Friday finish and a standout month
Indian equities inched higher to end the week, with the NSE Nifty 50 up 0.5% and the small-cap gauge down 2% on Friday. For October, the Nifty added 2%, landing among Asia's top major benchmarks and delivering its biggest month of beating emerging market peers since 2011.
Trent and IndiGo were among the notable Nifty 50 gainers on Friday. Over the month, heavyweight IT names Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys helped pull the index higher.
Why India diverged from the tech slump
A selloff in technology shares hit markets tied to the artificial intelligence trade, leaving a regional stock gauge down about 6% in October. India's market, with limited exposure to technology hardware and chipmakers, proved relatively insulated even as Brazilian and South Korean shares fell sharply.
"India is being called an anti-AI trade, and October offered a glimpse of that," said Sudip Bandyopadhyay, chairman of Inditrade Capital. He cautioned that oil near $117 a barrel is a major worry and said the recent moves could fade without an improvement in the geopolitical backdrop.
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Breadth, flows, and new listings
Higher oil kept the broader market under pressure. The Nifty Smallcap 250 fell by nearly 6% in October - its weakest performance in seven months - and the mid-cap gauge declined 3.4%.
There were early signs of foreign money returning, with overseas investors acquiring over $1.2 billion in equities this week through Wednesday. Fresh issuance was another bright spot: India took the top spot for IPOs in October, with momentum fueled by Jio Platforms Ltd.'s headline-grabbing debut that followed the country's biggest ever IPO. During the month, companies collected about 455 billion rupees ($4.8 billion), surpassing the US, which stood at $2.1 billion as of Thursday, while Hong Kong totaled $1.5 billion.
What this means for your portfolio
The headline index rose, but the undercard stumbled. Small caps and mid caps lagged, oil is a headwind, and the Nifty is still down nearly 12% year to date, while Taiwan and South Korea have surged. In plain English: India's mix of limited hardware AI exposure, tentative foreign inflows, and heavy IPO activity is supporting the index, but breadth and energy costs remain pressure points to watch.
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