If you look at the Nifty 50 index over the last 20 years, it looks like a rocket ship. It has gone from under 2,000 points to over 24,000. But how much of that growth is "real" value creation, and how much is simply the denominator (the Indian Rupee) losing value?

This project was inspired by PricedInGold.com, which famously tracks the S&P 500 priced in gold ounces. As they note, stock market indices are units of measurement. When the measuring stick (the currency) shrinks due to inflation, the object being measured (the index) appears to grow, even if it hasn't changed in size.

The Methodology

To strip away the effects of currency devaluation, we price the Nifty 50 in Gold. Gold is the historic standard for money—it cannot be printed by central banks.

Here is how we calculated it:

This tells us: "How many grams of pure gold does it cost to buy one unit of the Nifty 50 index?"

1. Nifty 50 Priced in Gold

When viewed through the lens of gold, the "exponential" growth of the market looks quite different. This chart reveals the true purchasing power of the index.

2. The Currency Factor: USD vs INR

For comparison, let's look at the Nifty 50 priced in the world's reserve currency (USD) versus the local currency (INR). The divergence between these lines represents the depreciation of the Rupee against the Dollar.

3. Raw Nifty (INR)

Finally, here is the standard view we see on the news every day. While valuable for short-term trading, long-term investors should be wary of the "money illusion" present in this chart.

Technical Implementation

This dashboard is generated by an automated Python pipeline that:

• Fetches weekly historical data for Nifty 50 (^NSEI), Gold Futures (GC=F), and USD/INR (INR=X) from Yahoo Finance.
• Aligns the datasets by date to handle market holidays.
• Computes the synthetic "Gold Price in INR" to avoid local import duty distortions.

Data provided by Yahoo Finance. Not investment advice.