Foreign portfolio investors’ (FPIs) stock successful Indian equities has fallen to a astir 14-year low, adjacent arsenic home institutions person softly emerged arsenic the market’s largest stakeholder — a structural displacement unfolding alongside different week of sustained overseas selling.
As per NSDL data, FPIs were nett sellers successful Indian equities successful 4 of the 5 trading sessions during the week ended May 8.
On Monday, they pulled retired ₹8,035.69 crore done banal exchanges. Tuesday (May 5, 2026) offered a little respite, with FPIs turning nett buyers worthy ₹2,969.02 crore. Selling resumed connected Wednesday (May 6, 2026) with outflows of ₹3,399.03 crore, followed by the week’s steepest single-day sell-off connected Thursday (May 7, 202) astatine ₹5,697.61 crore. By Friday (May 8, 2026) selling had astir tapered off, with nett outflows narrowing sharply to ₹69.31 crore, arsenic gross purchases of ₹18,514.38 crore astir matched gross income of ₹18,583.69 crore. On an aggregate ground — combining banal speech and superior marketplace flows — FPI equity outflows for the week stood astatine ₹14,207.20 crore. The play inclination reflects a broader structural shift.
According to JM Financial’s monthly tracker for April 2026, FPI ownership successful Indian equities has dropped to 14.7% — the lowest since June 2012 — from 19.9% a decennary ago. In contrast, Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs) present clasp 18.9% of Indian equities, overtaking FPIs for the archetypal clip since December 2024 and steadily widening the gap. V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist astatine Geojit Investments Ltd., said, “This takes the full FPI merchantability fig done exchanges successful 2026, truthful far, to ₹2,18,540 crore,” helium said, portion noting that superior marketplace concern by FPIs has remained resilient, with “total concern of ₹12,340 crore, truthful far, this year.” N. ArunaGiri, CEO of TrustLine Holdings, said, “At a clip erstwhile Korea received astir $4 cardinal and Taiwan astir $5.5 cardinal successful flows, India is inactive not getting its owed stock of emerging marketplace allocations. This intelligibly indicates that FIIs presently bash not find India arsenic charismatic from an allocation perspective,” helium said.
The impact, helium added, is disposable successful marketplace behaviour. “Large caps person comparatively underperformed, portion beardown home flows person continued to enactment the SMID segment.” Analysts said India’s underperformance successful attracting overseas flows is partially structural.
(The writer is with The Hindu businessline)
Analysts accidental India’s underperformance successful attracting overseas flows is partially structural

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