The holiday calendar available on the NSE and BSE websites reveals that the country's leading stock exchanges will operate as usual on Friday, May 5. However, it is a settlement holiday on account of Buddha Purnima, which means that you won’t be seeing your shares purchased through the day, transferred to your dematerialized or Demat account until Monday, May 8.

What Is A Settlement Holiday? In India, trade settlement occurs on a T+1 basis. When you trade a stock, the settlement takes place a day later. So, if you buy a stock on Monday, the transaction settles by Tuesday. Similarly, if you sell a stock on Monday, the settlement occurs the next working day.

Settlement Holidays delay the deposit of shares in the Demat account by one day. In other words, they add an extra working day to settle the Demat account. Settlement Holidays occur when depositories are closed or on bank holidays, and in this case, May 5 is a bank holiday.

According to the Indian Clearing Corporation Limited’s (ICCL) website, the next odd settlement holiday which doesn’t coincide with a stock market holiday is August 16, which is a holiday for depositories on account of Parsi New Year.

Markets on May 4: Indian markets overcame opening losses and rose in trading. Metal stocks excelled, leading the surge while robust Q4 earnings supported Indian markets, allowing investors to disregard the U.S. Federal Reserve rate increase.

The Nifty 50 index ended near the 18,250 mark, at the highest level since December 20 last year, while the BSE Sensex rose 556 Points to end the day at 61,749.

Tata Teleservices shares hit the upper circuit during the day, while HDFC shares hit a new 52-week high buoyed by strong quarterly results. Titan and Cholamandalam Finance shares performed well too after strong quarterly earnings.

Technical Analysis: Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst at HDFC Securities, stated in an email to Benzinga India that Nifty is now positioned to experience a sharp upside breakout from the critical resistance zone of around 18200-18300 levels. A decisive move above this area could reveal the next upside targets of around 18600-18700 levels in the near term. Immediate support lies at 18150-18100 levels.

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