Sensex lost 38% in '08-'09

The last day of the financial year 2008-09 — March 31 — turned out to be bullish for Dalal Street with the Sensex rising 140 points, or 1.47 per cent, at 9,708.50. However, during the financial year ended March 31, 2009, the Sensex lost 5,936 points, or 38 per cent, from 15,644.44 recorded on March 31, 2008. The global financial crisis, meltdown in equity markets and huge selling by foreign investors contributed to this huge erosion in equity valuations during the fiscal. It was not all that bad. The BSE Sensex clocked its first quarterly gain in the January-March period since 2007, as easing concerns about the global economy revived investor appetite and sparked a worldwide rally in March. In the quarter ended March 2009, the Sensex rose 61.19 points or 0.63 per cent from 9,647.31 on December 31, 2008. It was Sensex's first quarterly gain since the December 2007 quarter. The Sensex rose 9.2 per cent in March, its first gain in three months and the best show since last April.
Investor wealth also eroded in a big way. The combined market valuation of all the listed companies per cent or market capitalisation per cent in the country dropped to Rs 30,86,100 crore on Monday as against Rs 49,73,000 crore on March 31, 2008, leading to a loss of around Rs 18,87,000 crore during the period. Reliance Industries alone saw an erosion of close to Rs 89,460 crore in its market cap during the fiscal ended March 31, 2009.
The Sensex was one of the top five performers among major indices in the world, but well below China’s 30 per cent jump. Automakers Maruti Suzuki and Mahindra & Mahindra powered the quarterly rise as lower interest rates pushed their sales up even in the face of a slowing economy. Energy giant Reliance Industries, which has the biggest weight in the main index, was another major market mover as it gets set to pump gas from its field off India’s east coast.