Bulls vanish in 2008

13,000 points lost

Not even a sworn pessimist would have expected the market to fall the way it did in Year 2008. As bad news kept hitting the market almost non-stop, stocks, big and small, went sliding down without a break with many of them falling to their all-time or multi-year lows.


The Great Crash of 2008

The Sensex, which was sailing along merrily for four years despite a few big falls, suffered probably its biggest ever setback in a year as it crashed by over 13,000 points to 7697.39 on October 27, 2008 from a historic high of 21,206.77 it had touched on January 10, 2008. The Sensex had closed at 20,286.99 on December 31, 2007.

The Sensex lost a massive 51% or 10,358.64 points (at 9928.35 as on December 22, 2008) during the year. The Nifty, which hit a historic high of 6357.10 in intra-day trades on January 8, 2008, suffered a loss of 50.5% or around 3100 points (at 3039.30 as on 22 December).

Text: Balakumar Subramanian

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