Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) reduced stakes in 21 Nifty 50 firms at each of the first three 2026 quarter-ends, The Economic Times reported, while domestic institutional ownership reached a record share.
The count is the newspaper’s analysis of quarterly company disclosures. It covers the same 21 companies at the quarter-ends in March, June and September, or 42% of the index by company count. Motilal Oswal Financial Services’ ownership percentages measure the aggregate share held by investor groups across each index.
Motilal Oswal’s October 2026 report put FII ownership of the Nifty 50 at 22.4% on Sept. 30. That was down 0.4 percentage point from June 30 and 2.3 percentage points from Sept. 30, 2025. The share held by domestic institutional investors (DIIs) reached a record 26.2%, up 0.1 percentage point from June 30.
Motilal Oswal separately found that FII stakes had fallen in 70% of Nifty 50 companies over the year through Sept. 30, 2026. That annual comparison covers a different period from The Economic Times’ count of companies with reductions at all three quarter-ends during 2026.
In the broader Nifty 500, FII ownership stood at 16.8% on Sept. 30, down 0.2 percentage point from June 30 and 1.7 percentage points from a year earlier. DII ownership reached a record 21.3%, rising 0.3 percentage point from June and 1.2 percentage points from Sept. 30, 2025.
Motilal Oswal described DIIs as active buyers amid selling pressure. The firm pointed to retail participation and contributions through systematic investment plans (SIPs) as factors supporting domestic ownership. The Association of Mutual Funds in India reported ₹32,490 crore in SIP contributions for September 2026.
Motilal Oswal’s longer Nifty 500 series shows the DII ownership share increasing at every quarter-end over a 10-quarter stretch ending Sept. 30, 2026. The firm said the shift toward higher domestic ownership gained momentum in 2021.
