Week to 22 October: PSU banks +2.0%, small caps -4.4%

The window

This is a short week by our data: NSE rows exist for 19, 21 and 22 October after the 16 October close, with none for 20 October. All changes below run from the 16 October close to the 22 October close. The rupee figures run to 23 October, where its rate is already published.

Equities: broad but uneven

The Nifty 50 closed at 22,687.65 on 22 October, down 1.98% from 23,146.15 on 16 October. Below the headline, the size of the fall depended on the size of the company.

Two of the 13 indices rose. The gap between public-sector and private-sector banks is the widest in the table: Nifty PSU Bank gained 2.01% while Nifty Private Bank lost 3.01%, a difference of about five percentage points in three sessions. Nifty Bank, which holds both, fell 1.64%. For the longer record of that pair, see PSU bank vs private bank index over nine years.

Size told the same story from another side. The Nifty 50 fell 1.98%, the Nifty Midcap 150 3.26% and the Nifty Smallcap 250 4.43%. The smaller the companies, the larger the fall. The mid- and small-cap indices are also the ones whose 2026 highs came late, on 13 August (Midcap 150) and 8 September (Smallcap 250), as covered in our fund drawdown post.

Institutional flows over the three sessions

FIIs were net sellers of ₹3,585 crore across the three sessions, DIIs net buyers of ₹7,707 crore. The month-to-date numbers are in our 14-session flows post.

Gold and silver

The metals moved more than any equity index here. Gold fell from ₹12,706.5 per gram on 16 October to ₹12,249.5 on 22 October, a drop of 3.6%. Silver went from ₹173.2 to ₹165.6 per gram, down 4.4%. Both prices stayed nearly flat until 21 October (gold ₹12,637.6, silver ₹174.9); the fall came on the 22nd. We look at that single day in its own post.

The rupee

The dollar was priced at ₹94.88 on 23 October. Eleven days earlier, on 12 October, it was ₹95.78, so the rupee is stronger by about 0.9% over that stretch. Within it the dollar had touched ₹94.31 on 21 October, and had been above ₹96 for most of early October.

What this does and does not tell you

Three sessions are a small sample, and a single bad day can decide the table. The sector ordering above could look different a week from now. Nothing in the figures says whether the pattern will continue; they record what NSE's index closes and the metal and currency series show for these dates. If you hold funds in one of these segments, the quickest check is the category's recent return on the screener.