The stock market as mirror: The changes that they reveal, and don't reveal

While Nifty 50 reflects changes in 40 years, it also shows what is missing: Low-cost manufacturers at one end, and deep-value players at the other. Also missing are technology players, notes T N Ninan

Forty years ago, the combined value on the stock market of the listed companies belonging to the 30 largest business “houses” was Rs 6,200 crore. Gross domestic product (GDP) at the time was 28 times bigger (Rs 1.75 lakh crore). Most of the companies were in “primary” manufacturing: jute, tea, cement, sugar, steel fabrication, textiles. There has been dramatic change since then. The combined value of companies listed on the National Stock Exchange today is about 15 per cent more than GDP, which last year was Rs 197 trillion.
 
Strangely, the power of the “big monopoly” houses (seen from