Nifty Fifty: When the safest U.S. stocks became the most dangerous bet

Buying and selling are widely considered the Siamese twins in the world of the stock market. People often buy stocks only to sell them for making profit. But then, there was a different set of stocks which were fondly known by investors and financial experts of the time as ‘one-decision’ stocks, that is, buy and never sell at all. Finperts considered these stocks as extremely stable, even for decades.

Before the story unfolds, let’s separate two lookalikes, or perhaps namesakes, so that we are not chasing the wrong shadow. Nifty Fifty is not to be confused with Nifty 50, the Indian benchmark index of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), which represents 50 large-cap stocks of Indian companies. The similarity in names is purely coincidental, and the U.S. Nifty Fifty has nothing to do with India’s Nifty 50. In Wall Street slang, “nifty” meant something attractive, pleasant, and appealing. In fact, long before the launch of NSE’s Nifty 50 on April 22, 1996, the U.S.’ Nifty Fifty had already been born, bloomed and bitten the dust too.