Introduction

MCX bhavcopy is the official end-of-day price report published by the Multi Commodity Exchange of India after each trading session. The word "bhavcopy" combines two Hindi words — bhaav (price) and copy (record) — and the term has been part of Indian market vocabulary since the BSE first published paper bhavcopy sheets in the pre-digital era. For MCX, it is now a downloadable data file that lists the closing settlement price, traded volume, and open interest for every active commodity futures contract on that day.

If you are a commodity trader, broker, or analyst working with MCX data, the bhavcopy is the authoritative source for end-of-day figures. All other sources — apps, terminals, aggregators — ultimately derive their closing prices from the same MCX bhavcopy data.

What MCX Bhavcopy Contains

Each row in the MCX bhavcopy corresponds to one active contract. The standard columns are:

  • Instrument Type — futures (FUTCOM) or options (OPTFUT)
  • Symbol — the commodity code (GOLD, SILVER, CRUDEOIL, COPPER, NATURALGAS, ZINC, LEAD, ALUMINIUM, NICKEL, COTTON, etc.)
  • Expiry Date — the contract month, typically in DD-MMM-YYYY format
  • Open — the session's opening price in INR per the contract unit
  • High / Low — the intraday range
  • Close — the official settlement price used for daily mark-to-market
  • Previous Close — the prior session's settlement price
  • Volume — number of lots traded in that session
  • Open Interest (OI) — the number of outstanding contracts yet to be settled
  • OI Change — the net change in open interest from the previous session
  • Value — total traded value in INR lakhs

The settlement price in the bhavcopy is not always the same as the last traded price. MCX uses a volume-weighted average of the last 30 minutes of trading to calculate the daily settlement price, which is what gets used for mark-to-market margining across all broker accounts overnight.

How to Access MCX Bhavcopy

MCX publishes bhavcopy data on its official website under the Market Data section. The file is available as a CSV download typically within 30–45 minutes of the 11:30 PM IST market close. The historical archive goes back several years and allows date-range downloads.

The data is free to access and does not require a login. Third-party platforms including NSE-affiliated data feeds, broker terminals, and financial data aggregators also redistribute the same file, often in processed or cleaned formats.

For systematic use — backtesting strategies, building OI trackers, or logging settlement prices — the raw CSV from MCX is the cleanest source since it avoids any reformatting errors introduced downstream.

How Traders Use It

Mark-to-market reconciliation. The closing settlement price in the bhavcopy is what your broker uses to compute daily MTM profit or loss. If your terminal shows a different closing price, the bhavcopy figure overrides it — this is the number that affects your margin account.

Open interest tracking. OI change is one of the most watched signals in MCX commodity analysis. Rising OI alongside rising prices suggests fresh long positions entering the market, a bullish confirmation. Falling OI on a price rally suggests short covering rather than new buying — a structurally weaker signal. The bhavcopy gives you this data for every commodity and every active expiry simultaneously.

Spread and roll analysis. Traders monitoring the spread between near-month and far-month contracts — to decide when to roll positions — can track both contract rows in the same bhavcopy file. The bhavcopy shows all active expiries for each commodity, making spread calculations straightforward.

Historical backtesting. Quants and systematic traders use the daily bhavcopy archive to build price series for commodities. Since MCX does not publish a single continuous-price series natively, most commodity databases are constructed by stitching together successive bhavcopy files, rolling over contracts at expiry.

Circuit and limit checks. For volatile sessions, the bhavcopy confirms whether a contract hit its daily circuit limit (typically ±4% or ±6% depending on the commodity), which affects the validity of any orders placed near those levels.

What to Watch

  • MCX market close time — 11:30 PM IST on weekdays; bhavcopy uploads follow within the hour
  • Settlement price vs. last traded price — discrepancies flag thin end-of-session liquidity
  • OI build in far-month contracts — signals institutional position-taking ahead of expected macro moves
  • Unusual volume spikes on near expiry — can indicate forced liquidation or delivery-related unwinding
  • MCX holiday calendar — no bhavcopy on exchange holidays; the next session's OI carries forward
  • SEBI circulars on position limits — changes to lot sizes or position limits alter what OI numbers mean in absolute terms