NSE Stock Universes for Backtesting — NIFTY50, NIFTY100, NIFTY200

What is a Universe?

A universe is a ranked, date-stamped snapshot of a set of instruments. Every trading day, each instrument is scored and ranked so your strategy knows what qualifies.

Instrument Collection

A universe starts with a broad set of NSE-listed stocks. Raw data — price, market cap, sales, fundamentals — is fetched for every instrument and stored in MongoDB.

Scoring & Ranking

Each day, a configurable expression ranks all instruments. For example, ranking by Market Cap / Sales ratio identifies value stocks. The top N instruments become the active universe for that date.

Date Snapshots

For every trading day, a separate snapshot collection is created (e.g. ALL.2024-01-15). This means your backtest uses exactly the universe that existed on that day — no look-ahead bias.

Available Universes

Pick one from the dropdown in Strategy Lab — no setup, no building, no admin access required.

NIFTY 50

India's bluest-chip 50 stocks. Most liquid, lowest noise — best for foundational momentum or value studies when you want stable rebalances.

NIFTY 100

NIFTY 50 + the next 50 large caps. Modest expansion in opportunity set with similar liquidity profile.

NIFTY 200

Top 200 by market cap — a common research benchmark covering large + most large-mid caps.

NIFTY 500

The most-used universe on ftInvstr. Covers ~95% of NSE market cap, includes mid & small caps. Good balance between breadth and data quality.

ALL

Every active NSE-listed equity. The widest scope — use when you want true cross-sectional ranking over the full market, including micro-caps. Trade execution still respects liquidity filters.

Why a "snapshot per day"?

Every universe stores a separate ranked snapshot for each trading day. That's how backtests stay bias-safe.

Date-stamped membership

On 2024-01-15, the NIFTY 500 looked different from how it looks today — some stocks were added, others removed. ftInvstr stores the exact composition that existed on that date (e.g. ALL.2024-01-15). When your backtest hits January 2024, it sees only the stocks that actually qualified then — never tomorrow's winners.

Survivorship-bias control

If a stock got delisted in 2023, it stays in the historical snapshots up to its delisting date and disappears after. Your backtest can't "magically know" which stocks survive — it trades what was tradable on each day, not what's tradable today.

Example Universe Snapshot

For any trading day, a universe produces a ranked table like this:

Instrument (ISIN)	Score	Rank	Close
INE009A01021	0.82	#1	₹ 2,340
INE040A01034	0.76	#2	₹ 1,820
INE397D01024	0.71	#3	₹ 540
INE148I01020	0.65	#4	₹ 980

Pick a universe and run your first backtest

Choose any of the five universes in Strategy Lab and you're one click away from a full historical backtest.

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