Simple, practical explainers on the stock market, IPOs and investing.
Looking for one term? The A–Z glossary lists every explainer on one page.
88 articles
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.
NSE and BSE are India's two SEBI-regulated stock exchanges. They share depositories and settlement rules but run separate order books, indices and symbols, so one share can show two prices.
BZ is NSE's series for shares of companies that have breached listing regulations. BZ stocks settle trade-for-trade: every trade ends in delivery, so intraday is impossible and price bands are narrow.
BE is NSE's trade-for-trade series: every trade must end in actual delivery and full payment, so intraday buys and sells in the same stock are never netted against each other.
EQ is NSE's series code for shares in the normal market: delivery and intraday trading are both allowed, and same-day trades are netted. The code says how a stock trades, not whether it is worth buying.
IPO updates, market explainers and new articles from CAPITA1, where you already are.