March 2026

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 mar 2026

Stock market investments come with oppotunities and risks. Geopolitical events such as US-China technological competitiveness, Ukraine war and now the most globally sensitive Middle-East conflict continue to shake-up the markets around the world. Traditionally, investing in stock market has been a forte of investment firms and brokerage houses with expert and analyst knowledge making financial decisions on large sums of client money. In recent times, in all markets and regions, retail individual investors are participating in equity markets and various exchanges directly through technology-driven user friendly applications. The article, written in October 2025 explores how the domestic retail investors in India are becoming a force to reckon with in the stock market. Moreover, even Domestic Institutional Investors (DII) are investing heavily and providing cushion to the market with Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) and Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) shying away from investing and now even exiting the Indian market due to the sentiment shift as a result of Middle-East conflict. According to the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), in July 2025 alone the flows into equity mutual funds increased by 81% to Rupees 427.02 billion (USD 4.9 billion). Individual investors, directly investing into the stock market and through mutual funds, now own 18.5% of the USD 5.1 trillion Indian equity market, an increase of 5 times since March 2020. The report from State Bank of India mentions that equities as a percent of household savings increased from 2.5% in FY2020 to 5.1% in FY2024. Jitendra Gohil, Chief Investment Strategist of Kotak Alternate Asset Managers, says, 'Promoters (people who started and developed a company and/or have control over it) owned 50% of the Indian market, and foreign institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies owned 20%. Hardly anything was with the retail investors. Now that proportion is tilting.' Expert mention rise of systematic investment plans (SIP), due to their small monthly investments, as one of the major contributor to this retail investor phenomenon. Anil Ghelani, Head of Passive Investments and Products at DSP Mutual Fund, says, 'Corporate earnings have been, for the most part, growing very well. On the back of that, we are seeing good flows coming in. I think for some of the global uncertainties there has been a little bit of concern on and off, but still India’s economy has been very resilient to these shocks.' Renu Maheshwari, Chairperson of the Association of Registered Investment Advisers in India, says, 'For the kind of outflow that we saw during the Global Financial Crisis that brought down the market by more than 50%, a similar amount of outflow today doesn't impact our market more than 3% or 4%.' Experts do caution that with this rise in retail inclusion comes risk due to lack of market knowledge and suggest more awareness and advise from qualified professionals. Read on...

CFA Institute: India's equity revolution: How domestic investors are reshaping markets
Author: NA

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