FII net sold ₹52,354 crore in 14 sessions to 22 October

The tally to 22 October

NSE's provisional figures for the cash market show that in the 14 sessions of October up to and including 22 October 2026, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers of ₹52,354 crore: ₹194,861 crore bought and ₹247,215 crore sold. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers of ₹55,875 crore, with ₹255,145 crore bought and ₹199,270 crore sold.

Added together, the two groups were net buyers of ₹3,521 crore, so domestic buying has so far more than absorbed the foreign selling. Our post on the first 13 sessions had FIIs at -₹48,895 crore; the 22 October session alone took another ₹3,459 crore off.

Session by session

FIIs were net sellers on 12 of the 14 sessions. The two exceptions were 16 October (+₹1,166 crore) and 21 October (+₹1,022 crore). DIIs bought on 13 of 14; 16 October, the day FIIs bought, was their one net-selling session at -₹3,661 crore. There is no NSE flow row in our data for 20 October.

The single biggest day was 8 October, when FIIs sold ₹12,944 crore and DIIs bought ₹10,703 crore, and the Nifty 50 fell to the month's low of 22,231.80.

Against the rest of 2026

Monthly net FII flows from the same NSE series, in ₹ crore:

With the month not yet over, October's FII selling is already larger than that of six of the nine full months of 2026. Only March, April and May were bigger. September was the first month since June with FII selling above ₹40,000 crore, and October has gone past it in two-thirds of the time.

DII buying has been the mirror image but not an exact one: in March DIIs bought ₹20,421 crore more than FIIs sold, while in October to date the gap is ₹3,521 crore in their favour. For the daily record and the historical comparison, see the FII/DII data page.

The index barely noticed

The notable feature of the month is how little the Nifty 50 moved against this selling. It closed September at 22,620.45; on 22 October it was at 22,687.65, a gain of 0.3%. In between it ranged from 22,231.80 (8 October) to 23,146.15 (16 October), a spread of 4.1% between low and high.

That does not mean the flows do not matter: the index could have been lower without domestic buying, and we cannot say what it would have done otherwise. It does mean that, on the evidence of this month, ₹52,354 crore of net selling and an index that finished the period level are both true at once. Our earlier look at whether FII selling moves the Nifty goes through the longer record.

NSE's provisional numbers are revised as final settlement data arrives, so small differences from later releases are normal. This post describes what was reported and makes no prediction about flows or the market.