FII vs DII in May 2026: one session moved the month

The month at a glance

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold a net ₹55,964 crore of Indian equities in May 2026. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought a net ₹82,669 crore. The Nifty 50 closed April at 23,997.55 and May at 23,547.75, down 1.87%.

More than a third of the FII total came on a single day, the last session of the month.

All figures are NSE's provisional cash-market numbers in ₹ crore, the series behind our FII and DII data page.

May in numbers

The month had 19 sessions.

• FIIs were net buyers on 5 of the 19, for ₹7,987.8 crore in total. The largest was 4 May, at ₹2,835.6 crore, followed by 18 May at ₹2,813.7 crore.
• DIIs were net buyers on 18 of the 19. Their only selling day was 15 May, at −₹1,958.8 crore.
• The Nifty's worst day was 12 May, −1.83%, when FIIs sold only ₹1,959.4 crore and DIIs bought ₹7,990.3 crore.

29 May, the largest day in our record

On Friday 29 May FIIs sold a net ₹21,105.9 crore and DIIs bought a net ₹16,764.1 crore. Both are the largest single-day figures in our daily record, which starts in September 2024. The previous largest FII net sale was ₹15,243.3 crore on 3 October 2024; the previous largest DII purchase, ₹14,894.7 crore on 30 March 2026.

The gross numbers are even more unusual than the net:

FIIs traded ₹2,00,573 crore gross that day. Their average across May's other 18 sessions was ₹31,290 crore. No other session in our record comes close; the next-largest FII gross day was ₹1,60,556 crore, on 25 November 2024.

So 29 May was mainly a day of enormous two-way trading, with a large net sale on top. Without it, FIIs would have sold ₹34,858 crore in May, the lightest month since February. The Nifty 50 fell 1.50% that day, to 23,547.75.

Eleven months of selling

May is the eleventh month in a row of FII net selling; June 2025 was the last month of net buying. After April, when FII selling outran DII buying by ₹19,072 crore, May went back to the usual shape: DIIs bought ₹26,705 crore more than FIIs sold.

Year to date, from 1 January to 29 May 2026, FIIs have sold a net ₹2,96,715 crore and DIIs have bought a net ₹3,84,337 crore.

June has opened in the same direction. On 1 June FIIs sold ₹3,911.7 crore, DIIs bought ₹5,109.1 crore, and the Nifty 50 slipped 0.70% to 23,382.60.

What this does not tell you

We do not know what was traded on 29 May, or why. The data gives totals, not stocks or reasons, and we do not guess at them.

DII is not one investor. It covers mutual funds, insurers, banks and pension funds, each with its own reasons to buy.

The figures are provisional and partial. NSE publishes them each evening for the cash market, rounded here to ₹0.1 crore a day. They exclude derivatives, debt and IPO allocations, so they will not match NSDL's monthly FPI figures.

A flow is not a forecast. Eleven months of net selling describes the past, not June.

Where to go from here

The FII and DII data page has every session and monthly total. Our April flows post covers the month before, and the May 2026 market recap covers indices and funds. The rupee's slide, which ran alongside the selling, is in our post on the rupee's weakest close.