The BSE and NSE remained shut on Monday (January 15) due to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, a decision that immediately drew scrutiny because of the exchanges’ growing international linkages and foreign investor participation. While trading desks stayed idle, the commentary on X was anything but.
Zerodha Co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath set the tone with a pointed critique, framing the closure as a structural failure rather than a one-off inconvenience. “Indian stock exchanges are closed today for Mumbai’s municipal elections,” Kamath wrote, calling the move “poor planning” and a “serious lack of appreciation for second-order effects.”
Kamath went further, questioning the incentive framework behind such decisions. Quoting Charlie Munger, he said: “Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” According to Kamath, the holiday persists because “no one who matters has any incentive to oppose the market holiday,” adding that it underlines “how far we have to go before global investors take us seriously.”
That global-investor lens was echoed, albeit from a different angle, by Helios Capital’s Samir Arora. Arora pushed back on the idea that the holiday is inconsequential, raising questions around consistency and fairness for overseas participants.
“So if it does not matter to anyone who does it matter to,” Arora wrote, warning against selective logic around trading days.
I don’t follow why this closure thing is so bad: three clear positives:
1. Agar aaj market khula hota, F2s would have sold another few thousand crores
2. Market being open on Feb 1, is also a good thing, because F2s are closed, and hence, they can’t sell a few thousand crores… https://t.co/YYcxdG5nxq
— Shankar Sharma (@1shankarsharma) January 15, 2026
He flagged the broader calendar anomalies, asking why markets should be open on a Sunday merely because the Union Budget falls on February 1, and whether it is “unfair to foreign investors” if Indian exchanges trade when global markets are shut. Arora also pointed to January 1 as another example, when Indian markets are open while most global markets remain closed.
While Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on the usual date of February 1 despite it being a Sunday, stock exchanges haven’t yet announced whether they would keep the market open.
In contrast, GQuant Investech founder Shankar Sharma took a more tactical view, arguing that the holiday narrative is being overstated. Sharma listed what he called “three clear positives,” framing the closure as a short-term buffer against foreign selling pressure.
“I don’t follow why this closure thing is so bad,” Sharma wrote, arguing that if markets were open, foreign institutional investors—referred to as “F2s”—could have sold “another few thousand crores.” He added that markets being open on February 1, when foreign investors are shut, similarly limits selling pressure, and that January 1 offers the same advantage.