The Iran conflict has raised panic among retail direct investors who prefer investing in small and midcap stocks (Smids) and trading directly on the markets, unlike their mutual fund counterparts.
This is borne out by activity data released by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) for Monday, the first day after markets reacted to the outbreak of war in the Middle East.
It shows that retail investors sold shares worth ₹3,508.51 crore, more than foreign institutional investors' (FIIs) outflows of ₹3,070.55 crore, per NSE data. NSE had almost 93% share in the equity cash market as of January end, with the BSE accounting for the rest.
Data on investor activity for Wednesday and Thursday will be available with a lag. The Iran war broke out on Saturday, with markets first reacting on Monday. Tuesday was a market holiday for Holi.
On the BSE, retail sold ₹1,084 crore worth of shares on Monday and Wednesday.
"Retail direct is clearly shaken by the war as it tends to invest in Smids, for generating alpha, which have underperformed the large caps this past week," said independent market analyst Ambareesh Baliga.
Alpha measures the active return generated by an investment relative to its benchmark. That is a mid or small cap stock returns tend to be higher than their underlying indices.
Baliga added that the fall in Smids came on top of the losses retail suffered over the past month, investing in silver.
For instance, the silver active contract on the commodity derivatives exchange MCX plunged 31% from its high of ₹4 lakh on 29 January to ₹2.75 lakh per kilo on 27 February.
Sentiment shift
Smids, which tend to outperform large caps in an uptrending market, are a double-edged sword: they underperform large caps during a market correction and are more volatile.
Since the war began, the Nifty Midcap 150 and the Nifty Smallcap 250 have fallen 2.39% and 2.6%, respectively, from Friday's levels to 21326 and 15465.75 on Thursday. Both have underperformed the Nifty over this period, which has fallen by 1.64% to 24765.9.
"Nobody can predict the duration of this conflict, but it has surely rattled retail direct investors thus far," said Rajesh Palviya, research head of Axis Securities.
Explaining the reason behind direct retail investors’ typical behaviour during crises, Dhiraj Sachdev, chief investment officer at Roha Venture, said their participation through direct trading tends to be more emotional or sentiment-driven during volatile periods.
By contrast, retail investors who invest through mutual funds or portfolio management services (PMS) tend to remain more disciplined and calm, as investment decisions are outsourced to professional fund managers.
Retail direct has sold shares worth ₹45,090 crore on NSE in the current fiscal year through February against net inflow worth ₹98,371 crore in the same period (April-February) of FY25, per NSE data.
Domestic institutional investors, led by mutual funds, posted record inflows of ₹7.1 trillion during April–February this fiscal, compared with ₹4.6 trillion in the same period a year earlier, according to data from the NSE.
"We are fully invested and are buying the dip," said Swarup Mohanty, vice chairman and CEO of Mirae Asset Investment Managers, underscoring his premise of deploying investor funds in quality stocks across the listed universe.
"This is a stock picker's market, and attractively valued stocks across Smids and the large cap universe are there for the picking. I can also say as of now there is no panic among MF investors," he added.