FII DII Data October 29: FIIs Sell ₹944 Crore, DIIs Buy

The FII DII data for October 29 showed the old split again. Foreign institutional investors went back to selling, offloading a net ₹943.60 crore of Indian shares in the cash market on Thursday, while domestic institutions bought a net ₹1,924.41 crore, according to provisional exchange figures reported by CNBC-TV18. The market didn’t seem to mind. The Sensex jumped 905 points.

FII DII data October 29: the cash market numbers

FIIs bought shares worth ₹13,400.29 crore and sold ₹14,343.89 crore. DIIs bought ₹18,458.64 crore and sold ₹16,534.23 crore. These match the trade-date table for October 29 in NSE’s provisional FII/FPI and DII report, which combines trades on NSE, BSE and MSEI.

Add the two nets and institutions as a group were buyers of roughly ₹981 crore on the day. That’s our arithmetic, not an exchange number. It’s also a sharp turn from Wednesday, when both FIIs and DIIs were on the buy side, with FIIs adding ₹871.83 crore and DIIs ₹643.35 crore.

A rally that domestic money carried

The Sensex closed 905 points higher at 74,151 and the Nifty gained 238 points to 22,937, with both ending at the day’s highs, CNBC-TV18 reported. Nifty Bank rose 642 points to 54,910 and the midcap index added 567 points to 57,842. FMCG, PSU banks and real estate led among sectors. We covered the session in detail in our October 29 market close report.

Stock moves were driven mostly by results and management news. Birlasoft rose 12% after its Q2 numbers, Equitas Small Finance Bank fell 12% after its MD and CEO resigned, and Hexaware Technologies slipped 6% after narrowing its EBITDA margin guidance. DLF gained more than 4% as realty stocks recovered in the last hour.

October so far: the gap keeps widening

One day’s flow tells you little. The month tells you more. Over the 19 sessions from October 1 to October 29, FIIs have been net sellers of about ₹48,760 crore in the cash market, while DIIs have been net buyers of about ₹63,038 crore, based on the NSE provisional series compiled by Strota. FIIs sold on 14 of those 19 days. DIIs bought on 17 of them.

So Wednesday’s foreign buying looks like a pause rather than a change of direction, at least so far. Domestic institutions are still absorbing what foreigners sell.

What the derivatives data says

In index futures, FIIs bought ₹1,626 crore worth and sold ₹2,049 crore on October 29, per the exchange derivatives statistics published on SGX Nifty’s after-market data page. That works out to net selling of a little over ₹420 crore. Their positioning is still heavily short. In the participant-wise open interest data on the same page, FIIs held 35,686 long index futures contracts against 273,709 short ones, which means longs are only about 11.5% of their index futures position by our count.

That’s worth keeping in mind. A market rising on domestic buying while foreign desks stay short can move fast in either direction if FIIs start covering, or if domestic flows slow down.

What we’d watch on Friday

The question is whether Thursday’s rally gets any foreign support. A second day of FII selling alongside a rising index would confirm the pattern of the month. A swing back to buying, together with some short covering in index futures, would be a more meaningful signal. We’ll have the numbers once the exchanges publish them after the close.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and education only and is not investment advice. Figures are provisional exchange data and can be revised. Please do your own research or consult a SEBI-registered adviser before making any investment decision.