Diwali sweet nothings: Like soan papdi, the annual festival stock tip is admired, passed along, and almost never 'eaten'

Few objects travel as widely as a box of soan papdi. The flaky, cardamom-infused mithai arrives on Dhanteras and rests on top of the fridge for a decent interval. It then leaves with the next visitor, ribbon intact, seal unbroken. A single box can pass through 4 households before Bhai Dooj without anybody tasting it. Its purpose is social, rather than nutritional, and everyone involved understands this perfectly well.

This Sunday, on Diwali, stock exchanges will open for an hour. Muhurat trading marks the ceremonial start of Samvat 2083, the Hindu accounting year. Days running up to it, business channels will unveil their Diwali picks with the solemnity of a budget speech. Some 20 brokerages will offer 600-odd recommendations, each with a target price and a diya on the cover page.

Last year's lists promised gains on individual stocks of anywhere between 12% and 56%. The market, as it turned out, had other plans. On Muhurat 2025, Sensex closed at 84,426. A Bloomberg consensus reported that week expected 93,512 by end-Oct 2026. On Oct 29, the index stood at 74,151, some 12% below where the year began, and about a fifth short of the forecast. Nifty fell by roughly 11% over the same Samvat. Whatever each pick did on its own merits, all of them were unwrapped into a falling market.

Indians have a phrase for the economics at work here: lena-dena, the unwritten ledger of give-and-take that governs festive gifting. You sent sweets last year, so they send sweets this year, and nobody counts the calories.

The Diwali tip runs on the same ledger, and every party to it goes home content. Channels fill their festive airtime, brokerages drum up trades in a slow month, and viewers feel they have done something clever with their bonus. Nobody at the table is ever obliged to 'eat' anything.

Annual report cards observe a similar etiquette. Every October, brokerages mark their own homework, choosing dates, method and benchmark. In 2025, one large firm reported 11% return on its previous list, calculations 'based on our target prices'. Another declared 4.8% against Nifty's 3.6%, a margin of roughly ₹1 in every 100. That's about the ribbon's cost.

Good years flatter every brokerage's report card handsomely. In Samvat 2080, when Nifty rose by about a quarter, a review found that 17 of 22 brokerage picks had met their targets. When the whole market climbs that far, a target reached says more about the tide than about the swimmer.

It would be unkind to blame analysts, many of whom are diligent people. The trouble lies in the format: a 12-mth price for a single stock, delivered on TV during a festival. Even professionals with research departments and no festive deadline find the game hard. S&P Dow Jones Indices, which keeps score, reports that 76% of India's active large-cap funds trailed their benchmark over the 10 yrs to 2025, and 84% over 5. A festival list must be right about the company, price and year at once. That is a tall order for a document with a diya on the cover.

Wall Street veteran Fred Schwed's 1940 book, Where Are the Customers' Yachts?, describes a visitor to New York being shown handsome yachts of bankers and brokers in the harbour. He looks around for a while and asks where the customers' yachts are.

86 yrs on, the question has aged better than most stock tips. A brokerage earns on the trade, whether the pick works out or not. That is not a scandal. It's merely a business model, though this might be of use to be printed on the 'box' beside the expiry date.

None of this obliges the recipient to be rude about the gift. A tip, like a sweet, can be accepted graciously and set aside without fuss. The humble index SIP buys a little of every company each month, including ones nobody bothered to gift-wrap. Over the past decade, it beat roughly 3 in 4 professional large-cap funds. It won't appear on TV this week, and it has never needed a 'muhurat'.

Grandmothers have long enforced one sensible rule of Diwali gifting: before a box is passed along, somebody please check the date stamp on the bottom. Investors might apply the same test to last year's list from the same shop. Whatever fails, it can stay on top of the fridge, ready for next year's Diwali.