Nifty 50 heatmap: how to read the tiles and colours

What the map is for

"The Nifty rose 1%" hides a lot. Did most stocks rise, or did three heavyweights carry the rest? The Nifty 50 heatmap answers that at a glance. Every constituent is a tile, sized by market capitalisation and grouped by sector, so a big company's move takes up as much of the picture as it does of the market. This post reads it as of the close on Thursday 15 October 2026. The prices were stamped 3:35 pm IST, and no account is needed.

Step 1: read the layout

Sectors are horizontal bands, largest first, each labelled with its share of the map's combined market value ("% of index"). NSE splits the 50 stocks across fifteen industries, several of them a single stock. The heatmap folds them into ten so each band stays readable. On 15 October:

Within a band, tile width is exactly proportional to market capitalisation. Band heights are proportional down to a minimum, so a one-stock band like Telecom stays legible; the largest sectors are drawn slightly smaller than they are. On a phone the bands give up proportional height altogether and the tiles wrap.

Step 2: the Day change view

The default view, "Day change", colours each tile green for a rise and red for a fall. The colour gets stronger with the size of the move and is at full strength by ±3%, so a 3% move and an 8% move look the same; read the number printed on the tile for the difference. A line above the map counts the day: on 15 October it read 41 up · 8 down, with Jio Financial unchanged.

The worked example is the point of the map. Nestle India fell 7.76%, the only deep-red tile on the board. But Nestle made up 1.33% of the map's market value. ICICI Bank rose 3.80% on a 5.35% share, Reliance rose 3.44% on 8.80%, and Bharti Airtel 3.31% on 6.23%. Four large green tiles outweighed one small red one many times over. A list of "top losers" would have put Nestle first, and the map shows how little it moved the index.

Tech Mahindra had the largest rise, 4.75%, but on a 0.87% share it is the smallest IT tile. Hover over a tile for the name, price, day change, P/E and market cap. Each tile also links to the stock's own page, which lists every mutual fund that holds it, such as Nestle India.

Step 3: the P/E vs index view

The second button, "P/E vs index", recolours the same tiles by valuation. Green means the stock's P/E is below the median of the 50; red means above. The colour is at full strength at 60% away from the median. On 15 October the median P/E was 25.04, across the 47 stocks that had one.

Read the P/E view with care. A low P/E often reflects slow or cyclical earnings rather than a bargain: oil, coal, steel and power fill the cheap column. A very high P/E can mean earnings are small, not that the price is high; Eternal's 714 is that case. Sectors also carry different typical valuations, so the fairest comparison is often within a band. Median stock P/E by market cap shows those differences across the wider market. For the index's own valuation through history, the Nifty P/E page and the index P/E guide are the better tools.

What the heatmap does not do

• It is not NSE's index weighting. Tiles use each company's full market capitalisation as the site stores it, a few days old. The Nifty 50 itself weights by free-float market cap, so a promoter-heavy company looks bigger here than in the index.
• It is not live. Prices refresh every 15 minutes during market hours and hold the close outside them. It is a map, not a trading screen.
• It does not explain moves. Nestle's fall on 15 October is on the map; the reason is not.
• The list is fixed by hand. Constituents follow NSE's published Nifty 50 list, updated when NSE changes it, about twice a year.

For the bigger picture of single days, the best and worst Nifty days of 2026 puts one session in context. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any stock.