The Indian stock market will remain closed on May 1, as the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) will be shut for trading on account of Maharashtra Day. This marks the first market holiday of the month and comes during a holiday-shortened week.

India’s largest commodity exchange, the Multi-Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), will remain closed for the first session (9 am to 5 pm) on Maharashtra Day. Trading will resume in the evening session between 5 pm and 11:30 pm, as per its website. The National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX), meanwhile, will remain closed for the entire day.

Upcoming market holidays

In total, 16 stock market holidays are scheduled for 2026, of which seven have already passed. April saw two holidays—April 3 (Good Friday) and April 14 (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Jayanti). Including the May 1 holiday, trading will be suspended on nine more occasions over the remaining eight months.

The BSE and NSE will next be closed on May 28 for Bakri Id, followed by June 26 (Muharram), September 14 (Ganesh Chaturthi), October 2 (Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti), October 20 (Dussehra), November 10 (Diwali-Balipratipada), November 24 (Guru Nanak Jayanti), and December 25 (Christmas).

Check list of upcoming nine market holidays

Maharashtra Day is observed annually on May 1 to mark the formation of the state in 1960. After India’s independence, the demand for linguistic reorganisation of states gained momentum. The Samyukta Maharashtra movement played a key role in the creation of the state.This led to the enactment of the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960, which bifurcated the erstwhile Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat on May 1, 1960. Mumbai was designated as the capital of Maharashtra. Notably, both the BSE and NSE are headquartered in Mumbai, home to Dalal Street. May 1 is also observed as Labour Day in many parts of the country.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions expressed by experts are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Economic Times.)

There are lots of things that can move the stock market, from economic data, to Federal Reserve pronouncements, to corporate developments. But for the past 15 months, traders’ fortunes have been largely tethered to the whims of a single person: President Donald Trump.

Since taking office last January, Trump’s comments to reporters in extemporaneous gatherings in the Oval Office and at formal press conferences, as well as his posts on social media, have been the primary driver behind the five best and worst days in the S&P 500 Index, according to an analysis from Fundstrat Research. It’s a grip unmatched by any modern American leader. No other president has orchestrated this many best and worst days in a dozen administrations going back to President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

“He has the market in a chokehold,” said Hardika Singh, economic strategist at Fundstrat. “The president isn’t supposed to have such an extraordinary amount of control over the fortunes of the stock market. It’s completely unprecedented.”

The war in Iran is providing a perfect backdrop to see how much Trump can move US stocks. The S&P 500 just posted its fastest V-shaped drop and recovery since 2020, tumbling 9% from a Jan. 27 peak to the cusp of a technical correction on March 30, before rallying back to all-time highs over the course of 11 trading days.The impact of the president’s words is even clearer when examined session-by-session. For example, the S&P 500 sank 1.5% on March 20, as Trump said in a White House briefing that he didn’t want a ceasefire with Iran. Then, on March 31, the index jumped 2.9% for its best day since May and rallied through the rest of the week after Trump told reporters at several different news outlets that negotiations with Iran were going well and the war was close to ending. There are numerous similar examples from before and since then.

It isn’t just equities that are seeing these moves either. Commodity prices have also swung wildly, with oil market volatility rising to levels last seen at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.In essence, Trump’s wavering positions on the war have made him the market’s “arsonist and firefighter,” said Alexander Altmann, head of global equities tactical strategies at Barclays.
The whiplash strongly resembles last year’s tariff-driven rout and subsequent rebound. Both episodes were tied to abrupt policy jolts from the president and unwound by equally abrupt backpedaling. It has now reached the point where Wall Street is anticipating reversals in policy and rhetoric from day to day.
“Investors have been conditioned, not wrongly, to expect that if things get too bad, especially if it’s administration induced…they’re waiting for the tweet that says, actually, we’re good,” said Ross Mayfield, an investment strategist for Baird Private Wealth Management.

The president’s influence on stocks isn’t entirely new. Typically, the S&P 500’s biggest up and down days are driven by a combination of micro and macro catalysts, with Washington policy being one. What’s different about Trump’s second term is the market swings so closely track his social media posts and public speaking engagements.

“I have never seen a market that’s been this moved by chatter coming out of the White House on a daily basis,” said veteran market strategist Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research. “Trump speaks every single day, and every single day he says something that seems to have an impact on the market.”

Trump’s fixation on equity prices as a scoreboard was well known before his second term began. Official White House social media channels are now using their platforms to address market moves, posting animated graphics to tout S&P 500 records or telling Wall Street not to be “panicans” when Trump’s words or policies spark fears. He’s even explicitly urged investors to buy stocks.

“If we look back again in data, this has never happened before,” Fundstrat’s Singh said. “That to me is just crazy.”

Among the S&P 500’s best days during Trump’s current term are the 9.5% rally on April 9, 2025, when he paused his tariffs, and the 3.3% jump on May 12, 2025, when the US and China agreed to a 90-day trade truce. On the flipside, the worst days include the 6% plunge on April 4, 2025, after China retaliated with tariffs on the US, and the 4.8% drop on April 3, 2025, after the president first implemented sweeping levies.

Of course, some Wall Street pros argue that the symbiosis between what the president says and what the market does is purely anecdotal and a function of the frequency of the president’s communication.

For instance, a look at volatility measurements contradicts the idea that the market has been more turbulent under Trump than during past administrations, Barclays’ Altmann said. The average value of the Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, across the entire term of each president since the inception of the gauge in 1990 is 19.3, precisely in line with Trump’s second term and with President Joe Biden’s term, according to his analysis.

“While the world may hang on to the unorthodox communication methods by the president, and anticipate a bout of market volatility in its wake, the reality is that markets are behaving in a consistent way with historic patterns,” Altmann said. “It is the medium — high cadency social media — by which it is reacting to news flow that has changed rather than the magnitude of the reaction.”

The rise of passive investing has made the market more reactive to news in general, whether it’s a president’s comments or an unexpected earnings report, said Michael Green, portfolio manager and chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management.

In the simplest terms, he explained, the computers that manage passive portfolios are being programmed to buy or sell assets based on headlines, which is driving moves in broader indexes. By his estimate, markets are approximately four to five times more reactive than they’ve been historically.

“The headline volatility from Trump just has to do with the fact that he’s speaking more frequently,” Green said. “The simple math is that he is just a guy born into a time.”

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The combined market valuation of seven of the top-10 most-valued firms eroded by Rs 2 lakh crore last week, with Tata Consultancy Services and Reliance Industries emerging as the biggest laggards, in-tandem with a bearish trend in equities.

Last week, the BSE benchmark Sensex tanked 1,829.33 points, or 2.33 per cent, and the NSE Nifty dropped 455.6 points, or 1.87 per cent.

“Markets ended lower after two consecutive weeks of gains, weighed down by heightened geopolitical tensions and weak earnings commentary from IT majors,” Ajit Mishra — SVP, Research, Religare Broking Ltd, said.

Global developments continued to dominate market direction, with ongoing uncertainty around the West Asia crisis and concerns over supply disruptions keeping crude oil prices elevated, he added.

The combined market valuation of seven of the top-10 most valued firms dropped by Rs 2,05,343.06 crore.

The market valuation of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) tumbled Rs 66,699.44 crore to Rs 8,67,364.12 crore.
Reliance Industries lost Rs 50,670.34 crore from its valuation, which stood at Rs 17,96,647.50 crore.The valuation of HDFC Bank dived Rs 23,090.05 crore to Rs 12,08,225.48 crore and that of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) dropped by Rs 19,670.75 crore to Rs 5,13,020.56 crore.

The market capitalisation (mcap) of Bharti Airtel declined Rs 19,406.59 crore to Rs 11,05,718.62 crore.

ICICI Bank‘s mcap edged lower by Rs 14,663.27 crore to Rs 9,50,345.40 crore and that of Larsen & Toubro diminished by Rs 11,142.62 crore to Rs 5,52,171.88 crore.

However, the valuation of Hindustan Unilever jumped Rs 20,652.91 crore to Rs 5,47,219.80 crore.

The mcap of State Bank of India climbed Rs 19,522.76 crore to Rs 10,16,752.53 crore and that of Bajaj Finance went up by Rs 8,253.64 crore to Rs 5,73,690.81 crore.

Reliance Industries remained the most-valued domestic firm followed by HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, TCS, Bajaj Finance, Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever, and LIC.