Strota/ Newsroom/ Global Markets/ 2026-07-31

Sensex edged up 0.2%

Strota Newsroom · Global Markets · session of 2026-07-31 · market close

BSE Sensex closed at 78,094.64 on 2026-07-31, edged up 0.2% on the session and is -8.4% year-to-date. Here is what the market data shows.

India's oldest equity benchmark ended July with a shrug. The BSE Sensex closed at 78,094.64 on 31 July, up 0.21% — a fifth of a percent, small enough to leave the index effectively flat.

Within its own past year, the Sensex sat close to the middle of the range: 8.94% below the 52-week high of 85,762.01 and 8.54% above the 52-week low of 71,947.55. It held above its 50-day moving average of 76,395.15 — the average close of the last 50 sessions, a rough short-term trend marker — but stayed under its 200-day average of 80,114.08, the longer-run equivalent. The record behind it was mixed: up 2.68% over the past week, 0.76% over a month and 1.54% over three months, yet down 8.36% for the calendar year.

Against Asian peers trading the same session, that move looked minor to the point of contrast. KOSPI in South Korea rose 17.91% and Taiwan's TAIEX 7.98%, the two largest gains anywhere in the peer set, while Japan's Nikkei added 4.03%. Shanghai closed 0.72% higher; Hong Kong's Hang Seng and Australia's ASX 200 each managed 0.1%. The domestic comparison was quieter: the Nifty 50 finished the session 0.27% up, near-identical to the Sensex.

European markets that also closed on 31 July moved in a narrower band: the CAC 40 up 0.78%, the Euro Stoxx 50 up 0.63%, the DAX 0.28% and the FTSE 100 0.22%, the last almost matching the Sensex tick for tick. The three US indices in the peer list last closed a day earlier, on 30 July, when the Nasdaq gained 2.78%, the S&P 500 1.66% and the Dow 1.19% — a different session, so not a like-for-like read.

Indian headlines offered explanations this data cannot verify. CNBC TV18 published a piece listing three reasons the market ended higher; The New Indian Express reported Bajaj Finance surging in early deals; Upstox described a flat open with Bajaj names among the gainers and IT stocks snapping a winning streak. Business Standard reported that IT led July's advance even as a large share of BSE 500 constituents lagged. Several other items were already stale: reports from the Times of India and India Today describing large point rallies were two days old, and a report from The Hindu of a flat close three days old. A Livemint item was a pre-session preview rather than a record of the day.

What the evidence establishes is narrow. The Sensex rose fractionally, held above its short-term average and below its long-term one, and remained negative for the year. It does not establish a single driver for the move, and the reasons circulating in the press remain claims by their publishers rather than anything the price data confirms.

The numbers

Around the world (same session)

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How this article was made: Strota assembled the market data above (the index's price history, same-session peer-market moves and public headlines) and an AI model wrote the narrative strictly from that evidence — it is not permitted to add outside facts or numbers. Every figure comes from the underlying market/public data.