FIIs net sold in all 10 months of 2026: ₹4.53 lakh crore

The year so far

Over the 197 trading sessions from 1 January to 19 October 2026, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers of Indian equities in the cash market in every calendar month. The total was ₹4,52,985 crore. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers in every month, for ₹6,90,905 crore.

These are NSE's daily provisional figures, the same series on the FII/DII data page. They cover the exchange cash market. They do not include derivatives or trades done off the exchange.

Month by month

The last column is DII net buying plus FII net selling, a rough sign of whether domestic purchases outweighed the foreign sales in the month.

Patterns

March was the peak. FIIs sold ₹1,22,540 crore, 27% of the whole ten-month figure, and DIIs bought ₹1,42,961 crore. This lines up with the sharp fall in the market that month, a period also covered in India VIX's March spike. It is a coincidence in timing, not proof of cause.

Seven months were heavy, three were quiet. Selling above ₹40,000 crore came in January, March, April, May, June, September and October, seven of ten months. The quiet months were February (₹6,641 crore), July (₹5,779 crore) and August (₹7,532 crore), when DIIs still bought between ₹35,099 crore and ₹58,268 crore.

April is the only month where domestic buying fell short. DIIs absorbed ₹51,064 crore against ₹70,136 crore of FII selling, a shortfall of ₹19,072 crore. In all other months through September DII buying was larger than FII selling, by between ₹20,421 crore and ₹50,736 crore.

DIIs bought more than FIIs sold, overall, by about ₹2.38 lakh crore. That is about 52.5% on top of the foreign selling. DII buying exceeded FII selling in nine of ten months; October is close to level so far.

The pace has not slowed. Sessions in 2026 averaged FII net selling of about ₹2,300 crore a day (₹4,52,985 crore over 197 sessions). The October average, ₹4,160 crore a day over 12 sessions, is higher than that; the September average was ₹2,096 crore a day.

What this table cannot say

• It is net, not gross. A month of ₹49,918 crore net selling can hide very large buying and selling on each side.
• Flows are not the market. Months of heavy FII selling are not all months of falling prices, and this post does not test that. The data shows what institutions did, not what the index did.
• DII buying includes mutual fund SIP money. A large part of domestic institutional purchases comes from mutual funds deploying monthly investments, so DII figures partly reflect household saving rather than a view on the market. The flow behind it is covered in what mutual funds bought most in September.
• Provisional. NSE's figures are provisional and can differ slightly from later revisions.

For the same offset by quarter, see FII selling and DII buying, quarter by quarter, and for the latest twelve sessions, FIIs sold on 11 of 12 October sessions.