Muhurat Trading 2026: Sensex, Nifty end lower for the first time since 2017

What happened in the session

The muhurat session ran from 2:20 pm to 3:30 pm IST and opened Samvat 2083, the new Hindu calendar year that Indian traders mark with a token "auspicious" trade on Diwali.

The Nifty opened higher at 25,070.45 and climbed to 25,131.85, about 0.4% above Friday's close. It then drifted lower for most of the hour and closed at 24,986.40, almost exactly at its low for the session (24,985.30). The Sensex traded between 80,932.42 and 81,442.11 before closing at 80,999.40.

Trades from the session settle on Monday, 9 November.

The index fell. Most of the market did not.

This is the part a red headline hides. The two benchmark indices fell, but the broader market rose:

Why the gap? Banks and financial companies carry the largest weight in the Nifty 50, so a small fall in them outweighs bigger gains in smaller sectors. Inside the Nifty 50, 32 stocks fell and 17 rose. Across all active NSE stocks in our feed, 2,417 rose and 680 fell.

What this means for an investor: a red Nifty close told you very little about how most portfolios did on Sunday. If you held small or mid-sized companies, or pharma stocks, your holdings were more likely to be up than down.

The stocks that moved

Session closes from Tapetide's NSE live feed; previous closes from NSE end-of-day data. These are provisional until NSE publishes its official closing file for 8 November, and we will update this table then. A move "with the market" means we found no company-specific news, so the cause is not established.

Muhurat trading since 2016

In eleven sessions, the Nifty never moved more than 1% either way. That is what you would expect from one hour of light, ceremonial trading. The session's direction also says little about the year ahead: Samvat 2082 began with a +0.10% muhurat and went on to become the weakest Samvat for the benchmarks in 15 years.

For every year since 2016 in one place, see our muhurat trading history.

The week before Diwali: the biggest weekly gain since February 2021

The muhurat session came straight after an unusual run:

• In the week of 2 to 6 November, the Nifty rose 1,977 points (+8.57%) and the Sensex 6,568 points (+8.82%), their largest weekly gains since February 2021.
• Over the seven sessions to 6 November, the Nifty climbed from 22,698.85 to 25,030.35, a 10.27% gain.
• On 5 November the Nifty rose 2.40% on a day when the Nasdaq Composite fell about 5.5%, Korea's Kospi 6.02% and Japan's Nikkei 5.96%. US coverage tied the US fall to a sell-off in AI and chip stocks after the US midterm elections.
• Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought a net ₹14,975 crore of Indian shares on 5 November and ₹13,750 crore on 6 November, after selling for most of the year.

Reports at the time credited returning foreign money, easier crude oil prices, better-than-feared September-quarter results and a firmer rupee.

Samvat 2082 in numbers: Diwali 2025 to Diwali 2026

What drove the year, as reported. US and Israeli strikes on Iran began on 28 February 2026, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was cut off in early March. Brent crude jumped from about $80 to about $120 a barrel in a week. About 90% of India's LPG imports pass through Hormuz, and the country faced cooking-gas shortages. The Nifty fell about 9.4% between 27 February and 27 March.

A US–Iran ceasefire on 8 April set off the Nifty's best week of the spring, from 22,713 to 24,051. The truce broke down in July. The index slid through September and early October, as foreign investors kept selling and US bond yields stayed high, and made its lowest close of the year on 8 October. It then rallied hard into Diwali.

In rupee terms, gold beat the Nifty by about 14 percentage points over the year. Much of gold's gain came from a weaker rupee: priced in dollars, gold fell 6.6%.

What remains uncertain

• The stock-level closes above are provisional until NSE's official file for 8 November is out.
• We found no company announcement behind Finolex Cables' 20% move or Aster DM's rise.
• Muhurat-session figures before 2025 come from published tables, which differ slightly in a few years.

Why it matters

A red muhurat close makes a good headline but tells you little. This session's data shows a small, bank-led dip in the index while most stocks rose. Eleven years of muhurat history show no reliable link between the session's direction and the year that follows.

What to watch next

• Monday, 9 November: the first full trading day of Samvat 2083, and settlement of Sunday's trades.
• This week: US consumer and producer inflation data, and India's October consumer inflation (CPI) figure.
• Foreign money: whether FIIs keep buying after ₹45,960 crore of net purchases in the five sessions to 6 November.
• Volatility: India VIX rose 5.8% to 18.49 on Sunday, after a week of very large moves.