stock market holiday: Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) has canceled the market holiday scheduled for Saturday, Instead, they will hold a special event live trading session To test preparedness for unexpected disasters.
According to ET, the decision follows Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) guidelines market infrastructure intermediaryunderlines the importance of Business Continuity Planning,
The special session scheduled for tomorrow involves a significant intra-day switch from the primary trading site to the disaster recovery site. The purpose of this switch is to ensure that business activities Stay uninterrupted and data secure, especially in the event of any adverse event impacting the main business hub in Mumbai. BSE said the session was initiated after specific discussions with SEBI and its Technical Advisory Committee. It aims to evaluate the preparedness of Market Infrastructure Intermediaries (MIIs) to handle unexpected events impacting their operations and restore operations from a Disaster Recovery (DR) site within the prescribed recovery time objective.
Trading dynamics during this special session are expected to vary due to its brief nature, which will limit the time available to traders. To customize. Market participants expect volatility to reduce during the session.
Key details of the special trading session on Saturday:
Saturday’s special trading session will consist of two parts, with regular activities like trading, settlement and billing within short time frames for equity and equity derivatives segments.
The pre-open session on both NSE and BSE begins at 9 am, with normal trading taking place from 9:15 am to 10 am.
At the disaster recovery site, the pre-opening session begins at 11:15 am, followed by regular trading at 11:30 am, ending at 12:30 pm.

During this special session, a maximum price band of 5% has been set for all shares including the F&O segment. Securities with a 2% upper and lower circuit limit will retain this 2% limit. Geojit Financial was quoted as saying that any pending orders from the first session will be cleared before the start of the second session.
It is important to note that January 20 is settlement holiday, which means credits from the F&O segment and intra-day profits from January 19 will not be available for trading during this session. Additionally, fund withdrawal requests made on Saturday will not be processed.
This is not the first time that the stock markets have acted over the weekend, similar instances had happened during the 2020 Budget and in 2016 and 2017 when special sessions were held from disaster recovery sites.