Mutual Fund Investments, FII Investments and Stock Market Returns in India

Abstract

Exploring the dynamic interaction between investment flows of mutual funds and foreign institutional investors (FIIs), based on post-crisis data, this study finds a strong negative relationship between the net investments by these two classes of institutional investors. Domestic mutual funds are found to determine their investment flows on the basis of their own previous investments, FII investments as well as market returns. The analysis suggests that the effect of stock market returns can be overshadowed by the effect of FII investments, in determining mutual fund flows. The study also finds evidence of net investments by FIIs having a causal influence on stock market returns even as it fails to identify any causal relation between domestic mutual funds’ net investments and domestic stock returns. The conservative and contrarian pattern of mutual fund net investments in equity markets, as brought out by this study, indicates why equity mutual funds, as a group, have not provided a strong domestic alternative to foreign flows in the Indian stock market.

Keywords: Mutual fund investments, Foreign institutional investment in India, Indian stock market

JEL Classification: G23, C32