Rupee Breaks 96 as 190 Stocks Hit 52-Week Lows in the First 90 Minutes of Trade

The level the rupee had been holding gave way on Tuesday morning. The currency slipped to 96.145 against the US dollar, its weakest point in roughly two months, a day after settling just inside the line at 95.9825.

On Monday, dollar sales by state-run banks, widely seen as acting for the Reserve Bank of India, had kept the rupee from closing past 96. By Tuesday that line had been crossed, and equities took the same direction.

A Broad-Based Morning Sell-Off

The more telling figure from the first hour and a half was not the headline index level but how many stocks were falling. By around 10.30 am, 190 BSE-listed companies had touched 52-week lows, and declining shares outnumbered advancing ones by more than two to one, at 2,655 against 1,225. The combined market value of listed companies had shrunk by about Rs 4.38 lakh crore within that window.

The Nifty tested 22,600 and hit an intraday low of 22,569.65, while the Sensex fell as far as 72,064. Both marked six-month lows, extending a slide that had already stretched across seven sessions. India VIX, the market's gauge of expected volatility, rose 5.53 percent to 14.39.

Twenty-seven of the 30 Sensex stocks were in the red at that point, with HCLTech, Bajaj Finance, Titan, Infosys and Maruti Suzuki among the heavier decliners. The indices clawed back part of the fall later in the morning, with the Sensex trading around 500 points above its low by midday and the Nifty back near 22,700.

Why the Rupee Matters Here

Oil is the thread tying the currency and stocks together. Brent crude for November delivery rose about 1.9 percent to $107.27 a barrel, after sitting below $100 as recently as September 22, as the US-Iran conflict kept Middle East supply risks in focus. India imports close to 88 percent of its crude, so every leg higher in oil adds directly to dollar demand from refiners.

The effect is already visible in the import bill, which jumped 48 percent year on year to $74.8 billion in April-August 2026 even though volumes were broadly flat.

Foreign money is adding to the pressure. Overseas investors sold a provisional Rs 5,353 crore of Indian shares in the cash market on Monday, taking September outflows past Rs 20,000 crore. Cumulative foreign selling of Indian equities in 2026 now stands at over Rs 2.45 lakh crore.

The Rate-Hike Question

What has changed in recent sessions is the conversation around interest rates. The US 10-year Treasury yield is hovering around 5.25 percent and India's 10-year bond yield is at 7.16 percent. Nomura has said markets are now pricing in close to 125 basis points of RBI rate hikes over the next year, describing monetary policy as being at an inflection point.

A weaker rupee complicates that picture further. It raises the cost of imported inflation just as the central bank is weighing how hard to lean against it, and it makes the RBI's next move in the currency market worth watching closely. India's foreign exchange reserves stood at $765.9 billion in the week to September 18, after a drop of nearly $15 billion in a single week.

For investors, the near-term direction of the rupee and equities is likely to hinge on the same three inputs: the price of Brent, the course of US-Iran talks, and whether foreign selling eases after quarter-end rebalancing.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.