Investors moving away from stocks, going for MFs: Sebi

MUMBAI: For long, stock market and mutual fund industry analysts have been saying that Indian investors are maturing fast, moving away from trading in direct stocks and investing for the long term through the fund route. Now, a Sebi research paper, using granular data, has bolstered that notion.

Using holdings data of households in depositories, along with the ones published by Reserve Bank and MoSPI, the paper showed that even as retail flows through equity mutual funds went up between FY23 and FY25, individual investors were selling stocks in the secondary market, indicating better investment temperament.

In FY23, net selling by Indian households in the stock market was worth Rs 27,684 crore, which increased to Rs 69,329 crore in FY24 before falling to Rs 54,786 crore in FY25, the Sebi report said. From the beginning of FY23 to FY25 end, sensex, after peaking in Sept 2024 at almost 86k-point level, had closed at 77,767 points, a gain of nearly 33%.

Data in the Sebi paper showed that of the Rs 6.9 lakh crore that Indian households put into the securities market (equities + mutual funds + debt + REITs + InvITs) in FY25, about 80% was through the mutual fund route. The corresponding numbers for FY24 were nearly Rs 3.6 lakh crore and 82%.

According to Jimeet Modi, Founder & CEO, SAMCO Group, the most interesting finding in the report was that households were net sellers of direct equity in FY25 and in FY24, even as they were record buyers of mutual funds during those years.


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