The total wealth, measured in terms of cumulative market capitalisation of all listed companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange, has surged to record high of Rs 70,38,538 crore (over US$1.7 trillion), latest data available with bourses show.

This marks a ten-fold surge in total market value in just about four and a half years. It stood at about Rs 7,00,000 crore in May 2003.

The investors’ wealth has grown by Rs 34,14,181 crore, or about USD 970 billion, since the beginning of 2007. Taking into account the 249 days of trading so far this year, this means an average gain of about Rs 13,711 crore a day or about Rs 41 crore a minute. At the end of 2006, total market capitalisation stood at Rs 36,24,357 crore (US$812 billion).

During this period, stock market’s benchmark Sensex has grown 46.6 per cent from 13,786.91 points on December 29, 2006. It settled at 20,206.95 points on Friday last week, while it registered record intra-day high of 20,498.11 points on December 13.

The surge of 94.2 per cent in the market cap during 2007 is more than double of the rise in the Sensex, as close to 100 new companies got listed on the bourses in the year. The bourses saw as much as 101 IPOs during the year.