Sensex every year since 1998: 22 of 28 years rose

Twenty-eight years in one table

The database holds daily closes of the BSE Sensex from 1 July 1997. Taking the last close of each calendar year gives the following yearly changes in the price index (dividends are not included).

2026 stands at 74,525 on 21 October, -12.6% for the year so far.

What the table says

• Up years: 22 of 28. Down years: 1998, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2011 and 2015.
• The best year was 2009 (+81.0%), a rebound from the worst, 2008 (-52.4%). Behind them are 2003 (+72.9%) and 1999 (+63.8%).
• After a down year, the next calendar year was positive in five of six cases: 1999, 2002, 2009, 2012 and 2016 followed down years with a rise, while 2001 followed 2000's fall with a further fall.
• Down years have come in clusters of one or two, never three: 2000–2001, and otherwise single years.
• The 2010s were gentler. From 2012 onward, only 2015 was negative. 2026, if it ended here, would be the first down year since 2015.

Compounding the whole span: the Sensex went from 3,659 at the end of 1997 to 85,221 at the end of 2025, 11.9% a year over 28 years. The most recent ten years (end-2015 to end-2025) compound at 12.55% and the last five at 12.28%, so the recent stretch is only a little above the long-run rate.

A single year is a poor guide

Look at what the 11.9% average conceals: few years land near it. Years of +40% or more (1999, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009) all sit in the first twelve years of the table; since 2010 the best year is 2014 at +29.9%. The lesson is not that the market has become tamer; it is that any single calendar year, in either direction, has been an unreliable indicator of the next.

Note also that the yearly view hides intra-year falls. In a year that ends up the index can still fall sharply along the way; the deepest Nifty 50 fall in every year since 1999 shows how much.

2026 so far

The Sensex stands about 13.2% below its record close of 85,836 on 26 September 2024. How long past peaks took to recover is in how long the Sensex took to regain a peak since 1997. The same year, the Nifty 50 is down a similar amount (see the year-to-date comparison), and foreign institutions have been net sellers in the cash market, covered in October's flow post.

How to read it

• This is the price index; including dividends would add a little each year.
• Calendar years start and end on arbitrary dates. A rolling 12-month window gives a different count.
• Past returns of an index are not the return on a fund; the category scorecard shows what equity funds have done lately.

Figures are as of 21 October 2026, from the WealthTicker database, and are history, not a forecast.