Daily Market News Update - 26th-27th October 2026

Midnight News Update: 26-27 Oct 2026

The central government has held several meetings with SEBI, CBDT, and banks to take inputs on the revamp of long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax. Currently, LTCG on equities is charged if held for more than 1 year, at the rate of 12.5% of gains, after considering an annual exemption of ₹1.25 lakhs. The government may either look to reduce the rate of LTCG tax or even make LTCG exempt beyond an ownership time threshold. The issue of LTCG has assumed importance with FPIs being persistent sellers and retail investors also reducing trading volumes in the market.

Brent crude is getting to its highest level in 2026 as the prices have now crossed the $110/bbl mark. For countries like India, the actual landed cost is a lot higher due to the impact of freight and risk insurance premiums. Crude prices are up more than 18% in the last one month and has been primarily triggered by geopolitical risk, weak rupee, and a major demand-supply gap likely to emerge in crude oil. Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabian pipeline infrastructure also slowed the supply of oil & gas in the global market. Falling SPR levels have also led to an oil price surge.

The coal supply crunch at power plants appears to be building up with nearly 98 plants currently operating with under 6 days of coal inventories. This has raised some major concerns amid rising demand for power. Power demand has been on a rise and the current thermal power capacity is struggling to keep pace. Also, the coal output has been disrupted this year and that is also taking a toll on the power output. Low coal levels at power plants has become a chronic problem. Most RE plants operate at much lower capacity utilization compared to thermal power plants.

Hindustan Coca Cola Ltd, the bottling company of Coca Cola in India, is planning to file its DRHP with SEBI for its proposed $1 billion IPO. The IPO and the listing are slated to happen in 2027. The IPO is likely to value the bottler at an indicative valuation of $10 billion. Rothschild will be the advisor to the IPO. Jubilant group owns 40% in the bottler. Hindustan Coca Cola currently operates 14 bottling plants across 10 states, which package, distribute and sell Coca Cola, Thums Up, Sprite, and Fanta. It has a network of 2,000 distributors and reaches to 1.7 million customers.

Hyundai Motors India is slated to expand its manufacturing capacity to 1.14 million units by year 2030, and also boost local procurement of components up to 92%. The car manufacturer will also expand its SUV and Powertrain portfolio with more CNG, electric, and hybrid offerings. Enhancing localization to 92% will entails setting up a complete local ecosystem for the value chain. Till date, Hyundai Motors India has sold 14 million units, of which 10 million were sold in the domestic market and 4 million were exported. It has identified India as one of the big growth markets.

According to SBI chairman, C S Shetty, discretionary credit could start gradually moderating. However, he also underlined that he expected an additional 50 bps of rate hike by the end of fiscal year FY27. This is likely to hit rate sensitive sectors like NBFCs, real estate, autos etc. The RBI has already hiked rates by 25 bps in October, but inflation continues to be quite rampant; both in terms of CPI and WPI. With Crude oil at above $110/bbl, the downstream impact on inflation is likely to be acute. Weak rupee is also likely to contribute in the form of imported inflation.

The Indian office market scenario set a 9-month record as of September 2026. However, nearly 43% of the demand came from global capability centres (GCC). Major cities like Mumbai and NCR are witnessing very low vacancy rates in office property. GCCs are set up by major global companies that use the skilled lower-cost Indian personnel to deliver quality inputs at a reasonable cost. GCCs have become one of the big driver of foreign exchange earnings in the recent past. Most of the Fortune 1000 companies globally are already present with their GCCs in India.

Anthropic of the US has filed for an IPO in the US market, and it will be listed on the NASDAQ. Famous for its Claude AI models, Anthropic did a confidential filing. The IPO is likely to be made at an indicative valuation of $1.50 trillion. In the first half of 2026, total revenues of Anthropic stood at $16.30 billion, while the net losses widened to $80.70 billion. The spike in the losses can be largely attributed to a rise in the fair value of bonds convertible into equities. Another major AI company, Open AI, is also planning an IPO, and Anthropic will be a useful benchmark.