nifty Smallcap 100 constituents

Same source and the same check: upstox's quoted Nifty Smallcap 100 close of 18,463.60 matches the exchange feed. Five of the ten names moved more than 7%, against a 0.51% gain on the Nifty 50 — the spread that defined the session.

Institutional flows

FII/FPI and DII activity in the cash segment

Cash-market figures for 30 Oct 2026, from NSE. Provisional exchange data.

Corporate & macro desk

What moved the tape and what the IR desks were announcing

• IT carried the index on its own — Nifty IT rose 2.32%, the best of the sixteen sectorals. Infosys closed 3.36% higher, HCLTech 1.72%, Tech Mahindra 1.20% and TCS 0.99%, with Wipro and Coforge each up more than 4%. Four sectorals rose, one was flat and eleven fell.
• Sun Pharma's profit fell 36% on a one-time charge, and the stock still rose — Q2 net profit was Rs 1,988.53 crore, down 36.2% year on year on a one-time loss of Rs 1,269 crore, with revenue up 11.9% at Rs 16,198.71 crore. The US FDA approved Ilumya for psoriatic arthritis the same day and the stock closed 0.95% higher. Nifty Pharma touched a record 27,263.95 intraday before closing +1.55%.
• FIIs turned buyers into a narrow tape — Foreign institutions bought Rs 20,564.02 crore and sold Rs 16,965.48 crore for a net Rs 3,598.54 crore, while domestic institutions were net sellers of Rs 817.51 crore — the mirror image of 29 October.
• First-half fiscal deficit at 42.1% of the full-year target — April-September borrowing reached Rs 7.15 trillion against a full-year target of Rs 16.96 trillion, or 4.3% of GDP, government data released on Friday showed. The year-earlier figure was Rs 5.7 trillion. Expenditure was Rs 25.5 trillion against Rs 23 trillion a year earlier.
• October in the books: large caps up, everything else down — The Sensex gained 2.73% over the month and the Nifty 50 1.91%, led by a 17.7% rise in Nifty IT — its strongest month in more than six years. Midcap and smallcap indices fell between 3% and 7%. Foreign portfolio investors sold Rs 45,162 crore over the month on provisional NSE data; domestic institutions bought Rs 62,220 crore.
• Rupee's best month in eight — The rupee closed at 94.95 to the dollar against 95.26 in the previous session, a gain of 31 paise, with Reuters attributing the month's strength to RBI measures to curb dollar demand.
• Crude at a six-month high, and Wall Street's worst day since June — Brent's expiring December contract settled at $117.64, up $2.76, and WTI at $104.12, up $2.12, on fears of escalation in Iran; Brent gained 13.6% over October and WTI 15.2%. After the Indian close, the Nasdaq fell 2.86% and the S&P 500 1.82% on concerns about AI capital spending.

Corporate actions ahead

Dividends, bonuses and splits going ex over the coming sessions · Source: NSE / BSE

Board meetings & results calendar

Scheduled board meetings — the IR calendar for the days ahead

IPOs open now

Issues that were taking bids during the 30 October session. GMP is each issue's last recorded grey-market quote on 30 Oct 2026, taken wholly from ipoji's day-wise history; subscription is as at 5:00 PM IST on 30 Oct.

Final day to bid on 02 Nov: Bombay Coated and Special Steels.

Grey market premium is an unofficial, unregulated indication of sentiment. It is not published by any exchange, is not a forecast of the listing price, and should not be treated as a valuation. GMP above is ipoji's last recorded quote on 30 October for each issue (M.K.Sons at 6:30 PM, after its own 5:00 PM close; Bombay Coated during its bidding window) — the whole column from one source, as the house rule requires. Quotes read on 31 October and 1 November were higher for Bombay Coated at Rs 8 and are not figures about this session. Subscription: M.K.Sons closed at 5.09x overall (QIB 1.84x, NII 14.12x, retail 3.08x); Bombay Coated stood at 3.78x on day two (QIB 6.56x, NII 1.80x, retail 3.02x). Both issues carried anchor books — M.K.Sons raised Rs 82.62 crore from nine institutions at Rs 162 for 51,00,000 shares (30% of the issue), Bombay Coated Rs 54.10 crore from six at Rs 82. Note NSE's own all-upcoming-issues feed reports Bombay Coated's issueSize as 1,65,33,012 shares, which reconciles with neither the 2,23,24,024-share total nor that total net of the anchor portion; the figure above is the one that reconciles against the price band and the Rs 183.06 crore issue value. SFC Environmental Technologies closed on 29 October and is therefore not shown; its allotment was finalised on the session date and it lists on 3 November. BLS Polymers and EAAA India Alternatives had also already closed. Vedant Poly Fabs, an NSE SME issue, opens on 2 November. A blank cell means not sourced, not nil.

Economic calendar

Data releases and policy events in the days ahead

Commodities, currency & global

Bullion and the rupee are for 30 October. The US index cards are Friday 30 October's own close — Wall Street shuts at about 02:00 IST, so for once the cards cover the same calendar session as the Indian close rather than the night before. Brent is the December contract, which expired on Friday; the January contract settled at $113.43, so the headline Brent quote drops by roughly four dollars next week on the roll alone, not on any change in the market. Gold and silver are retail reference rates from goodreturns that vary by city and exclude GST and other levies; the gold series reconciles exactly against this edition's 29 October figures, while the silver series moves in round Rs 5,000 steps and no second aggregator carried a dated 30 October row, so treat the silver card as indicative.