Markets and macro, answered.

No. India taxes crypto under the Income Tax Act and applies anti-money-laundering rules under PMLA, and no standalone crypto law exists yet. A parliamentary committee report tabled on 23 July 2026 proposed an interim framework led by self-regulatory organisations as a first step toward one.

Not yet. The report is a recommendation sitting with Parliament, and nothing has been enacted from it so far. It proposes self-regulatory organisations operating under a statutory regulator such as SEBI or RBI.

It is a daily score from 0 to 100 published by alternative.me. It is built from Bitcoin's volatility, momentum and volume, social media activity, Bitcoin's dominance of total crypto market value, and Google search trends. A score near 0 reads Extreme Fear, a score near 100 reads Extreme Greed. On 2026-09-03 it read 65, in the Greed range.

It is published as a whole-market gauge, but its inputs, volatility, momentum and dominance, are read almost entirely off Bitcoin's own price data. An index built to score coins individually has shown gaps of over 60 points between the most fearful and most greedy major coins on the same day. A single blended number cannot show that spread.

No. The index describes crowd mood on a given day, and alternative.me does not claim it predicts price direction. On 2026-09-03 the index read 65, Greed, the same day Bitcoin's own daily MACD momentum indicator turned negative: two separate readings that do not have to agree.

Once a day. Alternative.me recalculates the score every 24 hours from the same five weighted inputs, so a reading can move sharply between one day and the next. The index moved from 25, Extreme Fear, a month before 2026-09-03, to 65, Greed, on that date.

8:30 am US Eastern time is 6 pm IST for most of the year, when the US observes daylight saving. It shifts to 7 pm IST roughly from November to March, when the US is on standard time and India stays on its own fixed offset.

The pattern runs through rate-cut odds and tends to hold, though it stops short of a fixed rule. Inflation data and other market forces can all outweigh it on a given day.

Both numbers come from the same monthly release but different surveys. Nonfarm payrolls, from the establishment survey of employers, counts jobs added or lost. The unemployment rate, from the household survey, measures the share of the labor force without a job and looking for one.

The CME Group's FedWatch tool publishes probability estimates for the Federal Reserve's upcoming rate decisions, built from Fed Funds futures pricing. It reflects what professional futures traders are positioned for at that moment, a snapshot of sentiment rather than a promise of the outcome.

The Federal Open Market Committee announces its rate decision and statement at 2pm ET on 16 September 2026, followed by the Fed Chair's press conference at 2:30pm ET. Both are published the same day, with the full meeting minutes following about three weeks later.

3.50 to 3.75 percent, unchanged since a 9 to 3 vote to hold in July 2026, with three members having wanted an immediate quarter point hike at that meeting.

Tighter financial conditions have often coincided with a cooler appetite for risk assets, crypto included. That is a tendency across cycles, useful for context but never a rule for any single week. Crypto has moved in both directions around Fed decisions before.

A probability derived from fed funds futures contract prices, reflecting current positioning rather than a survey or a forecast of the outcome. It read 58.6 percent for a hold at the September meeting as of 25 August 2026, and the number moves as new data arrives before the vote.

A bond's current yield is its annual coupon payment divided by its current market price. It is never divided by the bond's original face value. Yield to maturity goes further than current yield. It also accounts for the gap between the purchase price and the redemption value. Coupon rate and yield are not the same thing, even though people confuse them. The coupon rate is fixed at issue and stays printed on the bond. Yield instead moves with the bond's market price. A bond trading below face value pays a higher return on the price actually paid. A bond trading above face value pays a lower one. This is why bond prices and yields move inversely. When a bond's price falls, its fixed coupon becomes a larger share of that lower price. So the yield rises. When the price rises instead, the same coupon becomes a smaller share. So the yield falls. Consider a bond with a face value of 1,000 rupees and a 7 percent coupon. That pays 70 rupees a year. If the bond's market price falls to 900 rupees, the yield rises. It moves to about 7.8 percent, since the same 70 rupee coupon is now measured against a smaller price. India's 10-year government bond yield is the figure most widely quoted in financial news. It works as a benchmark for other bond yields. It also indirectly affects loan rates across the economy.

Fixed deposit interest in India does not always clear inflation once tax is subtracted. Average bank FD rates have run near 6 to 7.5 percent over the past two years. CPI inflation has swung between roughly 2 and 4.5 percent over that same period. Tax on the FD interest narrows the real gap further. FD interest is added to your income and taxed at your own slab rate. That is unlike some instruments that get preferential tax treatment. For someone in the 30 percent bracket, a 7 percent FD rate becomes closer to 4.9 percent after tax. That is before inflation is even factored in. Once inflation is subtracted from that post-tax return, the real gain can turn negative. This tends to happen in years when inflation runs high. It also happens when the investor's tax bracket is steep. RBI's own inflation target band is 4 percent, with 2 percentage points of tolerance either way. A 6 percent inflation year already sits within that range. Consider 5 lakh rupees placed in an FD at 7 percent for one year. That earns 35,000 rupees in interest. At a 30 percent tax slab, roughly 10,500 rupees of that goes to tax. About 24,500 rupees remains, a post-tax return near 4.9 percent. Inflation ran close to 4.5 percent that year, near the top of its recent range. The math changes for someone in a lower tax bracket instead. A smaller slab rate leaves more of the FD interest intact after tax. That is why the same FD rate delivers a different real return. It depends entirely on who is holding it.

India's inflation rate is calculated and released every month by MoSPI. That stands for the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. MoSPI uses the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, to do this. The CPI tracks price changes across a fixed basket of household goods and services. Food and beverages carry the single largest weight in that basket, at roughly 37 percent. That is why a jump in vegetable or cereal prices moves the headline number the most. This is also why food price shocks, like an onion price spike, make national headlines every season. The remaining weight is split across housing, fuel, clothing and health. The current base year for India's CPI is set at 2024 equals 100, replacing the older 2012 series in February 2026. Today's prices are measured as a percentage change from 2024 levels. MoSPI periodically updates this base year as spending patterns shift. Consider a basket that cost 100 rupees in the 2024 base year. It now costs 105 rupees for the same goods and services. That works out to 5 percent cumulative inflation since the base year. MoSPI then breaks that down into the monthly and annual rates reported in the news. RBI's monetary policy targets this CPI number at 4 percent. It allows a tolerance band running from 2 to 6 percent. A reading that drifts outside that band for too long typically triggers a change in the repo rate.

When an IPO is oversubscribed, retail allotment for applications up to 2 lakh rupees follows a set process. It runs on a proportionate or lottery-based method. Which one applies depends on how many times the retail category was oversubscribed. SEBI mandates a fully computerized, registrar-run process for this. No human discretion decides who gets shares under this system. If the retail category is oversubscribed three times, not every applicant gets shares. The registrar's system then runs either a lottery for a full lot each, or a proportionate scale-down. Which method applies depends on how many lots are available against how many applied. SEBI's rules guarantee something when the retail category is undersubscribed instead. That means fewer applications than available shares. Every eligible retail applicant then gets at least one lot. That guarantee disappears the moment demand exceeds supply. Consider an IPO with 50,000 retail lots available. It receives applications for 2.5 lakh lots, five times oversubscribed. The registrar runs a lottery so no applicant's allotment shrinks to a fifth of a lot. Each successful applicant still gets one full lot, not a fraction. Allotment status is usually finalized within one working day after the issue closes, under SEBI's T+3 listing cycle. An applicant can check their own allotment status online through the registrar's portal, well before the stock starts trading.

NSE Indices rebalances the Nifty 50 twice a year. This happens on the last trading day of March and September. Selection is based on average free-float market capitalization. That average is measured over the preceding six months, not a single day's price. A stock also has to clear a liquidity test to qualify. Its impact cost must stay below 0.50 percent. That has to hold on at least 90 percent of trading days in the window. This filters out stocks that look large on market cap alone. Such stocks are often too thinly traded for an index fund to trade efficiently. Constituent changes are never sprung on the market without warning. NSE Indices announces entries and exits about four weeks ahead. That gives the change time to actually take effect. Index funds get time to plan their own trades around the date. Consider a stock whose market cap climbs steadily over six months. It crosses into Nifty 50 territory by the March review. NSE Indices would announce that entry in early March. The change would take effect on the last trading day of the month. Index funds tracking Nifty 50 would need to buy that stock around the same date. Not every index reviews itself this often. A broader index like Nifty 500 uses the same rebalancing calendar as Nifty 50. A narrower, sector-specific index might rebalance on a completely different schedule of its own. Qatobit's own QSI crypto indexes rebalance monthly instead of twice a year. That faster schedule matches how quickly crypto index weights can drift between rebalances.

Nifty 50 covers India's top 50 companies by free-float market capitalization. Nifty Next 50 covers the next tier, ranks 51 to 100. Nifty 500 stretches across the top 500 companies instead. Together, those 500 companies capture more than 95 percent of the country's listed market cap. Nifty Next 50 sits just below Nifty 50 in company size. It is often called the pipeline for future Nifty 50 entrants. A company usually has to grow into that Next 50 band first. Only then can it qualify for a spot in the top 50 itself. Nifty 500 is built for breadth rather than a narrow leadership tier. It pulls in large, mid and small companies together. That mix moves differently across a market cycle. A narrower index like Nifty 50 is concentrated in the largest names alone. Consider three investors, each holding one of these indexes. The Nifty 50 investor is exposed almost entirely to established large-cap names. The Nifty Next 50 investor holds companies one growth stage below that. Some of those may graduate into Nifty 50 later. The Nifty 500 investor holds a slice of nearly the entire listed market, large caps included. All three indexes are maintained by NSE Indices on the same free-float methodology. The difference between them comes down to two things only. How many companies each one includes, and where the size cutoff sits.

RBI's repo rate is what it charges commercial banks to borrow money for the short term. A rate cut lowers those banks' own cost of funds right away. That saving usually shows up in new FD rates and in repo-linked home loan rates within one review cycle. RBI's Monetary Policy Committee reviews the repo rate roughly every two months. Banks are not required to move every rate the instant it changes. Repo-linked loans are the exception. They are contractually tied to move within a defined window after each review. A rate cut does not affect every borrower or saver equally. Someone on an older, fixed-rate loan sees no change until they refinance. Someone on a floating, repo-linked loan sees their EMI adjust automatically. A saver opening a brand new FD gets the new lower rate. An existing FD keeps its original rate until maturity. Consider a 25 basis point repo rate cut. A bank offering 7.25 percent on new one-year FDs might move to roughly 7 percent. Someone with a 50 lakh rupee repo-linked home loan could see a similar 25 basis point drop. That lowers the EMI by a modest but real amount each month. The typical pass-through runs 25 to 50 basis points in fresh FD and floating home loan rates. The exact size and speed depend on each bank's own funding mix. Internal policy at the bank also plays a role.

Sovereign Gold Bonds split their tax treatment in two. The 2.5 percent annual interest is taxed as regular income, at your slab rate. The capital gain on redemption at maturity, after 8 years, is fully exempt. That exemption runs under Section 47(viii) of the Income Tax Act. That exemption only applies if you hold the bond to full 8-year maturity. You also have to redeem it through RBI directly. Selling an SGB earlier on the exchange works differently. So does early redemption after year 5 through RBI's own window. Both instead attract capital gains tax on whatever profit was made. No TDS is deducted on the SGB interest payout itself. That differs from many other interest-bearing instruments. There, the payer withholds tax before crediting you. With an SGB, you still declare and pay that tax yourself, when filing your return. Consider 5 lakh rupees invested in SGBs at issue, held the full 8 years to maturity. The 2.5 percent annual interest is taxed each year at your slab rate. That adds up over the holding period. But the entire capital gain on the gold price, from issue to maturity, is exempt from tax. Someone who instead sells the same SGBs on the exchange after 3 years gives up the maturity exemption entirely. That is before the 5-year early redemption window even opens. They owe capital gains tax on the profit at that point. This comes on top of the tax already paid on the interest received along the way.

The rupee depreciates against the dollar mainly for one structural reason. India runs a persistent trade deficit, driven largely by crude oil imports. Those imports create steady, ongoing demand for dollars. When that demand regularly exceeds dollar supply from exporters, the rupee weakens over time. Foreign institutional investor flows add another layer of pressure on top. When FIIs pull money out of Indian equity or debt markets, they convert those rupees back into dollars to leave. That selling adds further downward pressure on the currency. It sits on top of the structural trade deficit already described. RBI does intervene in the currency market at times. It sells dollars from its foreign exchange reserves to do this. The stated purpose is to smooth out sharp, disorderly moves. It is not to hold the rupee at a fixed level. The rupee is allowed to drift over the longer run. Over the past five years, the rupee has moved from roughly 75 to past 95 against the dollar. That depreciation reflects several forces together. The oil import bill is one. Periodic FII outflows during global risk-off periods are another. The interest rate gap between India and the United States adds a third. None of these forces move in a straight line. A period of falling crude prices can pause the depreciation. Strong FII inflows can even briefly reverse it. The underlying trade deficit usually reasserts itself over a longer stretch.

The government stopped issuing new Sovereign Gold Bonds after the last tranche in February 2024. No new tranche has been notified since then. The finance ministry pointed to one main reason. SGBs carry a high borrowing cost compared to alternatives like gold ETFs and gold loan schemes. An SGB effectively costs the government the 2.5 percent annual interest paid to bondholders. It also carries exposure to gold price movements from issuing the bond in the first place. Compared to simpler market borrowing, that combination made SGBs an increasingly expensive way to fund the same exposure. Bonds already issued before this pause are unaffected by the decision. They continue to trade on the stock exchange secondary market. They will still redeem on schedule at their original 8-year maturity dates. That happens exactly as promised when they were issued. Investors do not need to take any action to keep that redemption on track. Consider an investor who bought SGBs in 2021, expecting to redeem them at maturity in 2029. That redemption timeline stays exactly as it was. The tax exemption on the maturity gain stays exactly as it was too. Neither is affected by the scheme's new bonds no longer being issued. Anyone wanting exposure similar to an SGB today has one option left. They can buy existing bonds on the secondary market instead of a fresh issue. There is currently no primary window open for new SGB purchases.