On Monday the Nifty closed down 96 at 24238 (-0.39%) and the Sensex down 443 at 77708 (-0.57%), and if you only read those two numbers you missed the entire story. Episode 85 is the payoff to Episode 84: I told you not to trust the headline, and on Monday the market didn't either. It sold the exact banks it bought on Friday.

RED INDEX, GREEN BREADTH. The red 96-point number hid a green market underneath it. Midcaps closed up, smallcaps up, microcaps +0.61%, the PSU bank index +2.78%, and on the Nifty 50 itself 36 stocks rose against just 14 that fell. An index full of green stocks closed red because the index is a weighted average, not a headcount: two heavyweights, HDFC Bank and Axis, carry enough weight to drag the whole number down while three dozen other names quietly rose. A red headline on green breadth is concentrated heavyweight pai ...