Mumbai, December 31: Come Saturday, the BSE Sensex, the barometer of domestic stock market, is all set to enter its silver jubilee year.
The 30-scrip Sensex was launched by the Bombay Stock Exchange, the oldest bourse in the entire Asian continent, on January 2,1986 with 1978/79 as the base year. It had closed that day at 549.43 points.
A booklet on the Sensex released by the premier exchange giving reasons for compiling the index on that day said: “The absence of an index number of equity prices to reflect the general trend of the market was felt for a long time by investors and also by newspapers who do not compile their own index numbers.
With this end in view, the exchange started compiling and publishing a sensitive index number of share prices from January 2, 1986.
–Agencies