Categories: Stock Markets

Understanding Stock Index

Stock Index is the “performance measurement” section of the stock market. Among the stocks listed in the stock exchange, some similar stock is grouped to form an “index”. And this grouping is done on the basis of certain characteristics like the size of the company, sector or the industry to which it belongs to.

The value of an index is calculated by using the value of the grouped stock ( weighted index method). Thus, any changes in the price of the stock will lead to a change in the index prices. The index is “an indicator” of price change in the stock market which will help “traders” to track the market and calculate the returns on a specific instrument.

When will the Index raise?

In the stock market, prices of some items in an index will go up and down- these ups and downs in the prices will get canceled, whereas price rise on an average is more than the price fall, then the index will rise and we say inflation is rising and vice-versa.
For example, you may buy something in the market which may not reflect the trend of inflation. You go buy milk and find that the price has gone up. But, the index may be down because the price fall in fuel and other things have canceled out the price rise in the milk.

Most of the trading of Indian stock takes place in BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). In India, the BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty are considered as benchmark indices to evaluate the overall performance of the market.

What is Sensex?

For a better understanding of what is Sensex, let’s take an example of the Indian hockey team. If someone says “Indian hockey is in great form and expected to win against England”. Does it mean that every Indian can perform better than England players?
No, what actually means is that Indian players who are representing our country are performing well and there are expected to win over the other country.
Now taking this as a basis, there are the top best 30 countries that are listed in BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) that are representing the country’s economy. The index is formed taking the stock prices of these 30 companies on a pre-defined basis and it is called “SENSitive indEX”(SENSEX) which means that they are so sensitive to price change. When we say Sensex went up, it means that the prices of these 30 companies are gone up rather than fall and vice versa.
The same happens with Nifty. Nifty is a market indicator of NSE. It has a collection of 50 stocks, but presently it has 51 listed in.

What is Market Capitalization?

Now, let’s learn about market capitalization. Market capitalization (market cap) is calculated by multiplying the outstanding shares of the company to its current market price per share. Companies that are traded in the stock market are grouped into different categories. For example:

Index	Companies
Large-cap index	This index will keep track of the prices of large-cap companies.
Mid-cap index	The index tracks only the representatives of mid-cap companies.
Small-cap index	This index will track the firms which are even smaller than the mid-cap companies.
Bankex index	Tracks the stocks which are traded in the banking sector.
PSU index	Tracks the prices of PSU(Public Sector Undertakings).
Technology index	It will map the prices of tech-related firms.
Infra index	Tracks the prices of infrastructure-related stocks.
FMCG index	Tracks the prices of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).

Why stock prices go up?

Stock prices go up in the long run because as you know that the firms which are listed in the stock exchange trade their goods and services to make good profits and those companies will see good growth. Thus, rising prices reflect the growth and performance of the company.

Are stocks are the best route to get inflation-adjusted returns?

When inflation rises, the input cost of the firms will also rise. But, the company will not bear the entire cost. Instead, this cost will be passed on to the customers in the form of prices. So rise in the input cost will not affect the companies profit. Thus, we can say that stock gets protection from the effect of input price inflation.

Is investing in stock is complex?

Before investing in stock, you have various factors to consider such as size, sector, structure, etc.

All these factors are compared with the macroeconomic conditions in order to assess the capability of fund performance. So, there are speculators who will do this. As an investor, your only job is to invest your hard-earned money into the stocks and you have speculators, whose job is to track the market moves.

Thus, investing in stocks through Mutual funds is more advisable. You can get a wide range of benefits by investing in mutual funds.

Fisdom is one such platform where you can get access to a variety of funds in just one app.“Fisdom ”, which helps you select the right Mutual Fund according to your investment horizon, risk appetite, and financial necessities.