Sensex, Nifty hit life-high: Investors rejoice as nearly a third of stocks return over 100%

With the benchmark Sensex and Nifty hitting new highs today, investors’ wealth surged by a whopping Rs 26.35 lakh crore in the first 10 months of calendar 2014 from Rs 70.44 lakh crore to Rs 96.79 lakh crore.

In other words, on an average, investors gained Rs 12,916 crore per trading session in 2014 so far. The benchmark Sensex rose whopping 31.62 percent (6,695.15 points) from 21,170.68 on 31 December 2013 to 27,865.83 on 31 October 2014. The National Stock Exchange’s Nifty also surged 32.01 percent (or 2,018.20 points) from 6,304 from the start of the year to 8,322.20 now.

Foreign institutional/ portfolio investors, the main drivers of this rally, pumped in Rs 82,000 crore in 2014 so far in Indian equities while domestic mutual funds have made an investment of Rs 15,000 crore.

All the 30 stocks that constitute the Sensex have turned gainers during Janauary-October 2014. Passenger car major Maruti Suzuki with 89.8 percent gain led the gainers among Sensex companies, followed by Axis Bank (up 68.6 percent), Cipla (63.3 percent), Gail India (59.9 percent) and Larsen & Tourbo (53.40 percent).

In absolute terms, ONGC emerged as the top gainer with Rs 99,329 crore rise in market capitalisation during 2014 thus far. It is followed by TCS (market cap up Rs 82,177 crore) SBI (Rs 79,655 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs 60,524 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs 59,576 crore).

The broader markets gave even higher returns compared with the Sensex and Nifty. The BSE 500 Index rose 35 percent, while the BSE Midcap and Smallcap index rose 47 percent and 67 percent, respectively.

All sectoral indices recorded positive returns. The BSE Consumer Durable Index topped the list with 70.1 percent return. The BSE Capital Goods Index (up 54.4 percent), BSE Auto Index (51.3 percent), BSE Bankex (49.3 percent) and BSE Healthcare (42.6 percent) followed.

Out of every five stocks, four turned gainers in 2014 so far. That means out of total actively traded 2,500 stocks on the BSE, 2,000 gave positive returns to investors. Out of the 2,000 gainers, nearly 700 stocks gave more than 100 percent returns to the investors.

However, there are 470 stocks that have disappointed investors by posting negative returns ranging between 1 percent and 98 percent. The top wealth destroyers were includes Jindal Steel, which witnessed a market cap fall of Rs 9,655 crore, Cairn India (Rs 8,505 crore), Bhushan Steel (Rs 8,477 crore), DLF (Rs 7,369 crore) and JP Associates (Rs 4,553 crore).