Market Foundations

1. What you'll learn and why it matters

Before you draw a single trendline or read a balance sheet, you need to know what you are actually buying, who stands on the other side of your order, what happens to your money between clicking "Buy" and seeing shares in your demat account, and what the whole thing costs. This chapter is the plumbing. It is not glamorous, but every later chapter assumes it.

By the end you will be able to:

• Explain why idle cash loses value, and compare asset classes using real 10-year Indian data (Nifty, a Nifty ETF, a gold ETF and a fixed deposit).
• Calculate absolute return, annualised return and CAGR, and know which one to use.
• Name every institution involved in a trade (SEBI, NSE/BSE, NSE Clearing/ICCL, NSDL/CDSL, your broker and DP) and say what each one does.
• Follow an IPO from DRHP to listing day, using two real 2025 IPOs that listed very differently.
• Explain how the Nifty 50 and Bank Nifty are built, and estimate how much a heavyweight stock moves the index.
• Place the right order type (limit, SL, SL-M, GTT, AMO) with the right product type (CNC, MIS, NRML, MTF), and know when a stop-loss can fail.
• Read a quote and the market-depth window, and know the current session timings and circuit-limit rules.
• Handle dividends, bonuses, splits, rights, buybacks and demergers, including how they distort price data.
• Work out the full cost of a delivery trade at current (October 2026) charges.

2. Why invest: inflation, compounding, asset classes

2.1 Idle money shrinks

Prices of goods and services rise over time. This is inflation. India's CPI inflation was 4.82% year-on-year in August 2026 (MoSPI release of 14 Sep 2026). If your cash earns nothing, a basket that costs ₹100 today costs about ₹104.82 next year, so your rupee buys less. Varsity's opening example makes the point with a salaried person who saves part of every month's salary for 20 years but keeps it as cash: because expenses keep rising every year, the cash pile runs out only a few years into retirement, while the same savings invested at a reasonable rate of return grow several times larger.

The logic is simple. Your savings must grow faster than prices just to stand still. What actually matters is the real return: what you earn after inflation and tax.

2.2 Compounding: why the rate matters so much

Compounding means you earn returns on past returns. The value after \(n\) years at rate \(r\) is:

The exponent is why a few percentage points matter so much over long periods. ₹1 lakh left for 20 years becomes ₹2,19,112 at 4%, ₹3,52,365 at 6.5%, ₹6,72,750 at 10%, ₹9,64,629 at 12% and ₹16,36,654 at 15%. Moving from 10% to 15% does not add half as much again. It more than doubles the result. A handy shortcut is the rule of 72: money doubles in roughly \(72 / r\) years (at 10%, about 7.2 years).

2.3 Asset classes

An asset class is a group of investments with similar risk and return behaviour. Varsity lists four main ones for Indian investors:

Here is what actually happened to ₹1 lakh put into each over the last decade, using the course data. NIFTYBEES and GOLDBEES are exchange-traded funds (ETFs): funds that trade on the exchange like a share and simply track the Nifty 50 or the price of gold, so they are the easiest way for an ordinary investor to own the asset class.

3. Measuring returns: absolute, annualised, CAGR

Varsity's rule: use absolute return for holding periods of up to a year, and CAGR to compare anything longer.

Why CAGR? An absolute return of 28% means very different things over one year and over five. CAGR answers the question: "What constant yearly rate would have turned my start value into my end value?" That makes investments of different lengths comparable. It is a smoothed figure. The real path was bumpy, and CAGR hides that (Section 9 shows the bumps).

Rule of 72 check: the Nifty first closed above double its Oct 2016 level (17,519.45) on 15 Sep 2021, about 4.95 years later. That implies roughly 15% a year over that stretch (72 / 4.95 ≈ 14.5), much faster than its full-decade 9.99%.

4. The market ecosystem: SEBI, exchanges, clearing, depositories, brokers

A stock market is an electronic marketplace where buyers and sellers of securities meet. India has two main national stock exchanges, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE (formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange). A third, the Metropolitan Stock Exchange (MSE), has negligible equity volume, and the old regional exchanges such as Bangalore, Madras and Calcutta have shut down. This course uses NSE data throughout. You cannot trade on an exchange directly. You go through a registered stockbroker, and a group of regulated intermediaries works behind the scenes on every trade.

In your framework: the course framework's framework.data.load_ohlc(symbol) reads the same NSE price history used in this chapter. update_ohlc(symbols) refreshes it.

5. Who trades: retail, FPIs, DIIs, and where you fit

Every trade has a buyer and a seller with opposite views. In Varsity's words, "different opinions make a market". The main participant groups:

• Domestic retail investors: individuals like you, including HNIs (high-net-worth individuals).
• NRIs/OCIs: Indians living abroad, investing under separate rules.
• Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs): mutual funds (fed by SIPs, the fixed monthly investments millions of savers make), insurance companies, banks, pension funds (EPFO, NPS).
• Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs, often still called FIIs): foreign funds, pension funds and sovereign funds.
• Promoters: founders, parent companies or the government that control a company. They are owners rather than traders, but their buying, selling and pledging moves prices.

FPIs and DIIs move huge sums, so their net flows are watched daily (NSE publishes provisional FII/DII cash-market figures every evening). Recent reality: FPIs were net sellers of roughly ₹1.66 lakh crore of Indian equities in calendar 2025 and pulled out about ₹1.92 lakh crore more in Jan–Apr 2026, while DIIs, powered by SIP flows, put a record of over ₹6 lakh crore into equities in 2025 (Business Standard, citing NSDL/BSE data). That domestic tug-of-war is a big part of why the market fell only moderately rather than crashing.

5.1 Traders vs investors: where do you fit?

6. The primary market: how companies list (IPOs)

6.1 From idea to IPO

Varsity tells the story of a T-shirt start-up to show why companies go public. The funding ladder usually looks like this:

1. Seed / angel round. The founder, friends or angel investors put in, say, ₹5 crore. Shares are issued at a face value (e.g. ₹10 each, so 50 lakh shares). Face value is just an accounting unit, not what the share is worth.
2. Series A (venture capital). The business has revenue and needs to expand. VCs invest at a higher valuation. The founder's percentage is diluted, but the stake is worth more.
3. Series B, bank debt, internal accruals. Capex is funded from a mix of retained profits, new equity and loans. Debt brings interest costs.
4. Private equity (Series C+). Larger cheques, mature business, PE nominee on the board.
5. IPO. When the capital need is large, early investors want an exit, or the company wants visibility and liquid ESOPs, it offers shares to the public for the first time: the Initial Public Offering.

The IPO happens in the primary market, where the company or its existing shareholders sell to new investors. Once listed, shares trade between investors in the secondary market, and the company receives nothing from those trades.

6.2 The IPO process

1. Appoint merchant bankers (Book Running Lead Managers, BRLMs). They do due diligence, draft documents, help set the price band, market the issue (roadshows) and coordinate registrars, bankers and advertisers.
2. File the DRHP (Draft Red Herring Prospectus) with SEBI. It covers the business, financials, risks, management, objects of the issue (what the money is for) and who is selling.
3. SEBI observations, then the RHP with a price band (e.g. ₹1,080–1,140) and lot size.
4. Anchor investors (large institutions) are allotted shares a day before the issue opens, with a lock-in.
5. Book building: for usually 3 working days, investors bid within the band. Retail investors apply through ASBA (Application Supported by Blocked Amount, now usually via a UPI mandate). Money is blocked, not debited, until allotment.
6. Price discovery: the final issue price is usually set at the top of the band when demand is strong. Retail investors can bid at the "cut-off" price.
7. Allotment and listing in T+3 working days after the issue closes (SEBI's timeline since Dec 2023). Oversubscribed retail categories are allotted by lottery, at least one lot per successful applicant.
8. Listing day: a special pre-open call auction (9:00–9:45 am order entry, then matching) discovers the opening price, and normal trading starts at 10:00 am.

Investor categories in a typical book-built issue by a profitable company: QIBs (qualified institutional buyers) up to 50%, NIIs (non-institutional, above ₹2 lakh) at least 15%, and Retail Individual Investors (RIIs, up to ₹2 lakh per application) at least 35%. Jargon: oversubscribed 50× = bids for 50 times the shares on offer. Undersubscribed = less demand than supply. If subscription falls below the minimum, the issue fails and money is unblocked. Green-shoe = an option to allot about 15% extra if demand is strong. Fixed-price issue = a single price instead of a band. Fresh issue = new shares, so money goes to the company. Offer for Sale (OFS) = existing holders sell, so money goes to them and the company gets nothing.

7. The secondary market: what moves prices

After listing, a stock's price moves because buyers and sellers keep updating their expectations about the company's future cash flows, and because of plain demand and supply. Varsity's Infosys example: good news (a new CEO) means buyers accept whatever sellers ask, and the price ticks up 3,000 → 3,002 → 3,006 → 3,011 → 3,016. Industry-wide bad news (IT budgets cut) then hits all IT stocks together. Large, widely held companies move every day even without news. Thinly traded small companies can sit still.

7.1 Events every participant should track

8. Indices: Nifty 50, Bank Nifty and free-float weighting

8.1 What an index is and what it's for

India has thousands of listed companies. An index tracks a selected basket to summarise "how the market did", much as checking a few key junctions tells you how a city's traffic is moving. The Nifty 50 (NSE, 50 large liquid stocks, maintained by NSE Indices Ltd) and the BSE Sensex (30 stocks) are the headline indices. Nifty Bank (Bank Nifty) tracks banks, and Nifty IT tracks IT companies. Varsity lists four uses:

• Information: a quick read on overall sentiment.
• Benchmarking: a 20% return sounds great until the index did 30%. You should judge every strategy in this course against a benchmark.
• Trading: taking a view on the whole market through index futures and options (Chapters 9–10).
• Hedging: protecting a portfolio with index derivatives (Chapter 10).

8.2 How it is built: free-float market capitalisation

Each stock's weight is proportional to its free-float market cap: the market value of only those shares that are actually available to trade. Promoter, government and other strategic holdings are excluded through an Investible Weight Factor (IWF).

The logic: an index should reflect what investors can actually buy. A company whose government holds 61% has far fewer shares in public hands than its total market cap suggests. Weighting by free float also lets index funds hold the index without becoming dominant owners of thinly floated stocks. The base value (1,000 for the Nifty 50, base date 3 Nov 1995) only sets the starting scale, and the divisor is adjusted for constituent changes and corporate actions so that the index doesn't jump artificially.

8.3 Eligibility, rebalancing and caps

• Nifty 50 eligibility (NSE methodology): the stock must be in the F&O segment; its average impact cost (the extra price a large order pays, Section 13) must be ≤ 0.50% for 90% of observations over six months for a ₹10 crore basket (a liquidity test); it needs at least one month of listing history; selection is by free-float market cap.
• Rebalancing: semi-annual, using six-month average data up to cut-offs of 31 Jan and 31 Jul. Changes take effect on the last working day of March and September, with four weeks' notice.
• Concentration caps: after a SEBI framework for non-benchmark indices with derivatives, Nifty Bank was expanded from 12 to 14 stocks and phased (Dec 2025 – Mar 2026) to cap the top stock at 20% and the top three at 45%. On 30 Sep 2026 HDFC Bank's weight was 18.61% and the top three totalled 42.99%, both inside the caps.

9. Benchmark returns: 10 years of Nifty, honestly measured

A drawdown is the percentage fall from the highest value reached so far. It is how losses actually feel while you live through them. Market slang builds on it: a bull market is a sustained rise, and a bear market is commonly defined as a fall of 20% or more from the peak. A 10–20% fall is usually called a correction, which is where the Nifty sits today.

10. How a trade flows: order to T+1 settlement

1. Order entry: you log in to the terminal (user ID + password + TOTP, a time-based one-time code from an authenticator app; SEBI requires two-factor login) and place an order: symbol, exchange, quantity, price/order type, product type.
2. Broker RMS check: the broker verifies funds or margin (for a buy) or holdings (for a delivery sell) before forwarding. Insufficient funds means a rejection.
3. Exchange matching: the exchange's order book matches buy and sell orders by price-time priority: the best price first, and among equal prices, the earliest order first. A match creates a trade. You may be filled by one seller or by many.
4. Contract note: by the end of T day the broker emails a contract note listing every trade and every charge. Keep it, because it is your legal record for tax.
5. Clearing: the clearing corporation becomes the counterparty to both sides (novation), nets everyone's obligations, and guarantees settlement.
6. Settlement on T+1: buyers' funds and sellers' shares are paid in, and shares and funds are paid out. A Monday buy shows in your demat on Tuesday. India moved fully to T+1 in January 2023, one of the first major markets to do so. An optional T+0 cycle also exists for a limited set of stocks through participating brokers, but T+1 remains the standard.

Selling from demat: you must authorise the debit, either through a CDSL/NSDL eDIS (TPIN/OTP) step or a standing DDPI (which replaced the old POA). Shares are earmarked (blocked) in your own demat rather than moved to the broker's pool account, a SEBI safeguard in force since Nov 2022. You can also sell on Tuesday shares bought on Monday, before they are credited to your demat. This is called BTST (buy today, sell tomorrow), and it carries a small risk: if your seller fails to deliver, you cannot deliver to your buyer either, and the exchange auctions or closes out the shortfall at a penalty price.

11. Order types: market, limit, SL, SL-M, GTT, AMO

Other validity and quantity options: DAY (default: cancelled at close if unfilled), IOC (immediate-or-cancel), disclosed quantity (shows only part of a large order), and iceberg orders (the broker slices a big order). Trigger rule for a long position's SL: the trigger is at or above the limit price, e.g. trigger 820, limit 819.

12. Product types: CNC, MIS, NRML, MTF; long and short

The product type tells your broker how long you intend to hold the position and how it is funded. Names below are Zerodha's. Other brokers use similar labels ("Delivery", "Intraday", "Carry forward", "Pay later").

12.1 Long, short and square-off

Varsity's analogy: selling a phone you have not bought yet at ₹16,500 and buying it later at ₹14,000 is a short trade. In the Indian cash segment, a short must be squared off the same day (MIS). If you cannot deliver the shares, the exchange auctions them and you pay a penalty. To carry a short position overnight, use stock or index futures (NRML) or options. Squaring off a long is not "going short". It simply closes the position.

13. Reading a quote and market depth

The market depth window shows the best five (or, on some platforms, twenty) bids (buyers' prices and quantities) and offers/asks (sellers'). The gap between the best offer and the best bid is the spread. A market buy takes offers from the top of the ladder downward and pays more as it eats deeper. This is impact cost, the same liquidity measure NSE uses for index eligibility.

14. Market hours, pre-open, closing auction, circuit limits

14.1 NSE equity sessions (as of Oct 2026)

14.2 Circuit limits (price bands)

• Stock price bands: stocks outside F&O have fixed daily bands of 2%, 5%, 10% or 20% from the previous close, set by the exchange based on volatility and surveillance status. When a stock hits its upper circuit, there are only buyers (no sellers at the limit), and vice versa for a lower circuit. You may not be able to exit at all that day.
• Surveillance and trade-for-trade stocks: the exchange moves risky or heavily speculated stocks into surveillance frameworks (ASM, GSM) or the trade-for-trade segment (series BE/BZ instead of EQ). These often get tighter bands, higher margins and compulsory delivery: every buy must be paid for in full and every sell delivered, with no intraday netting. The stock's quote page on NSE shows its series and any surveillance flag. Check it before buying any small cap.
• F&O stocks have no fixed circuit. They use dynamic price bands (initially about 10%) that the exchange flexes in steps if the band is hit and trading conditions justify it.
• Market-wide circuit breakers (MWCB) trigger on a 10%, 15% or 20% move in the Nifty 50 or Sensex from the previous close. The halt covers all equity and equity-derivative trading on every exchange, and trading restarts with a 15-minute pre-open call auction:

15. Corporate actions: dividends, bonus, splits, rights, buybacks, demergers

A corporate action is a board- and shareholder-approved event that changes what you hold or receive. The key dates are the same for most of them:

• Announcement / declaration date: the board announces (final dividends need AGM approval).
• Record date: the company takes a snapshot of its register of members.
• Ex-date: the first day the stock trades without the benefit. Under T+1, ex-date = record date, so you must own the shares at the close of the trading day before it. Before the ex-date the stock is "cum" the benefit.
• Payment / allotment date: cash or shares arrive.

15.1 Dividends

A dividend is a share of profit (or reserves) paid in cash per share. It can be interim (during the year), final (after the year) or special (one-off). It is quoted per share or as a % of face value. Logic of the price drop: cash leaves the company on the ex-date, so the company is worth that much less, and the price adjusts down by roughly the dividend. You are no richer or poorer on the day: price falls, cash arrives. (Dividends are taxed at your slab rate, so a dividend can even leave you slightly worse off after tax. See Chapter 13.)

15.2 Bonus issues

A bonus issue gives free extra shares out of the company's reserves, in a ratio such as 1:1 (one new for each held) or 1:2 (one new for every two held). Face value is unchanged, the share count rises, and the price falls proportionally. Your holding's value is unchanged. Companies do this to make the per-share price more accessible.

15.3 Stock splits

A split divides each share into several, reducing the face value (the key difference from a bonus). The economics are identical to a bonus: more shares at a lower price and the same total value.

15.4 Rights issues

A rights issue sells new shares only to existing holders, in proportion to their holdings and usually at a discount. Unlike a bonus, you pay money, so subscribe only if you would buy the stock anyway at that price. The rights entitlement (RE) itself trades for a while and can be sold.

15.5 Buybacks

In a buyback the company buys its own shares, usually at a premium through a tender offer, and extinguishes them. Fewer shares means a larger share of earnings for each remaining share. It also signals that management thinks the stock is cheap (judge that yourself). Holders of shares worth ≤ ₹2 lakh on the record date get a reserved "small shareholder" quota with a much better acceptance ratio. Tax (rules changed twice recently): from 1 Oct 2024 to 31 Mar 2026 the whole buyback amount was taxed as dividend income at your slab rate, with your cost of the shares treated as a capital loss. Budget 2026 reversed this from 1 Apr 2026: for ordinary shareholders only the gain (buyback price minus your cost) is taxed, as a capital gain, while promoters pay an additional tax that takes their effective rate to roughly 22% (companies) or 30% (individuals). See Chapter 13.

15.6 Demergers, and price drops that aren't losses

Varsity's five corporate actions don't include it, but you will meet demergers, where a company spins off a business into a separately listed company. On the record date the parent's price drops by roughly the value of the spun-off business, and you receive shares of the new company.

16. Market-cap categories and reading a stock page

SEBI's mutual-fund categorisation uses AMFI's half-yearly ranking of all listed companies by average market cap: large cap = ranks 1–100, mid cap = 101–250, small cap = 251 and below. In the July 2026 list the large-cap cut-off was about ₹1,06,300 crore and the mid-cap cut-off about ₹33,500 crore (as summarised by Mata Securities from the AMFI list). Upgrades to large cap included BSE, Hitachi Energy India, Indian Bank and Groww's parent Billionbrains Garage Ventures. Smaller companies tend to be more volatile, less liquid and less researched. That gives more opportunity, more risk and wider spreads.

17. What a delivery trade really costs (current charges)

Varsity's settlement chapter shows the charges on a ₹1 lakh Reliance purchase. Rates have changed since it was written, so here are the charges verified for October 2026 (Zerodha charges page; NSE circular effective 1 Mar 2026; Budget 2026 for F&O STT):

In your framework: framework.costs.equity_delivery_charges(buy_value, sell_value) and framework.costs.capital_gains_tax implement exactly this arithmetic, and the backtester (Chapter 12) deducts them from every simulated trade.

18. Developing a point of view: the road ahead

Varsity closes Module 1 with the key idea: success needs a point of view (POV) on a stock or index (bullish or bearish), formed by your own analysis, and then the right instrument to express it.

• Fundamental analysis (Ch 6–8): "Revenue +25%, profit +15%, guidance positive, valuation reasonable → bullish for the long term → buy delivery."
• Technical analysis (Ch 2–5): "Bullish engulfing at support with momentum turning up → bullish for the next 1–3 weeks → swing buy with a stop."
• Quantitative analysis (Ch 12): "Statistically stretched, likely to mean-revert" or "the trend rule says long".
• Outside views (TV and social media tips): Varsity's advice, which this course shares, is not to act on these.

Instrument choice follows the POV: a 1-year bullish view suits a delivery buy; a short-term directional view on the index can use futures (with strict sizing, Ch 9); a view where you want limited downside can use options (Ch 10). Every instrument sits under the same risk rules (Ch 11) and is tested before use (Ch 12).

19. Try it yourself (Python)

These snippets need a copy of the course repository and Python with pandas and numpy (setup steps are in its framework/README.md). Run them from the repository's root folder, for example with .venv/bin/python, because the file paths are relative to that folder. All figures in this chapter come from course/scripts/ch01_figures.py.

1. CAGR, drawdown and calendar returns for any index or stock

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("data/ohlc/IDX_NSEI.csv", index_col=0, parse_dates=True)
c = df["Close"]
years = (c.index[-1] - c.index[0]).days / 365.25
cagr = (c.iloc[-1] / c.iloc[0]) ** (1 / years) - 1
dd = c / c.cummax() - 1
print(f"CAGR {cagr:.2%}  max DD {dd.min():.2%} on {dd.idxmin().date()}")
print((c.resample("YE").last().pct_change() * 100).round(2))
# try "IDX_NSEBANK", "HDFCBANK", "TITAN" ...

2. Find every bonus/split and dividend in the data, and check the ex-date move

import pandas as pd
d = pd.read_csv("data/ohlc/ITC.csv", index_col=0, parse_dates=True)
d = d[d["Volume"] > 0]                       # drop vendor holiday rows
d["prev_close"] = d["Close"].shift()
ev = d[(d["Dividends"] > 0) | (d["Stock Splits"] > 0)]
ev = ev.assign(expected_open=ev["prev_close"] - ev["Dividends"])
print(ev[["prev_close", "Dividends", "Stock Splits", "expected_open", "Open", "Close"]].tail(8))

3. Delivery-trade cost calculator (Oct 2026 rates)

def delivery_costs(buy_val, sell_val):
    turn = buy_val + sell_val
    stt, txn, sebi = 0.001 * turn, 0.0000307 * turn, 10 / 1e7 * turn
    gst = 0.18 * (0 + txn + sebi)          # brokerage is 0 for delivery
    stamp, dp = 0.00015 * buy_val, 15.34
    return round(stt + txn + sebi + gst + stamp + dp, 2)

print(delivery_costs(75 * 1212.70, 75 * 1321.70))   # 226.17
print(delivery_costs(5 * 291.70, 5 * 291.70 * 1.05)) # small trade

4. Rebuild the "price you saw on screen" across a split

import pandas as pd
k = pd.read_csv("data/ohlc/KOTAKBANK.csv", index_col=0, parse_dates=True)["Close"]
raw = k.where(k.index >= "2026-01-14", k * 5)   # undo the 5-for-1 adjustment
print(raw.loc["2026-01-09":"2026-01-16"])

20. Checklist, key takeaways, quiz, sources

Practical checklist: before your first trade

• Trading and demat accounts open with a SEBI-registered broker/DP; primary bank linked; nominee added; TOTP 2FA enabled.
• You know your benchmark (Nifty 50 TRI for equity portfolios) and will compare every result with it.
• You know the product type: CNC for swing and investing; no MIS/MTF leverage while you are learning.
• Limit orders for entries in anything less liquid; check market depth and the spread first.
• A stop-loss for every swing trade, with GTT/OCO if it must survive overnight, sized so that a 2–3× gap is survivable.
• Check the corporate-action calendar (results, ex-dates, record dates) for the stock before entering.
• Check whether the stock is in F&O (dynamic bands, closing auction) or has a fixed 2/5/10/20% circuit.
• Compute the round-trip cost with your broker's calculator; keep it well under 0.5% of position value.
• Know your tax status (STCG 20% if held 12 months or less, LTCG 12.5% above ₹1.25 lakh if held more than 12 months) and keep the contract notes.
• Never act on an outside "tip" without your own point of view and a plan for being wrong.

Quiz and exercises

Sources: Zerodha Varsity Module 1: The Need to Invest, Regulators, Financial Intermediaries, The IPO Markets – Part 1, Part 2, The Stock Markets, The Stock Markets Index, Commonly Used Jargons, The Trading Terminal, Clearing and Settlement Process, Five Corporate Actions, Key Events and their Impact, Getting Started, Supplementary: 20 Market Depth, Supplementary: IPO, OFS, FPO. Module 7: Taxation for Investors, Classifying your Market Activity.
Rules and rates (checked 1–2 Oct 2026): Zerodha charges; Zerodha support: market sessions (pre-open from 7 Sep 2026, closing auction from 3 Aug 2026); Zerodha support: GTT validity; Kite Connect docs: market protection; NSE transaction-charge circular effective 1 Mar 2026 (Rs 307/crore cash market, via TeamLease RegTech summary); ClearTax: STT rates after Budget 2026; Value Research: STCG/LTCG FY 2026-27; Business Standard: SEBI Bank Nifty caps; Upstox: market-wide circuit breakers; Business Standard: T+3 IPO listing; Forbes India: RBI policy Aug 2026; CPI August 2026; AMFI categorisation July 2026 (Mata Securities); Business Standard: FPI flows 2025, 2026, DII flows 2025.
Index data: NSE Indices factsheets dated 30 Sep 2026 (Nifty 50, Nifty Bank); Business Today: BSE replaces Wipro.
Corporate actions and IPOs: Chittorgarh: Tata Capital IPO; Upstox: LG Electronics India listing; IPO performance 2026; HDFC Bank bonus; Kotak split; Trent bonus; Zerodha: Tata Motors demerger; Infosys buyback and entitlement ratios; Adani Enterprises rights; CNBC: HDFC Bank chairman resignation.
Price data: course data set data/ohlc/ (NSE via Yahoo Finance, to 30 Sep 2026); extra series fetched with yfinance into data/extra/ (NIFTYBEES, GOLDBEES, BSE, LGEINDIA_ipo, TATACAP_ipo). Fundamentals snapshot: screener.in (fetched 2 Oct 2026). Figures: course/scripts/ch01_figures.py. Educational content only, not investment advice.