Companies have kept earning more. So why have prices stood still?
On three consecutive Independence Days August 2024, August 2025, and again this August an observer glancing at the Nifty 50 would have seen very nearly the same number a little above 24,000. Three years of headlines, three years of noise, and the index returned, almost
obediently, to where it began.
To the casual eye, this looks like a market that fell asleep. The temptation is to conclude that nothing happened, that India’s famed growth story had stalled, that patience had been punished. Yet beneath that flat line, something quite remarkable was taking place.
The companies that make up the index did not stand still at all. Quarter after quarter, they
earned more. In the June 2026 quarter, the fifty largest listed companies in the country grew their profits by roughly 18% over the previous year the fastest pace in ten quarters on revenues that rose nearly a fifth.