Sensex @ 70,000: A look at key milestones of India's heartbeat index

Extending last week's momentum, the S&P BSE Sensex hit yet another lifetime high of 70,057.83 on Monday but its journey from 60,000 to 70,000 took 548 days or 1.5 years which is second slowest by the 30-stock exchange to traverse 10,000 points. Sensex had hit the 60,000 mark on September 24, 2021.

The slowest 10,000 points journey by Sensex has been from 20,000 to 30,000 where India's oldest exchange took 2,318 days or 6.35 years.

It hit the 30,000 mark on April 26, 2017. The third slowest is 520 days or 1.42 years when the sensex moved from 30,000 to 40,000. The Sensex reached this milestone on June 3, 2019 and finished the day at 40,267.62.


The journey of Sensex at 10,000 on February 7, 2006 to 20,000 on December 11, 2007 took 463 days or 1.3 years while from 40,000 to 50,000, it took 416 days or 1.14 years. On February 3, 2021, Sensex ended at 50,255.75.

The fastest 10,000-points move was from 50,000 to 60,000, which took just 158 days or less than six months. The headline index hit this mark on September 24, 2021 and finally ended at 60,048.47


The base value of Sensex was taken as 100 on April 1, 1979 and its base year as 1978–79 and the above analysis does not take into account its journey period from the base value up to 10,000 which was hit on February 7, 2006. First compiled in 1986, S&P BSE SENSEX is a basket of 30 constituent stocks representing a sample of large, liquid and representative companies.

In today's session, most of the heavy lifting was done by ICICI Bank which was the biggest index contributor followed by ITC while Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel and Hindustan Unilever (HUL) dragged the market the most.

At 12 pm, Sensex was trading at 69,895.81, up by 70.21 points or 0.10%. Out of the 30 stocks 16 were trading in the green. The top gainers in terms of price action were UltraTech Cement Company, Tata Motors and Power Grid while the top losers were Axis Bank, Asian Paints and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M).

Inputs from Ritesh Presswala

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