Alan Greenspan, the former US Fed chief, attributed exaggerated share market valuations to irrational exuberance, not warranted by micro and macro fundamentals. As a corollary, another economist in the US quipped that there is always a greater fool out there, with one buying despite knowing valuations are exaggerated and selling successfully to another diehard optimist at double the price, and so on till the cookie crumbles.

Much the same happened on February 1, 2026, but in the reverse direction, when the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, presented her ninth continuous Budget. The bellwether Sensex fell by 1,100 points, disappointed by the lack of any big-ticket reforms or announcements in general, and by the small hike in Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on the F&O segment from the extant 0.02 per cent to 0.05 per cent.

Come to think of it, it was a reformist move, given the fact that Indian bourses are witnessing far larger trading volumes in the derivatives segment rather than in the cash segment. The small STT hike........

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