BSE Bulk Deals: What BSE Publishes and When

BSE bulk deals are the large trades BSE publishes after the close each trading day, under a SEBI rule that has been in force since 2004. On 6 October 2026, SEBI's master circulars list still carried the 30 December 2024 Master Circular for Stock Exchanges and Clearing Corporations as the current one, and its recent circulars list carried no new bulk or block deal circular, so the rule below has not moved. The part that trips people up is the threshold. A bulk deal is not defined by rupee value at all. It is defined by quantity, measured against the shares of that company listed on that exchange, which is why the BSE tape and the NSE tape can tell different stories about the same day's trading in the same stock.

What is the rule behind BSE bulk deals?

It sits in Chapter 1 of SEBI's Master Circular for Stock Exchanges and Clearing Corporations (SEBI/HO/MRD-PoD2/CIR/P/2024/00181, dated 30 December 2024), which carries forward SEBI circular SEBI/MRD/SE/Cir-7/2004 of 14 January 2004. Read on 20 September 2026, paragraph 1.1 defines a bulk deal as

all transactions in a scrip (on an exchange) where the total quantity of shares bought/sold is more than 0.5% of the number of equity shares of the company listed on the exchange

and adds that the limit "can be reached through one or more transactions executed during the day in the normal market segment". Four sub-paragraphs set the disclosure mechanics, and each of them matters when you read the data.

Why the BSE tape and the NSE tape disagree

This is the single most useful thing to understand about BSE bulk deals, and it follows directly from the words "listed on the exchange".

A company's shares are listed on both exchanges, but the bulk deal test is applied exchange by exchange, against that exchange's listed quantity and on that exchange's trades. So a fund that sells a single large position can split the execution across BSE and NSE and cross 0.5 percent on neither, and it will appear on neither tape. Or it can put the whole order through one venue and appear on that venue's tape alone.

The practical consequences:

• Reading only BSE, or only NSE, gives you a partial day. If you are trying to answer "who was selling this stock", both tapes are the minimum. Flock's bulk deals page lists the NSE and BSE bulk and block deals together, each row with the client, the security, the quantity and a link to the exchange file it came from.
• An absent name is not evidence of an absent seller. The disclosure is a threshold test, not a census of large trades.
• Do not add the two tapes together without checking. A trade large enough to cross 0.5 percent on both exchanges appears twice, once on each, and counting the quantity twice overstates the position change.

Block deals do not have this problem in the same way, because their test is a rupee value on a single order rather than a per-exchange quantity ratio. The conceptual split between the two is set out in bulk deals vs block deals.

What about BSE block deals?

Block deals run under a separate SEBI framework that applies to every exchange alike, so BSE's block deal rules are NSE's block deal rules. SEBI circular SEBI/HO/MRD/POD-III/CIR/P/2025/134 dated 8 October 2025 replaced the older framework, applying from the 60th day after issue, which falls on 7 December 2025. Read on 20 September 2026 it sets:

• a morning window from 08:45 to 09:00, referenced to the previous day's closing price;
• an afternoon window from 14:05 to 14:20, referenced to the VWAP of cash-market trades in the stock between 13:45 and 14:00, which the exchanges compute and publish between 14:00 and 14:05;
• orders "within +3% of the applicable reference price", as the circular prints it, subject to surveillance measures and the stock's price bands;
• a minimum order size of 25 crore rupees, up from the 10 crore rupees the master circular still records;
• mandatory delivery: a block trade cannot be squared off or reversed.

The same conditions apply to the block deal window under the optional T+0 settlement cycle. For a column-by-column walk through an exchange record, see how to read a block deal disclosure.

How to read BSE bulk deals without over-reading them

• The trade is a fact; the motive is not. A large sale can be rebalancing, a redemption, or a promoter raising cash. The four disclosed fields do not say which.
• Date the rule, not just the trade. The block deal minimum and price band changed in December 2025. A 2024 record was made under different constraints.
• One day is one day. The value is in a client turning up repeatedly, or in the same client turning up across several names, which is the pattern behind smart money convergence.
• Cross-check against the quarterly filing. A buyer who also moves in the shareholding pattern is a position, not a day trade.

Flock ingests both exchanges' deal reports daily, stamps every row with its date, and links it back to the exchange record. The routine for running that check yourself is in how to track bulk and block deals. The trade is public. What it means for you is your call to make.