Diwali 2026 Muhurat trading: Why do NSE, BSE break the holiday rule for special live trading session? Explained

The headline explains why the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE hold a one-hour special live trading session, known as Muhurat trading, on Diwali, a day when regular equity markets are closed for the holiday. The session is a traditional ceremonial trading window, typically held in the evening, that marks the start of the Hindu financial year and is widely observed by Indian market participants. Its market transmission runs mainly through sentiment and liquidity rather than fundamentals, since the brief session has historically attracted symbolic buying and modest volumes compared with ordinary sessions. Large-cap index heavyweights and broad equity benchmarks are the most visible instruments in the window, while retail-heavy and smaller-cap stocks can show sharper relative moves on thin order books. Traders will watch the closing levels of the Muhurat session against the prior regular close and the first full trading session that follows the holiday for signs of whether the symbolic opening sentiment carries into normal trading.

HIGH-impact news is typically a market-moving event with multi-pip or multi-percent intraday reactions. Examples include central bank rate decisions, major CPI/NFP releases, geopolitical shocks, mega-cap earnings beats/misses, and regulatory announcements. Traders typically position-reduce or hedge ahead of scheduled HIGH-impact events, and follow the wire in real time to react to unscheduled ones (war headlines, central-bank emergency statements, surprise corporate actions). The Trading News Terminal squawk box reads every HIGH-impact headline aloud the moment it hits the wire — so active traders don't have to stare at the feed.

Active traders typically follow a three-step workflow when a market-moving headline hits the wire: (1) read the headline on the terminal or hear it on the squawk box; (2) assess whether the news is already priced in (by checking intraday price action in the seconds before) or whether it's genuinely new information; (3) act — either entering a breakout position, fading an overreaction, or tightening stops on existing trades. Trading News Terminal's Pro plan delivers wire-grade headlines within seconds of the source, with automatic audio squawk on every HIGH-impact event, so the read-assess-act cycle never waits on a refresh button.