Muhurat Trading 2025 Highlights

What You'll Learn

• The final Sensex, Nifty and Bank Nifty numbers from the Muhurat Trading 2025 session
• Top gainers and losers, including the stocks that hit fresh 52-week highs intraday
• Sector scorecard — where the festive buying went and which sectors lagged
• How gold and silver moved, the Samvat 2081 review, and expert outlooks for Samvat 2082

Muhurat Trading 2025 delivered exactly what the ritual promises: a green start to the new Samvat year. In the one-hour special session held on Diwali day, October 21, 2025, from 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm on both BSE and NSE, the Sensex closed at 84,426.34, up 62.97 points or 0.07 percent, while the Nifty 50 settled at 25,868.60, gaining 25.45 points or 0.10 percent — marking the beginning of Vikram Samvat 2082 with a positive close. The session was the eighth consecutive Muhurat Trading session in which the Nifty closed in the green, and it extended the market's winning run to a fifth straight day. Both indices touched fresh 52-week highs during the session before profit-booking trimmed the gains — a pattern that summed up investor mood: festive optimism, tempered by caution about valuations and global headwinds.

Muhurat Trading 2025: The Session in Numbers

The special session on October 21, 2025 was held on a truncated schedule — block deals ran from 1:15 pm, the pre-open session from 1:30 pm to 1:45 pm with random closure at 1:37 pm, and the main window from 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm, followed by a closing session from 2:55 pm to 3:05 pm. Trades executed on October 20 and October 21 were settled with payout on October 23, 2025. The final scorecard across indices and commodities:

The day's numbers, reported by BSE and NSE and confirmed across Moneycontrol, Livemint and The Hindu's session coverage, show a market that opened firm, hit fresh record highs intraday, and closed with modest but positive gains. The Sensex opened at 84,484.67, up 121.30 points, touched a session high of 84,665.44 and a low of 84,286.40, while the Nifty opened at 25,901.20. The breadth was strongly positive — roughly 2,720 BSE stocks advanced against 902 declines, with 149 unchanged — confirming that the buying was broad-based rather than concentrated in a handful of heavyweights.

The timing of the session matters as much as the numbers. Under the schedule fixed by the exchanges, block deals ran from 1:15 pm to 1:30 pm, the pre-open session from 1:30 pm to 1:45 pm with random closure at 1:37 pm, and the main trading window from 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm, followed by a closing session from 2:55 pm to 3:05 pm. Securities traded on October 20 and 21 were settled with payouts on October 23, 2025. Trades executed in the one-hour window were charged the normal transaction fee and taxes, and index weights and derivatives expiry schedules were unaffected — the special session was purely an extra trading hour. Brokers also held their own "e-Muhurat" and physical trading events, with many firms reporting elevated client engagement, since fresh investments made during the Muhurat session are considered auspicious in the Hindu tradition.

Beyond the headline indices, the session had a notable midcap and smallcap tilt. The BSE Midcap index gained 0.23 percent to close at 46,787.20 and the BSE SmallCap index jumped 0.91 percent to 53,842.85, both outperforming the Sensex and the Nifty. The divergence matters: it shows that while heavyweight banks consolidated, the broader market — the pocket where domestic retail investors are most active — stayed firmly in risk-on mode. The breadth data, with advances outnumbering declines by nearly three to one, reinforced the same conclusion.

How the Opening Session Played Out

The narrative of the session moved in three phases. In the pre-open and opening minutes, both indices surged to fresh 52-week highs — the Sensex at 84,665.44 and the Nifty above its earlier record — powered by positive global cues and festive buying. Midway through the hour, profit-booking set in, led by banking heavyweights, which pulled the indices back toward the flat line. In the final stretch, selective buying in IT, autos and pharma carried both benchmarks to a positive close. The pattern matched what Economic Times reported — benchmarks hit new highs before profit-booking trimmed the gains.

Two institutional numbers framed the session. Provisional exchange data for Monday, October 20, showed foreign institutional investors (FIIs) as net buyers of ₹790.45 crore while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought ₹2,485.46 crore — the third consecutive day of combined FII and DII buying after a long FII selling stretch. Over the financial year to date, FIIs remained net sellers of about ₹2.39 lakh crore, offset by DII net buying of roughly ₹6.03 lakh crore, which explains why the market had been making new highs despite sustained foreign selling. The Muhurat session itself carried that momentum: with DIIs absorbing every foreign exit and retail participation high on Diwali, the indices had the support they needed to stay green. For context on how this institutional rotation drives Indian benchmarks, our Sensex Nifty rally analysis breaks down the banking-led record highs that followed in the months after the session.

Top Gainers and Losers in the Muhurat Session

Bajaj Finserv was the star of the session — the top Sensex gainer, up 1.42 percent, and one of only two stocks that hit a fresh 52-week high intraday. Axis Bank gained 0.80 percent after the RBI approved Neeraj Gambhir as its executive director, a move that added to the stock's momentum. Infosys rose 0.72 percent, Mahindra & Mahindra gained 0.60 percent and Tata Motors added 0.55 percent. On the Nifty, Cipla, Bajaj Finserv, Axis Bank, Infosys and Grasim were the biggest gainers, with Cipla and Bajaj Finserv rising more than 0.7 percent.

Bajaj Finserv closed at a 52-week high of ₹2,155.30 intraday, and Bajaj Finance also touched a fresh high at ₹1,089.95 before easing — a rare double for the Bajaj group on a single session. Bharti Airtel, which also printed a 52-week high of ₹2,057.95 intraday, still ended the session among the losers, a reminder of how quickly profit-booking moved through the one-hour window. On the losing side, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank led the Sensex declines while HCL Technologies, Asian Paints and Max Healthcare also closed lower on the Nifty. The outlier of the session was Ola Electric, which fell 2.75 percent to ₹53 after a legal case was filed against its CEO — company-specific news with no bearing on the broader market.

Sector Scorecard: Where the Festive Money Went

Sectoral performance during the session mapped neatly onto the themes that defined the coming year: industrials, telecom, commodities and capital goods led, while banks and realty lagged. BSE sectoral indices closed with Industrials up 0.53 percent, Telecommunication up 0.51 percent, Commodities up 0.47 percent, Capital Goods up 0.40 percent and Services up 0.38 percent. Metals added 0.37 percent, while the Bankex and Realty indices ended marginally lower — the main drag on the flat start.

The leadership was consistent with what analysts flagged as the Samvat 2082 investment theme: infrastructure, manufacturing and domestic cyclicals over rate-sensitive sectors. Midcaps and smallcaps outperformed largecaps — the BSE Midcap index closed up 0.23 percent at 46,787.20 and the BSE SmallCap index jumped 0.91 percent to 53,842.85 — confirming that risk appetite remained intact among domestic investors even as banks took a breather. Metal, media and telecom gained about 0.3 percent each on the BSE sectoral boards, in line with the broader picture.

Gold and Silver in the Muhurat Session

Commodity exchanges MCX and NCDEX also held their special Muhurat session on October 21, 2025, and precious metals closed lower. MCX gold ended at ₹1,28,000 per 10 grams, down ₹271 or 0.21 percent, while MCX silver settled at ₹1,50,000 per kilogram, down ₹327 or 0.22 percent. The metals had a wild hour — at one point mid-session gold was down nearly 2 percent and silver more than 4 percent before buyers stepped in, but both still closed the session in the red. The dip was read as profit-booking after a strong run-up rather than a change in the bullion trend, with global prices supported by central bank buying and rate-cut expectations. For the full-year view, our Gold Price Prediction 2026 guide examines whether gold can reach ₹2 lakh per 10 grams, while our gold price falls analysis and gold weekly review track the move since.

Samvat 2081 in Review: What the Year Delivered

The Muhurat session's positive close capped a Samvat 2081 that delivered steady, if unspectacular, returns. Over the year that ended on October 20, 2025, the Sensex rose 4,974.31 points, or 6.26 percent, to close at 84,363.37, while the Nifty gained 1,637.80 points, or 6.76 percent, to 25,843.15. The gains were driven by domestic institutional flows, strong corporate earnings in banks and autos, and a global risk-on backdrop — even as FII selling and rich midcap valuations kept a lid on the upside. The previous day's regular session, October 20, had itself ended higher: the Sensex rose 411.18 points and the Nifty 133.30 points, setting up the positive momentum that the Muhurat session carried forward. The year was punctuated by record-setting runs — the Sensex crossed the 84,000 mark for the first time in September 2025 and the Nifty scaled 25,800, with banking and auto stocks doing most of the heavy lifting. Midcaps and smallcaps delivered higher returns than largecaps for a third consecutive Samvat, stretching valuations that experts flagged as the main risk for the new year.

Samvat 2081 also rewrote the institutional flow picture. FIIs sold equities worth about ₹2.39 lakh crore over the year, a record outflow, yet the market kept rising because domestic institutions — mutual funds, insurers and provident funds — bought approximately ₹6.03 lakh crore. That structural shift, from foreign-led to domestic-led ownership of Indian equities, was the defining feature of the year, and it is why analysts entered Samvat 2082 more confident that the market can absorb continued FII selling without a major correction.

The 6 percent-plus year was the ninth consecutive positive Samvat for the Indian market, and it fed directly into the ritual's significance: for eight straight Muhurat sessions since 2018, the Nifty has closed in the green, with the sessions of 2020 to 2024 delivering returns of 0.40 to 0.90 percent each. The pattern is not superstition — it reflects that Diwali falls at a time of year when festive consumption, fresh annual budgets and institutional flows align. The Nifty's 8th consecutive positive Muhurat close on October 21, 2025 kept that streak intact. The year is defined by the Vikram Samvat calendar, the 57-year-ahead Hindu lunar calendar on which the Indian stock market's auspicious new year is based.

Expert Outlook for Samvat 2082

The outlook that emerged from the session's expert commentary was cautiously bullish, with a strong tilt toward domestic cyclicals, financials and quality largecaps. Nilesh Shah, Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra AMC, described consumption as the "sparkling firecracker" for Samvat 2082, pointing to the festive pipeline. Atul Suri, the noted market strategist, was the most aggressive: he expects the Nifty to head toward 30,000 within a year, believes the banking index will break into new highs first, and is positive on consumer finance and insurance. Ramesh Damani described Samvat 2081 as a fine year and advised staying invested in good companies, with a liking for rare earths, shipbuilding and PSUs.

Brokerage house strategies were concrete. Motilal Oswal said Samvat 2082 begins on a positive note with fiscal and monetary tailwinds, and published a 10-stock Diwali list plus five technical picks including SBI, Paytm, Hero MotoCorp, BEL and Cholamandalam. JM Financial listed 12 stocks for the new Samvat — Maruti Suzuki, Fiem Industries, Axis Bank, L&T Finance, IIFL Finance, Apollo Hospitals, Lloyds Metals & Energy, Ratnamani Metals, Brainbees, Anant Raj, Eureka Forbes and Astral — betting on domestic consumption and infrastructure. Palak Shah, head of research at PL Capital, advised buying quality names including Kotak Mahindra Bank, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro and Britannia Industries, arguing India is moving toward self-reliance. The rate backdrop supports the case: with inflation easing, the RBI is expected to cut rates through the year, and global central bank policy — tracked in our Federal Reserve rate forecast guide — is a key input for FII flows into India. For the complete Samvat 2083 picture and the Diwali 2026 session that will open it, our Muhurat Trading 2026 Complete Guide has the dates, timings and stock picks.

Key Technical Levels to Watch

Technical analysts reading the Muhurat session flagged a setup that remained intact well after the one-hour window: a strong structure above 25,800 with a clear breakout trigger at 26,000. Ponmudi R, CEO of Enrich Money, said the structure is bullish as long as Nifty holds above 25,800, with support at 25,600–25,500 and a breakout above 26,000–26,300 that could trigger fresh lifetime highs. Nilesh Jain of Centrum Broking noted the session's Doji candle formation and put support at 25,600 with the next target near 26,000, advising buying on dips. Nagaraj Shetti of HDFC Securities saw upside toward 26,300 in the following week with immediate support at 25,700. Vishnu Kant Upadhyay of Master Capital Services added historical colour — the Nifty has closed positive in five of the last five Muhurat sessions with gains of 0.40 to 0.90 percent — and recommended buying on dips toward the 25,000–24,800 zone. The levels that mattered:

• Support: 25,700 / 25,600 / 25,500 — the zones analysts said bulls needed to defend
• Resistance: 26,000 / 26,300 — breakout above these opens fresh lifetime highs
• Deeper dip-buying zone: 25,000–24,800 — where multiple analysts recommended accumulation
• Bank Nifty: needs to reclaim 58,000–58,500 decisively to resume its leadership

What Investors Should Do Now

The Muhurat session's message for investors was consistent with its 8-year pattern: the one-hour window is symbolic, but the sector preferences it reveals are real signals. The buying was concentrated in industrials, telecom, capital goods and midcap/smallcap names — the domestic capex and consumption complex — while banks consolidated after their run. For the new Samvat year, the strategies that emerged from the session's expert commentary converge on three ideas: stay invested in quality largecaps as the core, add selectively to high-growth domestic themes like infrastructure, manufacturing and financials, and use market dips toward the 25,500–25,700 support zone to build positions rather than chase highs.

For long-term investors, the ritual is a reminder of the discipline that matters more than any one session: systematic investing through the year, diversification across asset classes, and patience with compounding. A practical checklist for the weeks after the Muhurat session: review asset allocation once a year rather than after every market move; keep an emergency corpus in liquid funds rather than equities; add to equity positions through SIPs or on dips toward support levels instead of at all-time highs; and for those with a longer horizon, allow midcap and smallcap exposure only to the extent the risk budget permits, since these segments carry higher drawdown risk despite their Samvat 2081 outperformance. Gold remains the traditional hedge in the Indian portfolio — the Muhurat dip notwithstanding — and investors tracking the metal will find the full framework in our gold price outlook. For those planning retirement allocations in the new year, our EPF vs NPS 2026 guide compares India's two flagship retirement vehicles. The next milestone on the calendar is Diwali 2026 — the Muhurat Trading 2026 session on November 8, 2026 that opens Samvat 2083, with full details in our Muhurat Trading 2026 guide.

Conclusion

Muhurat Trading 2025 opened Samvat 2082 with the Sensex at 84,426.34 (+0.07%) and the Nifty at 25,868.60 (+0.10%) — a modest but meaningful green close that extended the Nifty's streak to eight consecutive positive Muhurat sessions. Bajaj Finserv led the gainers with a 1.42 percent advance and a fresh 52-week high, industrials and telecom led the sectors, smallcaps outperformed, and gold and silver closed marginally lower. FIIs bought ₹790 crore and DIIs ₹2,485 crore on the eve of the session, keeping the institutional support intact. Experts entered the new year with a cautiously bullish view — Atul Suri sees Nifty at 30,000 within a year, brokerages published concrete stock lists, and technical analysts flagged 25,500–25,700 as the support zone and 26,000–26,300 as the breakout trigger. The session's real value was not the one hour of trading but the confirmation of where the smart money is positioned for the year ahead: domestic cyclicals, infrastructure, financials and quality largecaps. Investors who use the festive start to review and rebalance their portfolios — rather than chase the session's moves — are the ones the ritual works for.

All figures sourced from BSE and NSE official session data, Moneycontrol, Livemint, The Hindu and Economic Times coverage of the October 21, 2025 Muhurat session, and broker research published for Samvat 2082.