Overseas investors bought a net 6.02 billion rupees ($122 million) of Indian equities on March 2, raising total investments in stocks this year to 371 billion rupees, according to the nation’s market regulator. Foreigners bought 23.9 billion rupees of shares and sold 17.8 billion rupees, the Securities & Exchange Board of India said on its website today. They poured 252.1 billion rupees in February, helping the BSE India Sensitive Index (SENSEX) to its second straight monthly gain for the first time since September 2010. They sold a net 4.09 billion rupees of debt, paring their inflow into bonds this year to 261.1 billion rupees, the data show. They put 421 billion rupees in bonds in 2011. Foreigners have invested 4.815 trillion rupees in stocks and 1.468 trillion rupees in bonds since they were allowed into the country in 1993. India’s $1.2 trillion stock market, Asia’s fifth-biggest, is influenced by flows from abroad. Inflows surged to a record in 2010, making the Sensex the best performer among the world’s top 10 markets. The largest-ever outflow in 2008 led the biggest annual slump of 52 percent. Offshore funds pulled out 27.1 billion rupees from local equities last year, compared with record flows of 1.33 trillion rupees in 2010, as Europe’s debt crisis threatened the global economy and cooled demand for emerging-market assets. That led to a 25 percent drop in the BSE India Sensitive Index, the second worst annual loss, and sent the rupee to an all-time low. The regulator provides data on shares bought and sold by large investors, including trades in the primary and secondary markets, with a delay of at least a day. To contact the reporter on this story: Paresh Jatakia in Mumbai at pareshj@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Arijit Ghosh at aghosh@bloomberg.net

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