Simple, practical explainers on the stock market, IPOs and investing.
Looking for one term? The A–Z glossary lists every explainer on one page.
25 articles
Volume counts how many shares changed hands; turnover is the rupee value of those trades. Price bridges the two, which is why identical volumes can move wildly different amounts of money.
The bid is the highest price a buyer is offering for a share and the ask is the lowest a seller will accept. The gap between them — the bid-ask spread — is what trading immediately costs on NSE or BSE.
A market order executes immediately at the best price the order book offers; a limit order executes only at your named price or better. One buys certainty of execution, the other certainty of price.
A bull market is a sustained broad rise in share prices; a bear market is a deep, extended decline. Neither label has an official definition in India — here is how each is applied and misread.
In India, large cap means the top 100 listed companies by market capitalisation, mid cap the 101st to 250th, and small cap everything after — a rank-based line that AMFI redraws every six months.
Market capitalization is the current share price multiplied by a company's outstanding shares — the market value of its equity, and the number behind index weights and fund cap categories.
To buy your first share in India, open a trading account with a SEBI-registered broker and a demat account, fund it, and place one order on NSE or BSE — the shares reach your demat account on T+1.
A trading account sends buy and sell orders to the exchange; a demat account holds your securities after settlement. One executes transactions, the other stores ownership.
The Sensex tracks 30 large companies on BSE; the Nifty 50 tracks 50 on NSE. Their constituents overlap heavily, so the two almost always move in the same direction — but never by the same points.
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