Nifty 50 is 11% below its January close; P/E 22.9 to 19.4

Where the Nifty stands

The Nifty 50 closed at 23,440.80 on 2 November 2026. Its highest close in our index history is 26,328.55, on 2 January 2026. That puts the index 11.0% below its peak, and 10.3% below its last close of 2025 (26,129.60 on 31 December).

Price index closes, with the P/E published for the index. On 2 November the P/B was 2.88.

The low and the bounce

The year's low close was 22,231.80 on 8 October, 15.6% below the January high. Since then the index has recovered 5.4% to 23,440.80. October as a whole was a modest month: 22,620.45 on 30 September to 23,053.10 on 30 October is +1.9%. The first session of November added another 1.7%.

So the picture is a drawdown of roughly a sixth at its deepest, about 30% of which has since been regained. That second figure is simple arithmetic: the index regained 1,209 of the 4,097 points it lost between the high and the October low, about 30%.

Prices fell, but the multiple fell more

Between 2 January and 2 November, the Nifty 50's price index fell 11.0%. Its P/E fell from 22.92 to 19.43, a drop of 15.2%. When the multiple falls faster than the price, trailing earnings must have grown over the same window. Put differently, the index is lower, but each rupee of index value is backed by more reported earnings than it was ten months ago.

Dividend yield moves the same way. The index's yield was 1.39% on 2 November, against 1.29% on 3 November 2025, when the index stood about 10% higher.

How unusual is 19.4?

Taking the last ten years of daily Nifty 50 valuation readings (2,471 readings from 2 November 2016):

The readings below 19.43 are concentrated in a few weeks of sharp market stress. The ten-year median is 3.8 points higher than today's multiple. That is a statement about history, not a promise: the past ten years include a period of unusually high multiples, and a median is only a midpoint. A long-run study on the site, does Nifty P/E predict future returns, looks at how much a starting multiple has told investors about what followed.

What this does and does not tell you

• It does show that the market has de-rated: the same index now sells at a lower multiple than at the start of the year.
• It does not tell you the next move. Valuation levels have been a weak guide to short horizons.
• It does remind you that a SIP buys more units when prices are lower. An investor who has been running one through 2026 has been accumulating at levels below the January ones.

For readers who want to see what the drawdown meant for how long a recovery has taken historically, how long the Nifty 50 took to regain each peak since 1999 sets the 2026 fall beside earlier ones. And if you want to compare funds against this backdrop, the screener shows trailing returns and drawdowns for every fund in our database.

Index closes and valuation ratios from NSE, as of 2 November 2026. Price index only; total-return figures differ because they include dividends.