This year’s Muhurat trading day on Monday turned out to be the best for the stock markets in a decade. India’s benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty rose by nearly 1 per cent — the highest single day gains for the indices seen during the special Diwali trading session since 2012, data show.

The one-hour Muhurat trading conducted by the BSE and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) each year is considered auspicious since it is believed in Indian culture among the business class that any deals on Diwali day bring growth and prosperity.  Before Monday’s Muhurat trading rally of Sensex and Nifty, both the indices always saw gains in between 0.2 and 0.5 per cent and only in November 2018, both the indices rose by nearly 0.7 per cent.

Buoyancy in the US markets was seen as one of the key reasons for the gains since the key indices Dow Jones, Nasdaq and S&P indices had gained more than three per cent in the past two trading sessions. When India’s market started trading at around 6.15 pm on Monday, the US index futures were quoting higher by one per cent.

Reliance shines

Gain in the share price of Reliance Industries (RIL), too, was a key catalyst for the rise in Sensex and Nifty on Monday. RIL share price rose by over one per cent in the one hour trading session as the company had announced that its shareholders will get one share of Jio Financial Services for every one share of RIL. Jio will be the insurance, consumer finance and merchant lending arm of RIL. 

 Ironically, even as the Muhurat trading was the best, the Samvat year 2078 — the year upto Monday from last year’s Muhurat trading day — was the worst in seven years. All was not hunky dory in the year gone by for the financial markets as Sensex declined 0.96 per cent and fell 1.48 per cent compared with Samvat 2077 when Sensex and Nifty rose by 40 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively.

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