Sensex Live Price, Chart & Market Data

The S&P BSE Sensex (Sensitive Index, commonly the 'Sensex') is the oldest equity benchmark in India and the headline index for the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). It comprises the 30 largest and most-actively-traded stocks listed on the BSE — a curated basket maintained by the BSE's index committee. Like its global peer the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Sensex was originally designed with a small constituent count to make daily calculations tractable in a pre-computer era; unlike the Dow, the Sensex transitioned to free-float market-cap weighting in September 2003, making it methodologically more modern than the Dow.

Sectorally the Sensex mirrors the Nifty 50 fairly closely — financials (~30%), IT services (~16%), oil & gas (~12%), consumer goods (~10%), automobiles (~6%) — although the smaller 30-stock basket means single-stock concentration is higher. Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Infosys and TCS together account for roughly 55% of total Sensex weight in 2026.

The Sensex was launched on 1 January 1986 with a base value of 100 set retroactively to 1978-79 fiscal year. It is India's oldest continuously-calculated equity index. The Sensex's history closely tracks India's broader economic liberalisation story: it was below 1,000 throughout the 1980s, crossed 1,000 in 1990, crashed -57% during the 1992 Harshad Mehta scam, recovered through the late 1990s, suffered a -50% drawdown during the 2000 dot-com bust, and then began the historic 2003-2008 bull run that took the index from 3,000 to 21,000.

Sensex round-number milestones: 5,000 (October 1999), 10,000 (February 2006), 20,000 (October 2007), 30,000 (April 2017), 50,000 (January 2021), 60,000 (September 2021), 75,000 (April 2024). The fastest 10,000-point gain came between 50,000 and 60,000 (just 8 months). Major drawdowns: 1992 (-57%), 2000 (-50%), 2008 (-61%), 2020 (-38% in 4 weeks), 2022 (-18%).

BSE shares the same trading hours as NSE (both regulated by SEBI under a common framework). In IST:

Read the Sensex alongside the Nifty 50, not as a separate signal. The two indices share 27+ common constituents and move with correlation > 0.98 on a daily basis. Meaningful divergences are rare and usually arise from corporate-action timing differences or single-stock events specific to a Sensex-only constituent. For institutional purposes, Nifty is the preferred benchmark; for retail / mainstream media, Sensex remains the headline number.

Diwali Muhurat trading is a uniquely Indian tradition — the BSE conducts a brief one-hour evening session on Diwali day for symbolic auspicious trades. The Muhurat session is largely ceremonial; meaningful volume is minimal but participation is high among retail investors.