Sensex breaches 15,000-mark for the first time

The BSE benchmark index rises above 15,000 points, led by gains in Infosys Technology and Bharti Airtel.

The stock market hit a new milestone on Friday with its benchmark BSE Sensex crossing the 15,000-level for the first time ever after the longest 1,000-point journey since it touched the five-figure mark last year.

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Sensex milestones

July 25, 1990 - 1,000 January 3, 1992 - 2,000 February 29, 1992 - 3,000 March 30, 1992 - 4,000 October 8, 1999 - 5,000 February 11, 2000 - 6,000 June 20, 2005 - 7,000 September 8, 2005 - 8,000 November 28, 2005 - 9,000 February 6, 2006 - 10,000 March 21, 2006 -11,000 April 20, 2006 - 12,000 October 30, 2006 - 13,000 December 5, 2006 - 14,000

It took nearly seven months or 143 trading sessions for the Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-share index, considered as the barometer of domestic stock market, to cover the 1,000-point journey from 14,000. This is the longest 1,000-point journey ever since Sensex breached the 10,000-peak in February 2006.

In comparison, the shortest 1,000-point leap is of just 19 trading sessions that the Sensex took to scale 12,000 level in April last year. Also, the index took only 26 days of trading or little more than a month to move from 13,000 level on October 30, 2006 to 14,000 on December 5 - which is the second-shortest journey in the stock market's history.

The market has been on a volatile move ever since crossing the previous thousand-point mark. Out of the 143 trading sessions between 14,000 and 15,000 levels, the market has traded above 14,000 level only in 80 sessions.

The index had crossed the 1,000 points on July 25, 1990. Since then, the longest 1,000-point journey so far has been more than seven-and-a-half years when it moved from 4,000 in March 1992 to 5,000 in October 1999.

The second longest was of over five years or 1,124 trading sessions between 6,000 and 7,000 levels, while the third longest was about one-and-a-half years between 1,000 and 2,000 points.