Tale of the Tape 

Good evening boys and girls!

Markets soared today with the Nifty and Sensex up +0.7% each. This tracked a surge in Asian markets with investors upbeat over a breakthrough in US-China trade talks. Midcaps (+0.9%) and Smallcaps (+0.8%) moved in sync. The advance-decline ratio was in favour of the bulls (3:2).

Except Pharma (-0.2%), all other sectors ended in the green. PSU Banks (+2.2%) were the top gainer, followed by Oil & Gas (+1.5%) and Real Estate (+1.5%).

In today’s issue of the Daily Rip, we cover the big Adani & LIC blow-up, SRF and SBI Cards Q2 results, the biggest newsmakers of the day and more. 

Honourable Mentions:

Ola Electric slipped -5% intraday after approving a Rs 1,500 cr fundraising plan. PS - they raised Rs 5,500 cr via their IPO fresh issue last year! Markets are clearly unhappy with this level of cash burn. Bharti Airtel hit a new all-time high after a double upgrade by ICICI Securities. They see a further +15% upside from current levels.

Check out the NSE 500 heatmap:

Market
Hit Flop Job

The latest Adani Group controversy is here. ICYMI - The Washington Post claims the GOI forced LIC to invest ~$3.9 in Adani debt & stocks to help it post-Hindenburg. There’s a LOT to unpack here so let’s get into.

The main allegation is that the finance ministry & Niti Aayog came with a plan to help inject confidence in the conglomerate.That involved nudging LIC to help Adani’s fundraising. Example: the PSU insurer was the only investor in a ~$585 million Adani Ports bond issue in May 2025. 

Why does any of this matter? Well, LIC is supposed to be independent. You don’t want North Block babus dictating how it should maximize policyholder money. On top of that, LIC is listed now. Its management is accountable to its public shareholders; if there’s someone secretly making decisions, we deserve to know. That said, there’s a whole other side to this. LIC has completely denied the allegations, saying the GOI has no role in any of its investments. But more importantly, the Washington Post leaves out context. 

For the unaware, LIC is India’s largest domestic institutional investor with ~Rs 50+ lakh cr in assets. It has to make investments somewhere! Crucially though: its exposure to Adani is less than ~2% of its debt and its equity allocation to other groups such as the Tatas is a lot higher (Rs 1.3 lakh cr vs Adani’s Rs 60k cr). So there’s no evidence of favouritism or undue risk either. 

Big Picture: There’s two issues here. One, even if the Washington Post is 100% wrong, LIC shareholders should absolutely push for greater transparency. It’s no secret it’s been used as a piggy bank in the past to save PSU IPOs although interference has reduced a lot since 2014. Secondly, be extremely careful of vested interests. A lot of Hindenburg’s claims against Adani haven't held up; ditto with Viceroy for Vedanta. Always do your own research!