The 2018 Union Budget reintroduced the long-term capital gains tax — 10% above ₹1 lakh, with no indexation — after 14 years of zero, completing the 'double taxation' begun with the STT in 2004. Traders had been reluctant to short ahead of the budget; when the tax was announced, the market fell further.

Days later came the Dow's 10% crash (see the next event). Tax at home plus collapse abroad — the 'double whammy' — took the Nifty down roughly 700 points that month, and PR Sundar marks it as the starting point of years of sustained FII net selling.

In the first week of February 2018, US inflation data triggered the 'Volmageddon' crash: the Dow fell about 5% during market hours and roughly another 5% after hours — close to 10% in a day in some tellings. The next morning India gapped down hard, Nifty falling about 400 points with SGX futures much more.

It was the arrival of the inflation-driven crash era that came to define 2022 — the first modern 'hot data = global sell-off' template, transmitted to Dalal Street through a single overnight gap.

The RBI announced it would open an FII window for HDFC Bank, whose ADRs traded at a 10–15% premium — foreign investors were desperate to buy. Bank Nifty jumped 1,000 points within half an hour, and HDFC Bank gapped up 10% the next morning. Then, once the window was exhausted in about 30 minutes, demand vanished and the stock fell 5–6%.

Technical analysts who bought the rising chart got stopped out; those who understood the FII-window mechanics profited by arbitraging cash against futures. The best 'technicals without context will destroy you' story in the dataset.

The collapse of IL&FS — with a reported ₹1 lakh crore of exposure — started India's NBFC crisis. When DSP BlackRock sold DHFL bonds at a discount, panic followed: DHFL fell 60% intraday, and housing-finance names took collateral damage. The same month, Rana Kapoor's exit from Yes Bank sent it down 30% intraday.

The government stepped in overnight to protect IL&FS retail investors. It was the first major financial contagion since 2008 — a Nifty-50 name falling more than 25% intraday had not happened since Lehman, and the playbook of 'credit event → panic' was born.

After a 2016–18 'bulldozer' rally that roughly doubled mid and small caps, the mid-cap index crashed about 30% in 2018 — and did not recover for two years, before COVID added another 30–40% on top. A 100% gain followed by a 50% drawdown nets out to zero.

This was the retail-pain crash that erased lakhs of small-cap fortunes with no quick recovery — and it became the antidote to the 'it's already fallen 30%, it must be cheap' fallacy.

In November 2018 the BJP lost all five state elections it contested. Foreign investors concluded that 2019 would produce a hung parliament — and sold Indian stocks continuously from 21 November 2018 through the end of February 2019.

A three-month, entirely election-driven FII exodus — the purest case in the dataset of foreign investors trading politics rather than fundamentals.

Indian fighter jets struck targets inside Pakistan at Balakot and returned safely. The resulting nationalist surge convinced foreign investors the BJP would win in 2019 — and FIIs flipped from relentless sellers to aggressive buyers almost overnight. The Nifty rose roughly 1,000 points in a month, rallying into an election the BJP duly won.

It is the only 'war event' in the dataset that was explicitly BULLISH for the market — proof that geopolitics can cut in either direction.

Around 11:30 am on 31 May 2019 the market was green — then, within minutes and with no explanation, the Nifty crashed 3%+ and Bank Nifty fell roughly 1,000 points. Two minutes later the news broke: Nirmala Sitharaman had been appointed Finance Minister, where markets had expected Amit Shah. The market recovered the same day.

In the aftermath, PSU banks collapsed over the following months — Bank of Baroda from 140 to 40, SBI from 375 to 175 — before a legendary recovery. A personnel announcement had moved the index — proof that in India the market trades on who runs the Finance Ministry.

Sitharaman's first budget imposed a surcharge on foreign portfolio investors — hitting foreign funds structured as trusts. FIIs sold relentlessly in protest, and the market fell sharply. The big red candle entered trader folklore as the 'Nirmala Sitharaman candle' — the bearish one.

It set up the September U-turn: the same finance minister, delivering the opposite candle.

With sentiment broken and FIIs still selling, the finance minister announced — with no warning, during market hours — a corporate tax cut from 30% to 22% in one shot. Markets exploded: the Nifty jumped roughly 5–7% in a day (Bank Nifty +2,000+ points) and about 10% across two sessions. Traders named it the 'Nirmala Candle 1.0.'

Short sellers were annihilated — one trader reportedly lost ₹75 lakh on ₹50 lakh of capital. It remains the biggest single-day policy rally in modern Indian history and the definitive 'white swan.'