Foreign portfolio investors sold a net ₹963.56 crore of Indian equities on Oct. 27, while quant Group founder and chief investment officer Sandeep Tandon told NDTV Profit that market gloom could precede a large-cap shift.
Central Depository Services (India) Ltd. (CDSL) recorded net foreign portfolio investor equity investment of minus ₹963.56 crore for the date. Net sales through stock exchanges totaled ₹1,340.52 crore, partly offset by ₹376.96 crore in net investment through primary markets and other routes. CDSL’s table sorts flows by transaction channel but does not identify investors as long-term, active or passive.
NDTV Profit published its interview with Tandon on Oct. 29. He said he had “never seen this level of negativity about India globally” and argued that sentiment had weakened faster than the country’s fundamentals. Tandon said investors with longer horizons had slowed their sales, while foreign institutions were again buying a handful of Indian shares. CDSL’s daily figures do not break out those investor categories, so they do not establish the change he described.
Tandon described mid-cap stocks as the most crowded area, pointing to positions held across large-, mid- and small-cap funds, family offices, wealthy individuals and institutions. He said mutual funds had taken up shares that company promoters, private equity investors and foreign investors were selling. In his view, plentiful cash can make managers less selective, and some stocks could become difficult to exit. “The exit could become very difficult in some names,” he told NDTV Profit.
He said large-cap stocks may take market leadership in the next phase. Tandon named power and renewables, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure and hotels among sectors he favors, and described gold as an accumulation opportunity. He also said his multi-asset strategies had increased gold exposure and remarked, “Pharma could be the next IT.” NDTV Profit reported these views in its interview.
The comments follow Tandon’s earlier call that India’s headline indexes were beginning to form a floor.
