Delivery Percentage in Stocks: How to Read NSE Delivery Data Properly

A stock jumps 17% on forty-five times its normal volume, and someone on a trading channel calls it “heavy buying”. Then you open NSE’s delivery file and find that only 9.42% of those shares were actually delivered. So which is it? That gap is exactly why delivery percentage in stocks is worth understanding properly. It tells you what share of a day’s traded quantity was carried past the session instead of being squared off. It’s a useful number. It is also one of the most misread numbers on Dalal Street. Below we go through how NSE calculates it, where to get it, and four real examples from the week ended October 16, 2026, pulled straight from NSE’s Security-wise Delivery Position data. If you’ve never opened an exchange data file before, our walkthrough of the NSE bhavcopy is a good place to start.

Educational content only. Not investment advice. The stocks below are used only to show how the data reads, not as recommendations.

What delivery percentage in stocks actually measures

Every trading day, NSE publishes two quantities for each stock. The first is the total traded quantity: every share that changed hands during the session. The second is the deliverable quantity: the shares that are still owed to someone once the day’s buying and selling has been netted out. Divide the second by the first and multiply by 100, and you have the delivery percentage.

Take HDFC Bank on October 16, 2026. NSE’s file shows 2,89,36,902 shares traded and 1,91,44,210 shares deliverable. Do the division and you get 66.16%, which is the exact figure NSE prints in its last column. No adjustments, no hidden weighting. It really is that simple.

The reason the two numbers differ is intraday trading. If a trader buys 500 shares at 10 am and sells the same 500 at 2 pm, both trades show up in the traded quantity, but nothing is left to settle. India runs on a T+1 settlement cycle, so shares bought and held move into the buyer’s demat account the next working day, while intraday positions that are closed the same day never get there, as Upstox’s explainer on trade volume versus delivery volume lays out.

One detail many people miss: NSE’s daily MTO file labels the column “Deliverable Quantity (gross across client level)”. In plain terms, a single client’s same-day buy and sell cancel each other out, but trades by two different clients don’t. So the figure is about netting per client, not about anyone’s intentions.

Where to find NSE delivery data

You don’t need a paid terminal for this. NSE lists the report as “CM – Security-wise Delivery Positions” on its All Reports page, under the capital market section. There are two common ways to pull it:

• The full bhavcopy with delivery columns (NSE’s sec_bhavdata_full CSV). This one is the most practical. Each row carries the symbol, series, previous close, open, high, low, close, average price, traded quantity, turnover, number of trades, deliverable quantity and delivery percentage, all in one line.
• The MTO file, a plain-text security-wise delivery position report that gives traded quantity, deliverable quantity and the percentage for each symbol.

Most broker apps also show a delivery figure on the quote page. That’s fine for a glance, but when you want to compare a stock against its own past, the CSV is far easier to work with. Download five or ten days, put them in a spreadsheet, and filter by symbol.

A quick note on the series column. Stick to one series, normally EQ, when you compare days, so you’re always looking at the same kind of trading.

Delivery percentage is a ratio. A ratio can fall while the thing you actually care about, the number of shares changing owners, goes up ten times.

Example one: a 17% jump with only 9.42% delivery

Here’s the case from the opening. HBL Engineering (NSE: HBLENGINE) closed at Rs 833.15 on October 16, 2026, against a previous close of Rs 710.45. That’s a gain of 17.27% in one session. We’re not getting into why the stock moved; the point here is what the delivery columns show.

Source: NSE Security-wise Delivery Position data (sec_bhavdata_full files) for each date, EQ series.

Read only the last column and you’d say interest collapsed: 9.42% against a range of 36% to 47% in the five sessions before. Read the quantities and the story flips. Over those five sessions the stock averaged about 8.64 lakh shares traded and 3.47 lakh delivered a day. On October 16, traded volume was roughly 45 times that average, and delivered shares were about 10.6 times the average.

So both things were true at once. Far more shares changed owners than usual. And an enormous amount of the day’s trading, around 3.54 crore shares, was churned within the session and never settled. A low percentage on a huge-volume day usually means intraday traders piled in. It doesn’t mean nobody bought to hold.

Example two: high delivery on a strong day

Bharti Airtel (NSE: BHARTIARTL) gives the opposite picture. On October 16 it closed at Rs 1,905 against Rs 1,854 the day before, a rise of 2.75%. Traded quantity was 2,54,84,107 shares, and 2,05,47,851 of them were deliverable. That’s a delivery percentage of 80.63%.

Context matters again. In the five sessions from October 9 to 15, Bharti’s delivery percentage sat between 63.04% and 68.12%. Average traded volume over those days was about 61.25 lakh shares, so October 16 was roughly 4.2 times normal, and delivered shares were about 5.2 times their five-day average. Higher volume, higher share of it delivered, and a rising price. This is the combination people usually mean when they say a move had “delivery backing”.

Even here we’d be careful about the label. Every delivered share was sold by someone who also settled. The file shows that a lot of shares changed hands for real, not that buyers “won”.

Example three: big volume, a big move, falling delivery

Tech Mahindra (NSE: TECHM) closed at Rs 1,790 on October 16, up 8.48% from Rs 1,650. Its traded quantity was 2,08,29,435 shares with 58,53,030 deliverable, a delivery percentage of 28.10%. In the five prior sessions the figure ranged from 35.50% to 53.23%.

Volume was about 4.8 times the five-day average, while delivered shares were about 2.8 times. Delivered quantity still rose sharply in absolute terms. What fell was the share of the day’s activity that stuck. Compare that with Bharti, where both rose together. Same day, two large-caps, two quite different trading patterns, and the price alone wouldn’t have told you that.

Example four: high delivery on a flat day

HDFC Bank’s 66.16% on October 16 was its highest in the six sessions we pulled; on the five days before it ranged from 55.40% to 60.21%. Yet the stock closed at Rs 728.85 against Rs 726.85, a move of just 0.28%.

That’s the lesson people find hardest to accept. A high delivery reading doesn’t push the price anywhere. Plenty of shares can move from one long-term holder to another at roughly the same price, with sellers as keen as buyers. Delivery tells you about the type of trading. It says nothing on its own about direction.

High delivery tells you shares changed owners for real. It doesn’t tell you whether the new owner or the old one made the smarter call.

A simple way to read delivery data

Here’s the routine we’d suggest for any stock you’re looking at:

1. Build a baseline. Pull at least five to ten sessions. A large private bank and a small trading favourite live in completely different ranges, so a single day’s percentage means little without the stock’s own history.
2. Check both quantities, not just the ratio. As HBL Engineering showed, delivered shares can jump ten-fold while the percentage falls to a fraction of its usual level.
3. Line it up with price and volume. Rising price, rising volume and a rising delivery share is a different animal from rising price, rising volume and a falling delivery share. Our piece on volume confirmation in trading covers the volume side in more detail.
4. Look at several days, not one. One unusual reading can be a block of shares moving between two institutions. A pattern over a week or two says more.
5. Check for events. Results, index changes, block deals, and corporate actions can all distort a single session’s delivery number.

Where the number misleads people

Most of the trouble comes from treating delivery percentage as a signal on its own. A few traps we see often:

• “High delivery means accumulation.” Not necessarily. Every delivered share has a seller who also delivered. The file doesn’t say who was more eager.
• Comparing across stocks. An index heavyweight sitting at 60% and a small-cap at 30% might both be perfectly normal for those names. Compare a stock with itself.
• Ignoring thin volume. A 90% reading on a few thousand shares in an illiquid stock can be one investor’s order. The percentage looks dramatic; the quantity is tiny.
• Reading intraday figures as final. The end-of-day file is the one to rely on. A delivery number seen during market hours can still change as positions are closed.
• Forgetting derivatives. Delivery data covers the cash segment only. Positions built in futures and options don’t appear in it at all.

Putting delivery data to work

We find delivery data most useful as a filter, not a trigger. When a stock breaks out of a range, it’s worth checking whether delivered quantity rose with it or whether the move was mostly intraday churn. When a stock drifts lower on rising delivery, it’s worth asking who is handing over shares and why. Neither answer gives you a trade by itself. Both make you look harder at the chart and the news, which is where the actual decision gets made.

It also pairs well with the rest of your toolkit. Delivery data sits comfortably alongside support and resistance levels, moving averages and the other basics we cover in our technical analysis guide for Indian stocks. Treat it as one more column of evidence, read in context, and it earns its place. Treat it as a buy signal and it will catch you out sooner or later.

The short version

• Delivery percentage is deliverable quantity divided by traded quantity, times 100, as published by NSE every trading day.
• The gap between the two quantities is mostly intraday trading that was squared off before settlement.
• Always read the absolute quantities next to the percentage. HBL Engineering’s delivered shares rose about ten-fold on October 16, 2026, even as its delivery percentage dropped to 9.42%.
• High delivery on a flat day, like HDFC Bank’s 66.16%, shows real ownership changes but says nothing about direction.
• Compare a stock with its own history, over several sessions, and alongside price, volume and news.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and education only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Stock prices and trading data change every session, and past figures don’t predict future moves. Consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making investment decisions.