Every trading evening the exchange publishes one net figure for foreign institutional investors and one for domestic institutional investors: how much they bought in the cash market that day, minus how much they sold. A positive number means that group were net buyers; a negative one, net sellers. Those two numbers are probably the most quoted and least understood figures in Indian markets.
The latest session's two figures are on Market Today, labelled with the date they are for. The homepage carries the current streak - how many sessions in a row foreign investors have been on the same side - with one mark per recent session. Free, no account needed.
Who is in each group
FII, now formally FPI (foreign portfolio investors), covers overseas funds, pension funds, sovereign funds and other foreign institutions buying Indian listed shares.
DII covers domestic institutions: mutual funds, insurance companies, banks and pension funds. The steady monthly inflow from SIPs into mutual funds sits here, which is why DII flows have become such a large counterweight over the last few years.
Neither figure includes retail investors, who are the other big group in the market and have no equivalent daily number.
Three things the daily figure is not
It is not final. The evening number is provisional, compiled from the day's trades as reported. Final figures, reported later through the depositories, can differ. The provisional figure is still the one everybody quotes, because it arrives the same evening.
It is cash market only. It covers buying and selling of shares. It does not include index futures and options, where foreign institutions often hold large and sometimes offsetting positions. A foreign selling day in shares can sit beside foreign buying in futures.
It is not a reason on its own. "The market fell because FIIs sold" is how the day is usually described after the fact. Sometimes that is the cause; sometimes both are responding to the same news; sometimes a large one-off block sale shows up as a big selling figure with no view behind it at all. Unusually large days are often explained by the deals on Bulk and Block Deals.
Why the two so often offset
On many days one group buys roughly what the other sells. That is not a coincidence and not a conspiracy. When foreign funds sell, prices fall, and domestic funds with steady inflows to invest find the lower prices attractive, and the reverse. So the more informative reading is often the NET of the two, and whether one side is overwhelming the other, rather than either number alone.
Reading a streak
A streak is the number of consecutive sessions a group has been on the same side: foreign investors net sellers for seven sessions running, say. It is a useful summary because a single day's figure is noisy.
What a streak does not carry is size. Seven small selling days and seven enormous ones make the same streak, so read the count beside the size of the latest day on Market Today rather than on its own. Long streaks also end, and nothing about the count tells you when.
Where can I see FII and DII data today?
On Market Today, free and without an account. It shows the latest session's net figures for both groups, labelled with the date they are for, and the homepage shows how long the current foreign streak has run. The figures are the exchange's provisional numbers, published in the evening.
Is FII selling bad for the market?
Not necessarily. Heavy foreign selling has often coincided with falls, but domestic institutions frequently absorb it, and the figure covers only the cash market. It tells you how one group positioned that day, not where prices go next.
What is the difference between FII and FPI?
FPI, foreign portfolio investor, is the current regulatory category that replaced the older FII label. In everyday use the two mean the same thing: foreign institutions investing in listed Indian shares.
If you think the flows predict something
FII and DII figures are not conditions our backtester can test today, and we would rather say so. What it can test is the market behaviour you would expect a flow signal to anticipate: a trend or a breakout, expressed as price and volume rules across years of end-of-day data with every charge deducted. The free plan covers it: Unlimited backtests on the free plan. What Free limits is DATA - three years, the Nifty 50, no options - never the number of runs
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