Investigating the indices

Indexing in India has come a long way from its heydays of the 80s. Apart from indices based on market cap, the Bombay Stock Exchange now hosts several sectoral indices tracking the performance of various industries.

In that spirit, we decided to investigate how the indices of Asia's oldest stock exchange have fared over the years.

We looked at the annual performance of popular BSE indices since 2009. Next, we investigated each year's top three and bottom three performers.

Here's what we found.

Key highlights

• S&P BSE Consumer durables and S&P BSE IT featured five times among the top three best performers.
• S&P BSE Telecom and S&P BSE Realty were on the worst performers list five times and six times, respectively.
• S&P BSE Telecom has been a consistent underperformer, featuring in the worst performer list five times and never once in the top performers. Similarly, S&P BSE Capital Goods and S&P BSE India Infrastructure have never ended up in the top performers bracket.
• S&P BSE Industrials has never been among the top or worst performers.
• S&P BSE Consumer discretionary and S&P BSE Energy have been consistent performers and never ended up in the worst performers list.
• In terms of market cap (i.e., Sensex, BSE 500, BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap), only S&P BSE Small Cap has been among the top (twice) and bottom (once) performers.

But investors be forewarned; we are not recommending investing based on this list. While a sector might have a consistent record of good performance, every industry is susceptible to cycles. Please do the due diligence before investing.

Suggested read: Is Sensex the most relevant indicator for you?