Stock Market Calendar

What a stock market calendar shows

A stock market calendar is a single, dated view of the events that can affect a listed company and its shareholders. Instead of hunting through dozens of company announcements, you see everything scheduled — today, this week or this month — in one place. The EquityTimer calendar is organised into two calendars you can switch between:

• Stock Results & Events — company-level dates: board-meeting results, dividends, bonus issues, stock splits, rights issues, buybacks, mergers and capital reductions.
• Economic Calendar — economy-wide releases: central-bank rate decisions, inflation, jobs and growth data, with expected, actual and previous figures.

Each calendar can be viewed for India (NSE- and BSE-listed companies) or the United States (Nasdaq), and filtered by date range. The table below summarises the company-level event types the calendar tracks.

Ex-date and record date explained

Two dates decide whether you actually receive a dividend, bonus or other benefit: the record date and the ex-date. They are simple once you see how they fit together.

• The record date is the day the company checks its shareholder register. If your name is on the register that day, you are eligible for the corporate action.
• The ex-date (ex-dividend date) is the practical cut-off for buyers. Buy before the ex-date and you are eligible; buy on or after it and you are not — the seller keeps the benefit.

Why T+1 makes them line up

Indian markets settle on a T+1 basis — a trade completes one working day after it is placed. Because of this, the ex-date and record date now commonly fall on the same day. In practice, to stay eligible you need to own the shares at least one trading day before the ex-date and hold them through it, so the transfer is settled and your name is on the register in time. This is exactly why the calendar shows an ex-date and a record date that are often identical — it reflects how settlement actually works, not an error.

A worked example

Suppose a company declares a dividend with a record date of Wednesday. Under T+1 the ex-date is effectively the same Wednesday. To be eligible you must have bought by Tuesday so the shares settle into your account in time. Buy on Wednesday itself and the trade settles too late — you miss that dividend, and whoever sold you the shares receives it. The share price also tends to adjust downward on the ex-date by roughly the dividend amount, since new buyers will not receive the payout.

Dividends, bonus, splits, rights & other actions

“Corporate actions” are decisions a company takes that affect its shares. Here is what each one on the calendar means, in plain terms, and why the dates matter.

Dividend

A share of profits paid in cash, quoted as an amount per share. Dividends may be interim (declared during the year), final (approved at the annual general meeting) or special (a one-off). Eligibility follows the ex-date and record date described in the previous tab.

Bonus issue

Free extra shares in a fixed ratio — for example, one bonus share for every two held (a 1:2 bonus). Your number of shares rises while the price adjusts proportionally, so the total value of your holding is broadly unchanged on the day.

Stock split

A share is divided into several shares of smaller face value — say one ₹10 share becoming five ₹2 shares. The company’s value does not change; the shares simply become more numerous and individually cheaper, which can improve affordability and liquidity.

Rights issue

An invitation to existing shareholders to buy new shares, usually at a discount to the market price, in proportion to what they already hold. It is a way for the company to raise fresh capital from its own investors.

Buyback

The company repurchases its own shares, reducing the number in circulation. Companies do this to return surplus cash to shareholders or to consolidate ownership.

Merger & capital reduction

A merger (or amalgamation, or spin-off) restructures how companies or divisions are combined or separated. A capital reduction formally lowers the company’s share capital, sometimes returning cash to holders. Both are less frequent but appear on the calendar when scheduled.

How to track results and earnings dates

A company’s results (called earnings in the US) are among the most watched dates on any market calendar, because they reveal how the business actually performed.

India: forthcoming results

Indian companies announce a board meeting date at which quarterly or annual results will be approved and published. The calendar’s Results tab lists these forthcoming board meetings — the company name and the scheduled date — so you can see which companies report and when. The figures themselves are released on the meeting day.

US: earnings with consensus estimates

For US companies, the calendar shows scheduled earnings dates along with a consensus EPS — the average earnings-per-share figure analysts expect. Comparing the reported result against this expectation is a large part of how the market reacts to US earnings.

India results do not carry a consensus EPS figure. Broad analyst-estimate data of that kind is not published in the same freely available way for Indian companies, so the calendar shows the scheduled date without an expectation column — a factual difference between the two markets, not a missing feature.

Reading the economic calendar

The Economic Calendar tracks economy-wide events rather than single companies — the releases that can move whole markets. Typical entries include central-bank interest-rate decisions (the RBI in India, the Federal Reserve in the US), inflation (CPI), employment data and growth (GDP) figures.

Expected, actual and previous

Each economic event shows up to three figures:

• Expected — the consensus forecast before the release: what economists, on average, anticipate.
• Actual — the figure once officially published.
• Previous — the value from the prior period, for context.

The gap between expected and actual is what markets react to: a result far from the forecast is a “surprise” that can move currencies, bonds and equities. The EquityTimer economic calendar can be viewed for all countries at once or filtered to a single country, and the expected figure is shown where a published consensus is available.

How to use the EquityTimer calendar

The calendar above this article is free and needs no login. Here is how to get around it.

1 · Choose the calendar type

Use the tabs at the top to switch between Stock Results & Events and the Economic Calendar. Each opens its own view for the same country.

2 · Pick a country

Toggle between India and USA. India shows NSE/BSE corporate actions and results; the US view shows Nasdaq dividends, splits and earnings. Selecting a country opens its own clean page.

3 · Choose an event type

Within Stock Results & Events, the left rail lists each event type — Dividend, Results, Bonus, Split, Rights, Buyback, Merger, Capital Reduction — with a live count beside it. Click one to see only those events.

4 · Set a date range

Use the range chips — Today, Next 7 days, Next 30 days, Next 60 days — to widen or narrow the window. Dates are grouped into day-by-day accordions you can expand.

5 · Filter the economic calendar by country

On the Economic Calendar, a country dropdown lets you see every country’s events together or narrow to one — India, USA and others.

What’s covered for India and the US

The calendar covers two markets, and the two are not identical — some event types exist for India but have no equivalent scheduled feed in the US. The table shows what appears for each.

Why some are India-only

Bonus issues, rights issues, buybacks, mergers and capital reductions are published as scheduled corporate-action events by the Indian exchanges, so the calendar can list them with dates. In the US, those same actions are disclosed through regulatory filings rather than a dated calendar feed, so there is no equivalent scheduled list to show — the US view focuses on dividends, splits and earnings, which do have reliable calendar data.

India corporate-action and results data is sourced from the BSE; US dividend, split and earnings data from Nasdaq. Dates and amounts are as announced by companies and exchanges and may be revised.