There are two leading stock exchanges in India viz. BSE and NSE. Both exchanges categorize their listed companies using specific criteria. This categorization facilitates traders/investors selecting the scrip. BSE has categorized its scrips as BSE group. For novices, these group may be daunting. This article helps to understand BSE group.
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Currently there are 6 active stock exchanges in India, viz.
- BSE Ltd.
- Calcutta Stock Exchange Ltd.
- India International Exchange (India INX)
- Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India Ltd.
- National Stock Exchange of India Ltd.
- NSE IFSC Ltd.
Of these active exchanges, BSE and NSE are the leading ones. Both of these exchanges compete with each other. They offer various facilities and options to its users. One of this facility is called categorizing the listed stocks. Both exchanges categorize its listed stocks differently with a different point of view. While NSE has categorized from the perspective of investors, BSE has categorized from the perspective of stocks. FundsBase has already decoded the NSE series for categorization. You can read that for your reference. In contrast to NSE, BSE has classified its listed securities in groups.
Before moving ahead to BSE stocks classification, let’s have a small recap of the BSE.
Bombay Stock Exchange
BSE Ltd. (formerly known as Bombay Stock Exchange) is the oldest exchange in Asia. It was established within two decades after the first freedom fight against East India Company erupted. At that time it was named as “The Native Share and Stock brokers Association”. You can refer BSE history for more details on BSE evolution.
BSE claims to be the fastest exchange in the world with the speed of 6 microseconds.
BSE has leveraged the fact to be the oldest stock exchange in Asia thus has more than 5500 companies listed. This figure makes BSE the exchange with the largest number of companies listed in the world. It used to operate on floor trading mechanism where licensed brokers shout-out prices in a ring inside the exchange. There was huge chaos and price fluctuation information was completely black-boxed. Investors outside the exchange used to learn about the previous day’s price through newspaper only. NSE, after its establishment started focussing on technology thus became favourite of investors. You can refer why NSE is better than BSE or a more in-depth article why NSE is more popular than BSE.
BSE noticed the user shift towards NSE and adopted technology as well. In 1995 BSE switched to electronic trading platform developed by CMC Ltd. This BSE trading platform is called BSE On-Line Trading (BOLT).
BSE groups
As mentioned earlier BSE has classified its listed stocks based on the stocks itself. Means BSE has grouped the stocks according to the liquidity, volatility, trustworthiness and much more. Clearly, BSE has classified the stock for investor’s guidance and benefit. Broadly BSE has divided securities in A, B, T and Z groups. Let’s go through BSE groups one by one.
- BSE group A
- BSE group T
- BSE group Z
- BSE group B
- BSE group F
- BSE group G
- BSE groups XC, XD, XT, X
This BSE group A consists the stocks which are most popular and actively traded. Read criteria for selecting BSE Group A for your reference.
This BSE group T represents the scrips which are settled on a trade-to-trade basis.
This BSE group Z was introduced by in July 1999 and includes companies which have failed to comply with its listing requirements and/or have failed to resolve investor complaints and/or have not made the required arrangements with both the depositories viz. CDSL and NSDL for dematerialization of their securities.
All securies which don’t fall in any of the above three categories come under BSE group B.
This BSE group F represents the fixed income securities.
This BSE group G represents the government securities traded by retail investors.
BSE has further classified the securities listed exclusively on BSE as sub-segments as X and XT. XT includes all the stocks which are exclusively listed on BSE and settled on the trade-to-trade basis. Rest stocks exclusively listed on BSE fall under the sub-segment X.
Previously there were XC and XD groups which were merged to group X on 24Nov2017. Read the notice of merging XC and XD to X for your reference.