4A.11 The daily routine, the session and the event calendar

4A.11.1A pre-market checklist (Indian equities and index derivatives)#

1. Overnight global markets. US close (S&P 500, Nasdaq), US 10-year yield and the dollar (M11), Brent and WTI crude (M10), gold, and Asian opens (Nikkei, Kospi, Hang Seng).
2. GIFT Nifty. Nifty futures traded on NSE International Exchange (NSE IX) in GIFT City since 3 Jul 2023, when SGX Nifty trading moved there. Sessions reported by brokers as 06:30–15:40 IST and 16:35–02:45 IST (about 21 hours a day; some sources give slightly different end times, so check NSE IX). Its 08:45–09:00 level, adjusted for the basis between GIFT Nifty futures and the spot index, is the market's estimate of the gap (4A.4).
3. Flows and positioning from the previous evening. Provisional FII/DII cash numbers; participant-wise OI (4A.5.3); the F&O ban list (stocks whose market-wide futures-equivalent OI exceeds 95% of the market-wide position limit are in a ban period, in which only position-reducing trades are allowed; the MWPL formula and FutEq basis changed from 1 Oct 2025, as reported).
4. News and filings. Results due today and after yesterday's close (M06A), board meetings, corporate actions with ex-dates today (M01 · 1.10), bulk and block deals (4A.5.5), SEBI and exchange circulars.
5. Calendar. Is today an expiry (Tuesday for Nifty), an RBI or Fed day, a US data day, an index rebalance day? (4A.11.3)
6. Plan. For each open position: stop, target, size, and what event could gap it through the stop. For each candidate: the setup's rule, the level, the volatility-scaled stop and the size. Write it before 09:00.

See it live: for steps 3–4, current index levels and India VIX at https://oicharts.com/indices, sector moves at https://oicharts.com/sectors and a market news feed at https://oicharts.com/news. Filings themselves are on the NSE and BSE corporate-announcement pages.

4A.11.2The NSE session (as of 6 Nov 2026)#

These facts are from M01 · 1.2, where they are sourced and qualified; several come from broker summaries of circulars.

Time (IST)	Session	Notes
09:00–09:15	Pre-open call auction (equities)	From 7 Sep 2026: market and limit orders 09:00–09:05, limit only thereafter; order entry closes at random between 09:08 and 09:10; matching about 09:10–09:12. No stop-loss orders.
09:15–15:30	Continuous trading	Volume and volatility U-shaped across the session.
from 3 Aug 2026	Closing Auction Session (F&O stocks)	Replaced the 15:00–15:30 VWAP close. From 7 Dec 2026: CAS 15:30–15:40 with random close of order entry 15:38–15:40; post-close session 15:50–16:00.
to 15:45 (from 7 Dec 2026)	Index derivatives on non-expiry days	Expiring index contracts stop at 15:30; expiry settlement at the VWAP of the last 30 minutes (one report says 15).

Session structure The first 15–30 minutes after 09:15 absorb the overnight information and the auction's imbalances: the highest volume and volatility of the day. Mid-session is quieter. The last hour carries institutional execution towards the close and, on Tuesdays, Nifty expiry flows (M09 · 9.8; M09A). Since August 2026 the close is an auction, so the last continuous print and the official close can differ.

4A.11.3The event calendar#

Event	Frequency and timing	Why it matters
RBI Monetary Policy Committee	Six meetings a year; decision announced on the morning of the last day (check RBI's schedule). Next: 2–4 Dec 2026 (M11).	Repo rate and stance move bank stocks, bonds and the rupee.
US FOMC	Eight meetings a year; statement at 14:00 US Eastern, which is after the Indian close. Next decision 9 Dec 2026 (M11).	Moves US yields and the dollar; India reacts at the next open (gap).
US CPI and non-farm payrolls	Monthly, 08:30 US Eastern: 19:00 IST while the US is on standard time (from 1 Nov 2026), 18:00 IST during US daylight time.	Global risk assets reprice; GIFT Nifty and Indian ADRs react overnight.
EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report	Wednesdays, 10:30 US Eastern (20:00/21:00 IST), shifted after US holidays.	Crude inventories; moves MCX crude in the evening session (M10).
OPEC+ meetings	Scheduled ministerial and monitoring meetings, plus unscheduled ones.	Supply decisions move crude, the rupee and oil-sensitive stocks.
Union Budget	1 February since 2017 (full Budgets in election years have come later, e.g. 5 Jul 2019, 23 Jul 2024).	Taxes (STT, capital gains), sector allocations; large intraday ranges.
Results season	Quarterly; listed companies must publish quarterly results within 45 days of quarter-end and annual audited results within 60 days (SEBI LODR).	Stock-specific gaps; index heavyweights move the index.
Nifty weekly expiry	Tuesday since 1 Sep 2025 (previous trading day if a holiday); monthly expiry on the last Tuesday.	Gamma and settlement flows (M09 · 9.8).
Index rebalances	Nifty 50 and most NSE broad indices: semi-annual, effective the last working day of March and September, using six-month average data to 31 Jan and 31 Jul, with four weeks' notice (NSE Indices factsheet and calendar).	Passive funds trade at the close of the effective day; closing-auction volume spikes.

How event days change volatility The clean model is that of M02 · 2.10.3: on an event day the return is ordinary noise plus a jump, $r=\sigma\varepsilon+J$, so its variance is $\sigma^2+\operatorname{Var}J$. The option market prices $\operatorname{Var}J$ in advance, and it can be extracted from the term structure of implied volatility (M09A derives the method). What do the data show?

• Union Budget days, Nifty (Yahoo ^NSEI, ten Budgets 2017–2025 that appear in the series). Close-to-close moves were mixed: +4.63% on 1 Feb 2021 (4.7 times the trailing 60-day standard deviation), +1.80% on 1 Feb 2017, but under 0.15% on four of the ten. The intraday range was usually large: above 1.5% on eight of the ten, with a median of 2.1% against a median daily range of 0.89% over 2017–2025, and 3.5% on 1 Feb 2023 for a close of −0.26%. Budget days are high-variance within the day more reliably than across it, which is exactly what a stop placed inside the normal daily range does not survive.
• Tuesday expiries, Sep 2025 to Oct 2026 (Yahoo, about 58 Tuesdays). Mean absolute close-to-close return 0.57% on Tuesdays against 0.56–0.69% on other weekdays, and similar ranges. In this short sample, expiry did not make the index itself measurably more volatile; its effect is on option Greeks and on the last hour's order flow, not on the daily index distribution.
• Scheduled binary events such as election results are the extreme case. M02 · 2.10.3 shows that on 4 Jun 2024 India VIX implied a result-day standard deviation of about 6.3%, against ordinary daily volatility of 0.72% (Case 2 below takes the trade-management view).