Friday evening the screen told you India had a terrible day. Nifty down 359 points to 23,547. Sensex down 1,092 to 74,775. The headlines blamed the Iran deal. There was one problem: the screen was lying. Look at Friday's chart and you will see a clean vertical cliff in the final thirty minutes. That was not selling conviction. That was a closing-auction dump. Episode 50 is the story of how a price can be fake, and how the morning proved it.

Here is what the headlines got backwards. Monthly contracts expired Tuesday, so Friday was a cash-only session, and Friday was an MSCI rebalance day. When MSCI resets its index weights, every fund that tracks it must trade baskets of Indian shares in the cash market at the closing price. It only forces cash trades, never futures, which is why the damage showed up in exactly one place. Foreign investors s ...