Nifty 50 rolling returns: how often has it lost money?

The question rolling returns answer

The Nifty 50 closed at 23,996.25 on Wednesday, 8.86% below its record close of 26,328.55 on 2 January. Over the last year it is down 4.25%.

A single trailing number like that depends on where it starts and ends. A rolling return asks a broader question: across every day in the record, how did a one-, three-, five- or ten-year holding turn out?

We took every trading day's close and measured the return to it from the same date one, three, five and ten years earlier. Our daily closes start on 17 September 2007, so the first one-year window ends in September 2008 and the first ten-year window in September 2017. The figures are for the price index only: they leave out dividends, which would add roughly a point to a point and a half a year. Three years and longer are annual rates.

The record, window by window

"Today" is the window ending on 22 July 2026.

Two things stand out. The chance of a loss falls fast with time: about one year in five, then fewer than one three-year window in thirty, then none of the ten-year ones. And the median barely moves with the window length, at between 10% and 12% a year. Longer windows don't earn more; they vary less.

Where the extremes sit

The worst windows cluster around two crashes:

• One year: −55.83%, from 20 November 2007 to 20 November 2008.
• Three years: −5.74% a year, from 23 March 2017 to 23 March 2020, the Covid low.
• Five years: −2.30% a year, from 23 March 2015 to the same day in 2020.
• Ten years: 3.83% a year, from 23 March 2010 to 23 March 2020.

The best windows start from the same lows:

• One year: 99.50%, from 9 March 2009 to 11 March 2010.
• Three years: 30.92% a year, from 23 March 2020 to 23 March 2023.
• Ten years: 15.81% a year, from 9 March 2009 to 11 March 2019.

The losing three-year windows all ended in four years: 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2020. The losing five-year windows ended in 2012, 2013 and 2020. None has ended since May 2020.

Where today's numbers rank

Every horizon is currently in the weaker part of its range, and the shorter the window, the weaker. The one-year return is in the bottom sixth of all one-year windows. That is what a fall of 8.86% from a January record looks like through this lens.

The ten-year figure is closest to ordinary. A ten-year window ending today starts in July 2016 and has absorbed both the Covid crash and this year's fall.

What this does not tell you

Price alone understates the return. Dividends add roughly a point to a point and a half a year, so every figure above is lower than an investor in a Nifty 50 index fund would have earned, before costs.

Windows overlap. About 2,179 ten-year windows sound like a lot of evidence, but they share most of their days. They come from barely 19 years of history, with two big crashes in it.

The past range is not a promise. No ten-year window has lost money in this record; a longer or different record could include one. None of this is advice to buy or sell anything.

Where to go from here

Rolling vs trailing returns explains the method, and the Nifty 50 returns calculator gives the return between any two dates. For what the index is priced at now, see the Nifty P/E ratio page and the Nifty 50's P/E in July.

For how the first six months of this year unfolded, see the first-half 2026 market recap.