India’s BSE Sensex Index: The Place to Be!

Indian stocks are hitting record highs, with the market capitalization of companies listed on Indian stock exchanges at more than $4 trillion as of the end of November.

India has two major stock exchanges: the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and Asia's oldest stock exchange (formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange) BSE. The BSE Sensex is known as the main India’s equity index.

The BSE Sensex is an India’s stock market index that tracks the performance of the top 30 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in India. The composition of the BSE Sensex is reviewed regularly to reflect changes in volume of trading and volatility. It has seen tremendous growth in the past 15–20 years, rising from a close of 3,377 in 2002 to just under 20,287 in 2007. In March 2015 it broke 30,000 for the first time, and nowadays it’s trading near 71,337.

According to data from the World Federation of Exchanges, the rapid rise means the NSE, which has more daily trading volume than the Bombay Stock Exchange, has now overtaken Hong Kong as the seventh-largest exchange.

Even more interestingly, Refinitiv pointed out that the rise in India's stock market value means the country ranks behind the United States, China and Japan.