Organised marketplaces where shares and other securities are bought and sold (stock exchanges), and the benchmark numbers that track the price movement of a representative basket of shares (indices).
- The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), founded in 1875, is Asia's oldest stock exchange; the National Stock Exchange (NSE), set up in 1992 and operational from 1994, pioneered fully electronic, screen-based trading.
- The Sensex is the BSE benchmark of 30 large, financially sound companies; the Nifty 50 is the NSE benchmark of 50 leading companies.
- Trades settle through depositories (NSDL and CDSL) in dematerialised form; settlement in India follows a T+1 cycle (trade plus one working day).
- Stock exchanges are regulated by concept sebi; they are the secondary market for capital market instruments.
- Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) trade actively here, so indices are sensitive to global flows and FII sentiment.
BSE (1875, Sensex of 30) versus NSE (Nifty 50), the T+1 settlement and SEBI regulation are clean static facts that appear regularly.
Sensex (BSE, 30 stocks) versus Nifty (NSE, 50 stocks); a stock exchange is the trading platform, while an index is only a measure of price movement.
BSE (1875, Sensex of 30) and NSE (1994, Nifty 50) are the main exchanges; SEBI-regulated, T+1 settlement via NSDL and CDSL.