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Below the Quote on FPI Flows in Indian Markets: For the Week 19 – 23 October 2026 by Dheeraj Gaur, Chief Investment Strategy Officer, Choice Wealth

Dussehra gave Tuesday off, which left four sessions – and a calmer week than we have seen in a while. On provisional NSE numbers, FPIs sold Rs1,149 crore on Monday, bought Rs1,022 crore on Wednesday, sold Rs3,459 crore on Thursday and bought Rs888 crore on Friday. Net, about Rs2,700 crore of selling – compare that with roughly Rs8,990 crore last week. This week was lighter in weekly outflows since early September. DIIs, as usual, were happy to take the other side, with about Rs10,940 crore of net buying.

The settled numbers are kinder still. Across the week’s four custodian reports, FPIs were net buyers of about Rs4,044 crore – roughly Rs2,643 crore on Monday’s report, a Rs413 crore outflow on Wednesday’s, Rs1,659 crore on Thursday’s and Rs155 crore on Friday’s. Friday’s report is worth a closer look: Rs2,262 crore of secondary-market selling was cancelled out by Rs2,417 crore of primary-market inflows, which looks very much like anchor money for the Jio Platforms issue (my reading).

Don’t get carried away, though. October is still about Rs48,060 crore in the red on a settled basis. That is a lot better than the Rs52,100 crore we were staring at a week ago, but it already runs well ahead of September’s Rs35,861 crore.

For the detail-minded:

So, if FPIs were not the culprits, who was?

The Nifty slipped 2.4% to 22,600 and the Sensex 2.2% to 73,124, and 15 of 16 sectors finished lower. Mid-caps and small-caps had their worst week in 20 months. HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Bajaj Finance each lost around 5% after results. Add Brent at around $114 and a Rs30,000 crore IPO quietly vacuuming up liquidity and you have a sell-off that did not need foreign help.

And what an IPO it was. Jio Platforms’ Rs30,213 crore issue – the biggest India has ever seen – closed 22.19 times subscribed, with over Rs7.4 lakh crore of demand and a record 1.39 crore applications. The institutional portion was subscribed 70.55 times, and foreign institutions bid for 123.9 crore shares. Foreigners may be picky about the secondary market, but they clearly still love a good primary deal.

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