Foreign investors sold a net ₹2,60,302 crore of Indian shares between January and September 2026, according to NSDL. Spread across nine months, that is about ₹28,900 crore a month.
In every month this year with published figures, Indians put more than that into mutual funds through SIPs. So when you hear about record FII selling, there is a fair chance the buyer on the other side was, indirectly, you.
The 2026 FPI outflow: who is selling, and how much
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are overseas funds that buy Indian shares. Since June 2014, SEBI has grouped them with similar foreign investors under one label, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs). News reports use the two terms interchangeably, and so does this article.
The 2026 numbers are large by any past standard. FPIs pulled out ₹1,66,286 crore in the whole of 2025. By the end of September 2026, the figure was already 57% higher, according to NSDL data reported by Business Today.
The selling has not been steady. March 2026 alone saw about ₹1.17 lakh crore leave, the worst month on record. July and August then brought net buying of ₹20,199 crore and ₹29,631 crore. September reversed most of that, with ₹35,861 crore of selling.
Who is buying when FIIs sell
Every share sold needs a buyer. In 2026, the biggest buyers have been domestic institutional investors (DIIs). These are Indian mutual funds, insurers, banks and pension funds.
The gap is wide. In the financial year that ended in March 2026, DIIs invested a record ₹8.5 lakh crore in Indian shares, according to SEBI's annual report. FPIs sold ₹1.8 lakh crore in the same year. Mutual funds alone supplied about ₹6.4 lakh crore.
That flow has shifted who owns the market. By March 2026, DIIs held a record 17% of NSE-listed companies, by SEBI's count. FPIs held 15.8%, their lowest share in at least 15 years.
The buying has also been unusually steady. As of June 2026, DIIs had been net buyers of Indian shares for 35 months in a row. That figure comes from NSE's Market Pulse report, as cited by Kotak Neo.
Here is where you come in. A large part of mutual fund money arrives through systematic investment plans (SIPs), where you invest a fixed amount every month.
SIP contributions hit a record ₹32,297 crore in August 2026, according to the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI). March was ₹32,087 crore, April ₹31,115 crore and June ₹31,781 crore.
Set those beside the ₹28,900 crore monthly average of FPI selling. The comparison is rough, because SIP figures are gross and not all SIP money goes into shares. But the scale is the point: your monthly instalment is now part of the market's main source of buying.
The case of 2022: the last time FII selling broke a record
This has happened before, on a smaller scale. In 2022, FPIs sold a record ₹1.21 lakh crore of Indian shares. The previous record, set in 2008, was about ₹53,000 crore.
Domestic investors bought through it. DIIs invested a record ₹2.74 lakh crore that year, per SEBI data reported by Business Standard. Mutual funds alone put in ₹1.8 lakh crore. SIP inflows rose from about ₹11,500 crore a month in January 2022 to about ₹13,300 crore by November.
The Sensex and Nifty 50 both ended 2022 up 4.4%. Business Standard reported it as the first time Indian markets had ended a year with gains despite aggressive FPI selling.
That case proves less than it seems to. It is one year, and the gain was small. The rupee fell about 11% against the dollar in 2022, its biggest annual drop since 2013, per SEBI's December 2022 dashboard. Domestic buying cushioned the market; it did not stop prices falling along the way.
The 2026 version of the test is about twice the size:
| 2022 (full year) | 2026 (January to September) | |
|---|---|---|
| Net FPI selling | ₹1.21 lakh crore | ₹2.60 lakh crore |
| Monthly SIP contributions | about ₹11,500 to ₹13,300 crore | about ₹31,100 to ₹32,300 crore |
| Year-end market result | Sensex and Nifty 50 up 4.4% | Not yet known |
Foreign selling has roughly doubled since 2022. Monthly SIP money has more than doubled. Whether that is enough to repeat the 2022 outcome is the open question, and the last column is still being written.
Is being the buyer a good trade?
It depends on how long you hold. An SIP buys more units when prices are low and fewer when prices are high. Say you invest ₹10,000 a month. At a fund price of ₹100, you get 100 units. If the price falls to ₹90, the same ₹10,000 buys about 111 units.
So a month of heavy FII selling that pushes prices down means your instalment buys more. You are, in effect, buying what foreign funds are selling, at that month's lower price.
Now the catch. Lower prices can get lower still, and nothing guarantees a recovery within your time frame. In September 2026, the Nifty 50 fell 6.1% in a single month despite record SIP inflows the month before. Domestic buying slows a fall; it does not set a floor.
That is why the trade only works if you can keep paying through the bad months. You can model your own amount and horizon with an SIP calculator, though any projection rests on an assumed return, not a promised one.
Going deeper: what would weaken the cushion
The domestic cushion depends on one thing, people continuing to pay. AMFI tracks this through the SIP stoppage ratio. It compares the SIPs that stopped or ended in a month with the new SIPs started that month.
In March 2026, 53.38 lakh SIPs stopped or ended, against 52.82 lakh new ones. That is a ratio of about 101%, per AMFI data compiled by Value Research. The ratio stayed above 100% in April. In August, 53.8 lakh SIPs stopped or matured, the highest count since January, according to Mint.
This is not yet a warning sign on its own. The ratio counts plans that simply reached their end date, not only investors who quit.
Total SIP money still rose to a record in August. But if contributions start falling while foreign selling continues, the cushion described above gets thinner. That is the number to watch, more than the daily FII figure.
