Delivery Percentage
Delivery percentage is the proportion of total traded shares in a stock on a given day that resulted in actual delivery — i.e., the shares changed hands in demat accounts — compared to shares that were bought and sold within the same trading day (intraday positions that were squared off without delivery).
When a retail investor purchased 100 shares of a company and held them overnight — resulting in those shares arriving in the demat account — this was classified as a delivery trade. When another participant bought 100 shares in the morning and sold them before market close without ever intending to take delivery, this was classified as an intraday trade. Delivery percentage was the ratio of shares that actually changed hands in demat accounts to total shares traded across both delivery and intraday transactions.
NSE and BSE published daily delivery data for every listed stock. For any given stock on any given day, delivery percentage was calculated as: (total delivery volume ÷ total traded volume) × 100. A delivery percentage of 40% meant that 40% of the total traded shares resulted in actual change of ownership in demat accounts, while the remaining 60% represented intraday positions squared off before the end of the trading session.
Delivery percentage was used by analysts and traders as a qualitative indicator of the nature of activity in a stock. High delivery percentages — typically above 50–60% — were interpreted as suggesting that buyers were taking genuine investment positions, indicating conviction-driven participation rather than speculative intraday activity. Very low delivery percentages, particularly in a stock experiencing a sharp price move, suggested the move was driven primarily by intraday speculation or derivatives-related hedging activity, and might lack the institutional conviction needed for a sustained directional move.
In the context of F&O (Futures and Options) segment activity, delivery percentage analysis was also used alongside open interest data to understand whether derivatives positioning was building up alongside cash market conviction or diverging from it. Stocks entering a sustained uptrend often showed progressively rising delivery percentages as more participants accumulated positions rather than trading them intraday.
However, delivery percentage had significant limitations as a standalone signal. Institutional block trades, operator-driven activity, and BTST (Buy Today Sell Tomorrow) trades could artificially inflate or deflate the metric. Like all market microstructure indicators, delivery percentage was most useful when interpreted alongside other data points — price action, volume trends, open interest, and sector context — rather than in isolation.