Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have returned to India in a big way, buying $7.5 billion over the past 15 sessions or Rs 71,000 crore. The inflows, however, have been concentrated in two key sectors: telecom and technology.
For the month of October, foreign investors sold around $2.2 billion worth of Indian equities, as most of the recent buying was back-ended in October and November. In the first six sessions of November, they bought nearly Rs 53,000 crore.
Despite the selling in October, most of the bullish bets were in the technology space, along with telecom; FIIs net bought $1.4 billion in technology and $700 million in telecom stocks.
FIIs remained most bearish on FMCG, which saw outflows of $1 billion, financial services and automobiles, which saw outflows of $1 billion and $800 million respectively, according to data from Motilal Oswal.
In the technology space, the buying comes as the global AI sell-off bolsters demand for domestic IT services companies that have been seen as a hedge for the artificial intelligence theme. For telecoms, the buying comes as Jio Platforms' issue drove record demand from foreign investors, leading to significant inflows.