Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) are continuously withdrawing money from the stock market. Everyone knows this. But do you know from which shares they are withdrawing money? In the entire September quarter, foreign portfolio investors have withdrawn about $9.3 billion, i.e. about Rs 82,400 crore, from the Indian stock market. Why are foreign investors doing this selling? Which are the top-5 stocks where foreign investors have sold the most?
The five stocks that were sold the most by foreign investors during the September quarter include shares of Sona BLW Precision Forgings, PNB Housing Finance, Samman Capital, Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) and Computer Age Management Services (CAMS). Foreign investors have reduced their stake in these five companies by more than 5 percent during the last three months, i.e. July to September quarter.
The biggest decline was seen in Sona BLW Precision Forgings, where FPI’s stake declined from about 30% to 23.5% at the end of June 2025. That means a decline of about 7.5 percent. In the last one year, the stake of foreign investors in this company has decreased by 10.1 percent. Apart from this, the stake of foreign investors in PNB Housing Finance has come down from 24.2% to 18.6%.
Market experts say that foreign investors first started selling shares due to the high valuation of the Indian stock market. But after this came the tariff policy of US President Donald Trump, which has further increased the concern of foreign investors. Due to this he also intensified his selling.
However, since October, foreign investors have started buying again, buying shares worth about $550 million. But for the last 7 days the selling has started again. This means that till now there are no concrete signs of return of foreign investors.
According to Bloomberg data, Indian stock markets are still trading at higher valuations than other stock markets in Asia. The one-year forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of Nifty is 20.4 times, while Taiwan’s TAIEX index is trading at 18 times, Korea’s Kospi index at 11 times and China’s CSI300 index at 14.7 times.
However, market experts believe that in future, foreign investors can return to the Indian market again. Ridham Desai, managing director of Morgan Stanley India, says, “India’s valuations are now at historically attractive levels, making the possibility of foreign investors becoming net buyers in the next 12 months.”
Neelkanth Mishra, Chief Economist of Axis Bank and Global Research Head of Axis Capital, says that “Many hedge funds are currently transferring money to other markets by selling Indian shares.”
Since the beginning of 2025, foreign investors have sold Indian shares worth a total of $ 16.5 billion. If we compare this with other countries, in Taiwan they made net purchases of $1.3 billion during the same period. At the same time, he has sold shares worth $1.7 billion in South Korea, $3 billion in Thailand and $4.6 billion in Vietnam, which is much less than India.
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