Stock market holidays 2008

The page lists 21 holidays for 2008, 17 of them on a weekday. Four fell on a weekend: Moharram on Saturday 19 Jan, Republic Day on Saturday 26 Jan, Holi on Saturday 22 Mar and Ram Navmi on Sunday 13 Apr. A weekend holiday costs no trading day, so the market was shut on 17 weekdays. The first weekday closure was Mahashivratri on Thursday 6 Mar and the last was Christmas on Thursday 25 Dec.

Mar 2008 and Oct 2008 had four listed holidays each. Mar 2008 had three weekday closures, because Holi fell on a Saturday. Feb, Jun and Jul 2008 had none.

Laxmi Puja, the main day of Diwali, fell on Tuesday 28 Oct 2008. Regular trading was shut that day; the page marks it as a muhurat trading day, a short evening session that opens the new Samvat year, the Hindu calendar year that starts at Diwali. Bhau Bhij, two days later on Thursday 30 Oct, was a full closure, so the market traded only three days that week.

Thursday 27 Nov 2008 was not a planned holiday. NSE and BSE stayed shut the day after the terror attacks in Mumbai began on the evening of 26 Nov, and reopened on Friday 28 Nov. Two observances also shared one date that year: Gandhi Jayanti and Ramzan ID both fell on Thursday 2 Oct, so the list shows them in one row.

Settlement, the step where shares and money actually change hands, has run two working days after the trade, called T+2, since 1 Apr 2003. Holidays do not count as working days, so a holiday between a trade and its settlement pushed settlement back a day.