Muhurat Trading: Clean the Portfolio Like You Clean the House

On Sunday 8 November, while homes light diyas for Lakshmi Puja, the stock exchanges will open for one short hour. This is Muhurat trading, which many families treat as the start of a new financial year. This year the session runs in the afternoon: pre-open from 2:05 pm and normal trading from 2:20 pm to 3:30 pm, as announced by the exchanges.

It is a lovely ritual. It is also a good excuse to do something more useful than buying a token share for luck.

What Muhurat trading actually is

The session is real trading. Orders are matched, trades settle the normal way, and any profit or loss is as real as on any other day. The difference is the mood and the volume.

Thin participation has a practical side. The gap between the best buy price and the best sell price can be wider than usual, and a large order can move the price more than expected. If you do place an order that day, a limit order, where you set the price you are willing to pay, protects you better than a market order.

A good omen is not a forecast

Does the market rise after Muhurat trading? Some years it does, some years it does not. One festive hour tells you nothing about the next twelve months. The value of the day is not in predicting anything. It is in pausing once a year and looking at your money with fresh eyes, the same way the house gets a proper cleaning before Diwali.

Diwali cleaning for your money

Before Lakshmi Puja, most families clear out cupboards, repair what is broken and throw away what is no longer used. Try the same four checks on your finances:

1. The emergency fund. Is there enough in a safe, easy-to-reach place to cover about six months of household expenses?

2. The mix. What share of your savings is in equity and what share is in debt? Has a good or bad year pushed it away from what you planned?

3. The SIP. If your income went up this year, did your monthly investment go up with it?

4. The clutter. Is there an old policy, scheme or product you no longer understand? Find out what it is before deciding anything.

A hypothetical family review

Take a made-up family with monthly expenses of Rs 50,000. Six months of cover means Rs 3,00,000. They have Rs 1,80,000 set aside, so the gap is Rs 1,20,000. Their SIP is Rs 10,000 a month and their income rose about 10 percent this year, so a step-up to Rs 11,000 keeps the habit in line with their life. They also find an old savings plan nobody in the house can explain. That goes on the list to discuss with a registered advisor.

Nothing here needs a market view. It needs one evening and a notebook.

Your Diwali practice: set one well-formed goal

In NLP, a well-formed outcome is a goal written so clearly that you can see, measure and start it. Vague wishes such as I want more money rarely survive January. Take ten minutes this Diwali and write answers to these six lines:

• What do I want? State it in the positive: build my emergency fund to Rs 3,00,000, not stop being short of cash.
• How will I know I have it? Picture next Diwali. What number do you see in the account? How do you feel opening it?
• Is it in my control? Saving and investing a fixed amount is in your control. What the market does is not.
• What is the monthly number? Divide the gap by twelve.
• What could get in the way? A wedding, a car repair, a bonus spent too fast. Plan for one now.
• What is my first step this week? Something small and specific, such as setting up an automatic transfer on salary day.

Here is the calculation for the hypothetical family. Their gap is Rs 1,20,000 and they have twelve months until Diwali 2027. Rs 1,20,000 divided by 12 is Rs 10,000 a month. If that money sits in a deposit earning a hypothetical 6 percent a year, the monthly amount needed falls to roughly Rs 9,730, because the interest does a little of the work. Over one year, the saving habit does almost all the lifting.

Write your own numbers down. Stick the page on the cupboard you just cleaned. Next Diwali, take it out and check it before you do anything else.

Muhurat timings as announced by NSE and BSE for 8 November 2026. Check the exchange circular for any last-minute change.