Daily Market News Update — 27th-28th April 2026

Midnight News Update: 27-28 Apr 2026

Amidst the West Asian crisis, Piyush Goyal has called for an urgent meeting of exporters. The US-Iran war has hit key export markets like the UAE and Saudi Arabia and that is hitting India’s export performance. Over last 3 financial years, there has hardly been any growth in India’s merchandise exports. India has just concluded the FTA with New Zealand. Essential Gulf exports like food and pharma are reaching through alternate ports, but energy, engineering, and petchem are getting the rough end. Government has already initiated a package to bail out exporters.

With the continued blockade of the Straits of Hormuz, the demand supply gap has widened sharply. Supply has been disrupted to the extent of 13.7 million barrels per day (bpd), leading rapid draw-downs of oil inventories across the world. Between March and April, this gap has surged from 9.1 million bpd to 13.7 million bpd. Most of the spare capacity is concentrated in UAE and Saudi Arabia and both are cut off from the global market. The fear is that inventories will start depleting in most countries by end of April and that could actually force a massive destruction of oil demand.

Digital lender, Kissht, has announced its IPO dates, albeit with a reduced IPO size. The fresh issue portion was trimmed from ₹1,000 crore to ₹850 crore, while the offer for sale (OFS) was halved from 8.9 million shares to 4.4 million shares. The IPO opens for subscription on 30-April and closes on 05-May, with 3 holidays in between. The price band has been set in the range of ₹162-₹171 per share. The overall size of the IPO (including the OFS) will be approximately ₹926 crore. Kissht offers unsecured personal loans at fairly steep rates of interest in South and West India.

India is facing a major domestic production crisis in fertilizers, ahead of the Kharif sowing season. Amid rising prices of fertilizers globally, India will be importing 64 lakh tonnes of Urea and 19 lakh tonnes of other fertilizers. Domestic urea production fell to just about 35 lakh tonnes as key inputs of the supply chain got disrupted due to the US-Iran war. Global prices of urea have nearly doubled since the war began about 2 months back. With the government keeping the market price of these fertilizers the same, it is going to result in a huge subsidy burden devolving on the government.

There seems to be a subtle change in gold buying patterns in the last couple of years. The average Indian household is shifting from buying gold for jewellery to buying gold as an investment. Today, buying gold for investment accounts for over 40% while jewellery demand has fallen to under 60%. The stellar rally in gold prices has made gold coins, gold ETFs and gold bonds very attractive. Investors in India are already looking at gold as a solid asset in uncertain times to diversify risk. After the 75% rally in gold in calendar 2025, the public perception of gold is clearly changing.

Amidst the vagaries of oil supplies and prices, here is how Reliance navigated the oil markets. To begin with, Reliance diversified its crude sourcing and enhanced its operational agility. Amid the ongoing war, Reliance tapped into non-Gulf producer of oil to supply the crude. In many cases, the Middle East oil got rerouted so as not to attract attention. Reliance worked closely with suppliers in the region to reroute standard crude. This helped RIL avoid any refinery closure or production cuts. The highly complex refining system of Reliance Industries has also been very helpful.

Coal India has charted a 10-year roadmap to slash nearly 243 million tonnes of coal imports. Apart from other initiatives, Coal India will also set up a National Washery & Logistics Grid to address supply chain issues. Coal India accounts for 80% of the coal output and Singareni Collieries accounts for another 10%. The balance is accounted for by captive coal mines of companies. However, the 243 MT of coal being imported each year is a major drag. The move is part of the government strategy to cut imports and reduce the pressure on the rupee, which gets hit by the rising CAD.

Acko, India’s digital insurer, plans a confidential filing for its IPO to raise a sum of $250 million. This IPO will value Acko at around $2.50 billion. The prospectus is likely to be filed by June this year. Acko has already appointed Morgan Stanley, Kotak Mahindra Capital, and ICICI Securities as the book running lead managers (BRLMs) to the issue. Acko bypasses the traditional agents and offers general, health, and life insurance directly to the customer. Acko has a rather formidable base of institutional investors like General Atlantic, Multiples PE, Accel, Elevation, and CPPIB.