Will the Diwali dhamaka fizzle out tomorrow? Here’s the track record

In the last ten years of history, 2013 has been the worst post-Muhurat day for Sensex when it lost around 1.25% after advancing 0.2% during the special one-hour Muhurat session to mark the advent of Vikram Samvat, the Hindu accounting year which begins from Diwali.

In fact, for five straight years in between 2012 and 2016, Sensex had ended in the negative zone on the trading day after the Muhurat session. The last time history repeated itself was in 2018.

The last three post-Muhurat trading sessions have been happier with the Sensex beating its Muhurat day rally. In 2019, the index impressed with a gain of 1.48%.

Just like most of the last few years, the Sensex ended the Diwali Muhurat trading session higher by 525 points or 0.88% today while the Nifty ended well above the 17,700 mark.

The market moves higher on Muhurat trading days as most traders and investors make token purchases in the belief that the pious occasion of Diwali will bring luck in their favour. However, reality takes over in the next session as fundamentals and technical factors start dictating the market mood once again.

Value investor Jiten Parmar, who has over two decades of experience in the equity markets, says he sells stocks most of the time on Muhurat day. “I have observed that most times on the next trading day, you get your sold stock back at a lower price,” he points out.

For the rest of Samvat 2079, analysts remain bullish on the India story with many brokerages having Nifty targets in the range of 19,000-20,000.

“We believe the relative outperformance of the Indian market will likely sustain in Smavat 2079 as well and would be led by favourable macroeconomic factors and better-than-historical fundamentals of Indian corporates. While inflation continues to be a major challenge in the developed world, inflation in the domestic economy seems to be manageable,” Axis Securities said.

(With data inputs from Ritesh Presswala)

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)