Indian stocks buck global tech rout, post best week in 6 years

Indian stocks posted their biggest weekly gain in six years as a fall in crude prices and limited exposure to AI-linked stocks helped them weather a global tech selloff.

Foreign investors, who had largely shunned Indian equities this year, made their biggest purchases in about six years in the four days through Thursday, fuelling the rally.

On Friday, the Nifty 50 rose 2.01% to 25,030.35 and the Sensex gained 2.17% to 81,028.02, both closing at over eight-month highs.

The Nifty and Sensex rose for a seventh straight session, their longest winning streak in 14 months and 26 months, respectively.

The gains stood in stark contrast to the region’s tech-heavy markets. South Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Nikkei shed 6% each and Taiwan also slumped 4.5% on Friday, tracking Wall Street’s sharp overnight retreat as worries mounted over returns on vast AI infrastructure spending.

The Nifty and Sensex gained 8.6% and 8.8% respectively this week, their strongest performance since February 2021, when optimism around India’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign powered a market rally.

“Indian markets have got their mojo back,” said Aishvarya Dadheech, founder and chief investment officer at Fident Asset Management.

“The US election outcome raises the prospect of greater checks on President Donald Trump’s trade and geopolitical agenda, which lowers the risk of further disruption and points to softer crude prices.”

Foreign institutional investors bought shares worth about 150 billion rupees ($1.6 billion) on Thursday, their largest single-day net purchase in nearly six years.

The week’s rally narrowed Indian benchmarks’ year-to-date gap with its emerging-market peers.

The Nifty and Sensex are down 4.2% and 4.9% in 2026, against gains of 7% for MSCI Emerging Markets.

AI rotation

The Nasdaq plunged 5.5% overnight, while the S&P 500 and Dow fell 4.4% and 3.4%, respectively.

Indian IT stocks, seen as relatively insulated from capital-intensive AI investments, outperformed. The Nifty IT index rose 0.4% on Friday, taking its two-day gain to nearly 2.9%.

“We believe the market could increasingly differentiate between companies funding the AI buildout and those positioned to monetise its enterprise adoption with lower capital requirements,” said Apoorva Khandelwal and Sushovon Nayak, analysts at Anand Rathi.

All 16 major sectors posted weekly gains, while small-caps and mid-caps rose 2.8% and 5.8%.

Financials gained 10.4% on renewed foreign inflows, with private banks up 9.1%. HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank rose 13.8% and 12.4%, respectively, posting their best weekly gains in about six years.

Reliance Industries gained 13.3% in the week after upbeat quarterly results.

Markets will be open for a special trading session on Sunday to mark the festival of Diwali.