What a normal delivery percentage actually looks like
A delivery percentage around 50 is unremarkable. Most commentary treating 40 as low is describing the middle of the pack.
Delivery percentage is one of the few genuinely Indian additions to the standard technical toolkit, and one of the least well documented. It's in every NSE bhavcopy, it appears on our stock pages, and almost nobody publishes what a normal value actually looks like.
So here's the distribution, measured across 1,710 non-ETF stocks in a single session.
What it measures
When shares trade on NSE, some transactions result in actual delivery — shares moving from one demat account to another. Others are squared off within the same session, so no delivery occurs.
Delivery percentage is the share of the day's traded volume that resulted in delivery. A stock with 60% delivery saw most of its volume settle as real share transfer. One with 20% saw most of its volume as intraday churn that netted out by the close.
The actual distribution
| Decile | Delivery % |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 31.1 |
| 20th | 38.7 |
| 25th (Q1) | 41.4 |
| 40th | 47.8 |
| 50th (median) | 51.1 |
| 60th | 54.5 |
| 75th (Q3) | 60.0 |
| 80th | 62.1 |
| 90th | 67.9 |
The median is 51.1%, and half the market sits between 41.4% and 60.0%. Only 9.1% of stocks came in below 30%, and 8.4% above 70%.
That's the single most useful thing here: a delivery percentage around 50 is unremarkable. Commentary treating 40% as notably low or 60% as notably high is describing ordinary middle-of-the-pack values.
It varies systematically by size
| Index tier | Median delivery % | Stocks |
|---|---|---|
| Nifty 50 | 60.5 | 50 |
| Rest of NSE | 51.5 | 1,210 |
| Nifty Midcap 150 | 49.4 | 142 |
| Nifty Smallcap 250 | 47.2 | 246 |
Large caps deliver more. The Nifty 50 median is roughly 13 percentage points above the smallcap median, which fits the intuition that index-tier names attract more position-taking and less short-horizon churn.
The practical consequence: comparing a smallcap's delivery percentage against a large-cap benchmark will make it look weak when it may be entirely typical for its tier.
The ratio we actually use
Method
Alongside the raw percentage we compute a delivery ratio — the day's delivery percentage relative to the stock's own recent norm. Across the same universe its median is 1.04, with quartiles at 0.89 and 1.16.
A ratio near 1 means today's delivery mix was typical for that stock. Above 1 means more of the volume stuck than usual; below 1 means more churn than usual.
The ratio is the more informative of the two, because it normalises away the tier effect above. A smallcap at 47% delivery is unremarkable; the same smallcap at 47% when it normally runs 30% is a change worth noticing.
Does it predict anything?
We haven't published a measurement of delivery percentage against forward returns, so we make no claim. It's on the list, and it will be tested the same way as everything else — pre-specified horizons, market-matched excess returns, and a t-statistic that has to clear our bar.
What we can say is that the delivery ratio is one of the factors carrying real weight in our internal scoring precisely because it is one of the few with a measured result on our own data rather than inherited reputation. The distribution above is the groundwork for that: you can't interpret a value without knowing what normal looks like.
Key takeaways
- Delivery percentage is the share of traded volume that settled as actual share transfer.
- Median across 1,710 non-ETF stocks was 51.1%, with the middle half between 41.4% and 60.0%.
- Only 9.1% of stocks came in below 30% and 8.4% above 70%.
- It varies systematically by size: Nifty 50 median 60.5% vs smallcap 47.2%.
- The delivery ratio — today versus that stock's own norm — normalises away the tier effect.
See these ideas on real stocks
StockLearn runs this read on ~2,000 NSE stocks every evening. Nifty 50 is free, no login.
Browse today's scan →This guide reports measured market statistics from a single session's data. It is educational and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.