September pain on Dalal Street: FPIs pull out 46k crore from equities

For the first time in two years, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) turned net sellers across all reported equity and debt segments in September.Also, on a standalone basis, FPIs were net sellers at Rs 35,861 crore in stocks till Sept 29. They net sold another Rs 10,148 crore worth of stocks on Sept 30, taking the month’s total figures to about Rs 46,000 crore, data from NSDL and BSE showed.The net selling figures for Sept in stocks came after two consecutive months of net buying: Rs 29,631 crore in Aug and Rs 20,200 crore in July. For the current year, net selling by FPIs at Rs 2.6 lakh crore is already way ahead of the previous year’s Rs 1.7 lakh crore net outflow by this influential investor group. The 2026 outflow is now the highest ever yearly net selling figure, NSDL data showed.Latest data showed that in addition to equities, FPIs were sellers in debt (general limit) at Rs 5,247 crore, in debt (VRR or Voluntary Retention Route) at Rs 5,049 crore, in debt (FAR or Fully Accessible Route) at Rs 10,431 crore and in hybrid at Rs 2,078 crore.FPIs were, however, net buyers in three of the five mutual fund segments: Rs 247 crore in equities, Rs 1 crore in debt and Rs 99 crore in hybrid, while they were net sellers in funds categorised under ‘other’ heads and didn’t put in any money in solutions-oriented schemes, NSDL data showed.The strong selling by FPIs in the current market came even as the rupee weakened, the price of crude oil—the single biggest import item for India—rose sharply to above the $115/barrel level for the Indian basket, and sensex and Nifty both lost about 6% each. While sensex lost 4,477 points to the month’s close at 72,480 points, Nifty lost 1,460 points to 22,620 points.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.