Nifty closed at 24,774.30 on 3 August. That is 2.7 points below 24,777 — a level it has not closed above since 2 March, 106 sessions ago. The week the sea gate at Hormuz shut.

OIL — Brent $83.55 a barrel. It averaged $118 in April, the highest since 2008, so oil is down almost a third from its worst. The cooking gas cylinder in Bengaluru has not followed: ₹944.50 today against ₹855.50 last August. Up like a rocket, down like a feather. Iran says the gate stays shut until America ends the war and pays. Their date is Sunday, 16 August.

GOLD AND SILVER — Gold ₹1,51,820 for ten grams against ₹99,220 last August. Silver ₹2,31,466 a kilo against ₹1,09,425. Gold up half. Silver more than doubled.

RUPEE — One dollar costs ₹95.25. On 20 May it touched ₹96.84, the weakest ever. It has recovered about a rupee and a half in eleven weeks, while oil fell thirty percent. The rupee did not follow the oil back down.

INDIA'S PRICE NUMBER — 4.38% in June, up from 3.93% in May, food the biggest push. The next one lands Wednesday at 4pm.

WORLD MARKETS — America closed Friday at its highest ever, S&P 500 at 7,757.64, its best week since April. Asia is higher this morning.

MONEY LENT TO GOVERNMENTS — Lend to the American government for ten years and you get 4.64%. That fell on Friday in one afternoon, after America counted its jobs and found 23,000 people had lost work when 83,000 new ones were expected.

THE WEEK AHEAD — Wednesday, our price number at 4pm and America's at 6pm. Thursday, their factory prices. Friday, our wholesale and trade figures. Sunday, the Iran date.

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On 3 August the Nifty closed at its own high for the day — 24,774.30. It did not fade into the close. It did not stall mid-session. It simply ran out of day, 2.7 points short of 24,777.

The last time it closed above that number was 2 March. In the 106 sessions since, the high has reached 24,777 on exactly zero days.

Which is the lesson, and it is the whole of it: a level is not crossed by being touched.

On 5 March the index traded up to 24,854.20 — well past it — and closed at 24,765.90. It went there. It did not stay. Every chart you will ever see records that day as a line reaching above 24,777, and every closing record says it never got there at all.

I have drawn this on a whiteboard in front of eighty students more times than I can count. The price comes up, it touches the line, and forty hands go up at once. Sir, it broke.

It did not break. It visited.

The touch feels like the break because you were watching. You saw it arrive. Your eye kept the highest number of the day, because that is the number that made your heart move. The record kept the last one, because that is the number everyone finally agreed on after the arguing was over.

Only one of those two numbers is written down anywhere. It is not the one you remember.

Here is what the difference costs. A man who opened his phone once a day, at half past three, and looked only at the closing price, has known since March that 24,777 was not taken. No screen all day, no alert, no opinion required. A man who watched every tick has been convinced four or five times that it was taken, has acted on it, and has paid brokerage each time to find out otherwise.

Same market. Same five months. One of them was told the truth once a day, for free.

I trade my own money. I lose sometimes. The gap between a touch and a close took me far longer to learn than I would like to admit.

Two point seven points. That is the entire distance between a story you would have told yourself and a number anybody can check.