Opening Auction Session
The 09:00–09:15 opening auction, the opening print against yesterday's auction close, futures-implied cash and GIFT NIFTY, the 09:30 gap verdict and the session-by-session history — NIFTY to SENSEX, every morning on both exchanges.
What this page tracks
From 7 September 2026 the 09:00–09:15 pre-open on NSE and BSE is an Open Auction Session that works like the Closing Auction Session: market and limit orders are collected until 09:05, only limit orders from 09:05 to a random close between 09:08 and 09:10, orders are matched at 09:10–09:12 to set each stock's opening price, and continuous trading starts at 09:15. The opening print is therefore an auction price — and since August 2026 the previous day's official close is one too, often a number the futures market refused. This page tracks that argument every morning for NIFTY, SENSEX, BANKNIFTY, BANKEX and the other tracked indices: yesterday's auction close next to what futures said the index was really worth, the GIFT NIFTY read, what the data feed shows during the auction, the opening print measured against all of them, and whether the opening gap held or faded by 09:30.
Watch the tutorial
Opening Auction, section by section, in a 4-minute video, also in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
Watch in
How to read it
- Yesterday's auction close — the official closing price, set by the closing auction. Next to it is futures-implied cash — where futures said the index was worth at the close. When the two disagree, the open usually has to pick a side.
- Opening print — the index's official open, built from the auction prices. The gap is shown three ways: against the auction close (the number every gap screener uses), against futures-implied cash, and against the last continuous price before yesterday's freeze.
- Open vs futures-implied open — the index's front-month future's own opening print (its auction match, or its first trade at the bell) minus yesterday's live basis. A large gap here means the cash auction and the futures market disagree about where the index really is.
- Gap verdict (09:30) — how much of the opening gap the market gave back by 09:30. Half or more retraced counts as "faded", less as "held"; an open within 0.1% of the previous close is a "flat open" and is not scored.
- Feed indicative — exchanges publish an indicative index while auction orders are collected. If the data feed relays it, the dashed part of the chart shows it and the page compares the final open with the last indicative value; if the feed just holds the previous close, the page says so.
- GIFT NIFTY read — where GIFT NIFTY stood going into the bell, the cash open it implied and how far the actual open landed from it.
- Opening flow (09:15–09:30) — how much call, put and futures open interest was added or shed in the first fifteen minutes — whether the open was met with fresh positions or with closing ones.
- The phase strip — the morning's steps from order entry to the 09:15 bell and the 15-minute gap test, with the current one lit; the line under it names the session, the expiry and the rules in force. Pick the index at the top, and switch open interest between quantity and lots with Qty or Lots.
- History — one row per session: previous close, open, gap, the gap against futures-implied cash, the 09:30 price, how much was given back and the verdict; EXP marks an expiry day and old a morning under the pre-auction rules. The chips above it count how many gaps faded by 09:30, how often the previous closing print faded at the open, and the average gap. Click any row to replay that morning's chart and cards.
Frequently asked questions
The restructured 09:00–09:15 pre-open session on NSE and BSE, effective 7 September 2026 under SEBI's circular of 16 January 2026. It mirrors the Closing Auction Session: market and limit orders are accepted from 09:00 to 09:05, only limit orders from 09:05 to a random close between 09:08 and 09:10 (market orders can no longer be changed or cancelled), orders are matched from 09:10 to 09:12 to set each stock's opening price, and continuous trading starts at 09:15. It applies to the cash segment and to equity derivatives.
The old session took all orders until a random close between 09:07 and 09:08 and matched from 09:08. Now market orders are only accepted in the first five minutes and cannot be modified afterwards, limit-order entry runs longer with the random close between 09:08 and 09:10, matching starts at 09:10, and market orders get priority over limit orders when matching. The 09:15 bell and the overall 15-minute length are unchanged.
Yes. SEBI's circular sets one date for all exchanges, and BSE issued its own notices (20260803-35 for equity and 20260803-36 for derivatives) for 7 September 2026. Switch the index selector to SENSEX or BANKEX to follow the BSE sessions; if an exchange ever runs on a different schedule the page labels that index's phases accordingly.
Since the closing auction started in August 2026, the official close has repeatedly printed 100–200 points away from where futures said the index was worth, and the next open has tended to land near the futures view. A gap measured against the auction print can therefore be mostly an artefact of the close. Measuring it against futures-implied cash shows how much of the gap was real.
Exchanges publish an indicative index while orders are collected. This page samples the data feed every 30 seconds from 08:58 and plots whatever it relays: an indicative index that moves, a previous close being held, or the matched open once it appears. The final open is then compared with the last indicative value, so you can see how much the random close and matching changed things.
It is a track record, not a signal. Over many sessions it shows how often an opening gap of a given size was given back by 09:30 — the evidence behind the classic gap-fade trade. Read it together with the futures-implied gap: a gap that exists only against the auction close has usually been the first to disappear.
They are the two halves of the same day. The Closing Auction page records the afternoon print and how far it sat from futures; this page records what the next morning's auction did with it, and both pages keep the same verdict for each session.