Simple, practical explainers on the stock market, IPOs and investing.
Looking for one term? The A–Z glossary lists every explainer on one page.
123 articles
Face value is the fixed nominal value a company assigns to each share. It anchors share capital, splits and percentage dividends — and has almost nothing to do with market price.
The upper circuit is the highest price a stock can trade at in a session and the lower circuit is the lowest, both set from the previous close. Hitting one blocks orders beyond it — it does not halt trading.
A circuit limit is the most a price can move in one session: stocks get daily bands of 2-20% around the previous close, and the whole market halts on a 10, 15 or 20% index move.
Number of trades counts matched executions, while volume counts shares. Volume divided by trades gives average trade size — a quick read on whether activity was many small orders or a few large ones.
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.
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