India's central bank hiked 25 basis points to 5.50% and ruled out near-term cuts, unwinding all of 2025's easing in under a year. Brazil's stock market jumped 7.7% to a record after Sunday's first-round election results set off a fiscal-repricing rally.
360 ONE Asset frames the October MPC as the start of a new tightening cycle after a nearly four-year pause, with rate cuts ruled out near term. Source
India's central bank just reversed course in record time. The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50% on Wednesday, a unanimous vote that matched consensus on the headline number. But the real decision was buried underneath it: a 4-2 split shifted the policy stance from neutral to "calibrated tightening," which Governor Sanjay Malhotra used to rule out near-term cuts entirely. The Standing Deposit Facility (SDF), the rate at which the RBI absorbs excess bank liquidity, moved to 5.25%, while the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) and Bank Rate rose to 5.75%.
