Another working Saturday! NSE to conduct special trading session on May 18

"Members are requested to note that exchange shall be conducting special session with intra-day
switch over from primary site to disaster recovery site on Saturday, May 18, 2024, in equity and segments," said in a circular.

The special session shall be divided into two segments. In the first part, the market will open for normal trading on 9:15 am and end at 10 am.

The second session, which would be conducted from the disaster recovery site, will begin from 11:45 am and end at 12:40 pm.

All securities (including those on which derivative products are available) will have a maximum of 5%. Securities already in 2% or lower price band, shall continue to be available in the respective bands.

Earlier, and BSE had conducted the disaster recovery session on March 2, which was also a Saturday.

Stock markets are closed every Saturday and Sunday, besides other national holidays. But on rare occasions, bourses may choose to keep the market open on the weekend as was seen during the 2020 Budget when the BSE and NSE were open for trading as February 1, which fell on a Saturday.

The special live trading session is being done according to Sebi guidelines, which mandate testing of preparedness for handling unexpected disasters from the main trading centre in Mumbai.

This is the third time in the year when traders will have to work on a Saturday. The first disaster recovery session was planned on January 20 (Saturday), but since January 22 (Monday) was declared a holiday due to Ram Mandir inauguration, the Saturday session was converted into a full-fledged one.

Similar sessions from the disaster recovery site have been conducted before in 2016 and 2017.