By IANS,
Mumbai: Indian stock markets opened flat at 6.15 p.m. Saturday for a 60-minute special Diwali trading session — also called muhurat. Five minutes into trade, a key index was ruling 0.3 percent higher.
The special session, conducted to pay obeisance to Lakshmi — the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity — also marked the New Year for traders as per the Hindu lunar calendar, or Samwat 2066.
The 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) opened at 17,452.56 points. Five minutes into trade, it stood at 17,382.2 points, 0.3 percent higher than its previous close at 17,322.82 points.
Around the same time, the S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was also marginally up at 5,152.8 points, up 0.2 percent from its last close.