The Indian benchmark indices, BSE SENSEX and NSE NIFTY50, opened lower and extended their losses during early trade on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. The market sentiment was heavily dampened by steep corrections in major Information Technology (IT) stocks, geopolitical tensions in West Asia, and persistent foreign institutional investor (FII) outflows.

• BSE SENSEX: Opened 0.2% lower at 74,507.73 points and quickly plunged over 600 points to trade around 73,843 points (down 1.07%) by 9:36 AM.

• NSE NIFTY50: Opened at 23,415.95 points and slid down more than 200 points from its opening levels to trade at 23,273.50 points (down 0.89%).

 Driving the Decline

 Profit Booking in IT Heavyweights

The primary drag on the indices came from the IT sector. Following a massive rally in the previous session fueled by artificial intelligence (AI) momentum in Wall Street, investors aggressively booked profits in major tech firms.

 Geopolitical Tensions & Rising Oil Prices

Global market sentiment turned cautious following reports of fresh military conflicts in West Asia. The US reportedly conducted a strike on Iran's Qeshm Island, alongside reports of failed Iranian ballistic missile launches in the region. This geopolitical instability pushed Brent crude oil prices above $96 per barrel, raising inflationary concerns for oil-importing nations like India.

 Heavy FII Outflows

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) continued their aggressive selling streak.

• On the preceding Tuesday alone, FIIs offloaded assets worth ₹8,362.92 crore.

• According to NSDL data, Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) pulled out a massive ₹24,109 crore in just the first two days of June 2026.

Top Gainers and Losers (Early Trade)

The market breadth favored losers, severely impacted by the technology sector sell-off.

Top Losers 📉

Stock

% Decline (Early Trade)

TCS

-6.6% to -8.46%

Tech Mahindra

-4.6% to -6.33%

HCL Tech

-3.2% to -5.14%

Infosys

-3.7% to -3.79%

ITC

-2.21% to -2.5%

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Top Gainers can-be-seen 📈

Despite the broader market slide, defensive sectors and select auto/consumer stocks showed resilience:

• ONGC: Up 1.3% (benefiting from elevated crude oil prices)

• Apollo Hospitals: Up 1.3%

• Bajaj Auto: Up 1.2%

• Maruti Suzuki: Up 0.7%

• Nestle India / Tata Consumer: Up 0.5%

Analysts expect investors to remain highly cautious throughout the trading session. Market movement will likely depend on any potential trend reversals in global cues, further developments regarding the US-Iran geopolitical situation, and whether domestic institutional investors (DIIs) step in to support the market against heavy foreign fund outflows.

A major financial controversy emerged following a Bloomberg Economics (BE) report authored by Senior India Economist Abhishek Gupta. The report inferred that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) likely sold $12 billion worth of physical gold reserves during the two weeks ending May 22, 2026, shifting those funds into liquid foreign currency assets to shield the Indian Rupee (INR) from geopolitical shockwaves.  

However, subsequent official disclosures from the Indian Government and the RBI have categorically denied the claim, labeling the report inaccurate and confirming that India’s physical gold reserves remain completely untouched.  

 The Catalyst: The Bloomberg Economics Hypothesis

The thesis presented by Bloomberg Economics rested entirely on an indirect analytical deduction of publicly available financial data rather than explicit transactional confirmation.  

The Methodology of the Estimate

• Valuation Discrepancy: The BE report noted a sharp fall in the reported fiat value of the RBI's bullion reserves during May 2026.  

• The Import Duty Factor: Under normal circumstances, India's recent decision to hike import duties on precious metals should have mechanically driven up the localized valuation metrics of the RBI's holdings.  

• The Inference: Because the reported monetary value of the gold reserves dropped despite the duty hike, Bloomberg inferred that the RBI was aggressively liquidating physical gold to purchase roughly $7.5 billion in foreign currency assets.  

Macroeconomic Pressures Driving the Theory

The report framed this alleged sale as a desperate but strategic move by RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra to counter extreme external pressures:  

• The West Asia Conflict: Ongoing regional war (specifically citing Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz) skyrocketed global crude oil prices.

• Current Account Deficit: As the world's third-largest oil importer, India’s dollar outflows escalated dramatically to cover energy costs, forcing the Rupee to all-time lows (flirting with the 95–97 range per USD).

• Liquidity Prioritization: The thesis argued that the RBI was intentionally sacrificing gold (a less liquid asset) to amass "dry powder" in liquid US Dollars to directly intervene in the foreign exchange market.

Official Rebuttal & Fact-Check

On June 3, 2026, both the Reserve Bank of India and the government’s official fact-checking arm, the Press Information Bureau (PIB), issued scathing corrections, calling the Bloomberg claims "fake" and "incorrect."

Key Data Provided by the RBI:

• Physical Stock Status: The RBI confirmed that its physical stock of gold remains entirely unchanged at exactly 880.52 metric tonnes.

• Rising Share of Total Reserves: Counter to the narrative of liquidation, official data shows that gold’s percentage share within India's overall Foreign Exchange basket has actually been climbing over the last year:

Period

Gold's Share of India's Total Forex Reserves

End-September 2025

13.92%

March 31, 2026

16.70%

May 22, 2026

16.85%

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• Explaining the Discrepancy: Financial authorities clarified that the mathematical drop in the value of the gold reserve noted by Bloomberg was caused purely by global mark-to-market valuation changes, international price fluctuations, and exchange-rate movements—not a physical sell-off.

• Ground Reality of India's Gold Strategy

The Bloomberg allegation strongly contradicts the macro-trend of India’s central banking strategy over recent years. Rather than offloading gold, the RBI has been actively repatriating its gold back to domestic soil.

• Domestic Storage Shift: By March 2026, 77% of India's gold was stored domestically, up from 66% just six months prior.

• The Sovereign De-risking Narrative: Following Western nations freezing Russia's foreign reserves, emerging market economies—including India—have grown highly cautious of leaving assets in overseas vaults like the Bank of England. Selling off $12 billion of gold would entirely reverse this heavily guarded national security posture of accumulating tangible, sanction-proof assets.  

While the Bloomberg Economics report highlighted the genuine and severe macroeconomic stresses India faces due to high oil prices and currency depreciation, its core conclusion was flawed.

The drop in reserve value was a paper-based accounting fluctuation, not an actual liquidation. The RBI did not sell its gold. The central bank's physical reserves remain fully intact at 880.52 tonnes, and the defense of the Indian Rupee is being managed through traditional foreign currency interventions and domestic monetary policy rather than tapping into the nation's core bullion emergency fund.  

June 2026 In a decisive move that underscores the rapidly shifting dynamics of global cybersecurity, Anthropic has officially expanded access to its restricted, hyper-capable cybersecurity AI model, Claude Mythos Preview, under the umbrella of Project Glasswing.

Moving beyond an exclusive group of initial U.S. launch partners, Anthropic is scaling the defensive initiative to 150 additional organizations across more than 15 countries, including India, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, South Korea, and the UK. Crucially, the expansion also marks a pivot by the United States to grant access to international governing bodies and military alliances, including NATO and the European Union’s cybersecurity agency, ENISA.  

The Double-Edged Sword: Why Mythos is Heavily Gated

Unveiled earlier this year, Claude Mythos represents a paradigm shift in artificial intelligence. It is the first frontier model capable of autonomously outperforming all but the most elite human security researchers at discovering, chaining, and patching software vulnerabilities.  

Because the same agentic intelligence can be weaponized to engineer devastating cyberattacks, Anthropic has tightly embargoed the model from commercial or public release. Instead, Project Glasswing serves as a controlled, defensive buffer, backed by $100 million in Anthropic usage credits and $4 million in direct donations to secure open-source infrastructure.  

The Terrifying Diagnostic Power of Mythos

In its initial trials, Mythos sent shockwaves through the tech industry by unearthing vulnerabilities that had evaded human detection for decades. According to Anthropic's latest research updates:  

• 10,000+ Zero-Days: Glasswing partners have used the model to autonomously uncover more than 10,000 high- or critical-severity software flaws across systemically important global software.  

• Legacy Exploits: Mythos successfully exposed a 27-year-old vulnerability hidden deep within OpenBSD (a legacy OS utilized heavily in high-security firewalls).  

• Massive Code Audits: When put to work scanning over 1,000 core open-source projects that anchor modern internet infrastructure, Mythos flagged 6,202 critical flaws, including a severe certificate-forgery exploit in the wolfSSL cryptography library.

• Browser Defenses Shattered: Mozilla utilized the preview to find and fix 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox—surpassing the diagnostic output of Anthropic's previous flagship model, Claude Opus 4.6, by tenfold.  

• Geopolitical Strains and the "Assume Breach" Reality

The rollout of Mythos has triggered intense diplomatic and corporate maneuvering. Previously, geopolitical tensions flared when European banks and software firms found themselves initially locked out of access due to stringent U.S. export controls and technology sovereignty concerns. Following "productive meetings" with the European Commission, the U.S. relaxed its posture, acknowledging that threat actors do not respect digital borders.  

Spotlighting India's Critical Infrastructure Push

The inclusion of India in this expansion phase highlights the country's vulnerable position as a global digital hub. Over the last decade, India has aggressively scaled highly interconnected, public-facing frameworks like the Aadhaar identity ecosystem, unified banking systems, and tax platforms.  

Alarmed by the offensive potential of upcoming AI models, Indian banks, the central bank (RBI), and tech titans like Infosys and TCS, alongside the national cyber agency CERT-In, have quietly been running massive security audits. Prior to getting official access to Mythos under this expansion, Indian firms were forced to rely on earlier Claude models to stress-test their infrastructure. The arrival of Mythos will dramatically accelerate India's ability to patch its core digital architecture before adversarial AI can exploit it.  

The Countdown: A 6-to-12-Month Window

The core motivation behind Project Glasswing's urgent expansion is a ticking clock. Anthropic has issued a stark warning to governments and enterprise leaders worldwide:

"Within 6 to 12 months, we expect that many other AI companies will have Mythos-class models, and they could release them without safeguards that prevent misuse."  

If hostile nation-states or decentralized ransomware syndicates deploy un-gated, Mythos-class AI agents, the traditional cybersecurity playbook becomes obsolete. Security frameworks must pivot from passive "perimeter defense" to an active "Assume Breach" protocol.  

When autonomous AI agents can chain exploits and attack codebases at machine speed, humans will no longer be fast enough to sit in the loop to triage tickets. The future of global security rests entirely on deploying defensive AI—like Claude Mythos—to out-think, out-pace, and out-patch the impending wave of algorithmic threats.