Factors affecting Investment Behaviour of Foreign Institutional Investors: Perception of Indian Investors

Liberalization of economic policies in 1992 allowed foreign institutional investors investing in Indian capital markets. Though FII permitted to invest Indian stock markets in 1992, they actually started investing in India from 1997 and factual growth of FII investment came after 2002. Since then participation of FII in Indian stock market has continuously increased. They have emerged to be one of the largest investors and have acquired ownership of substantial proportion of non-promoter shares. They have also emerged to be dominant market players contributing very high proportion 41.73% of total stock exchange turnover of BSE and NSE combined. In Indian markets, FII are perceived to be very large and sophisticated investors with very high impact on stock market returns. Many investors and market participants tend to make their stock market strategy based on investment pattern of FII and base their stock market analysis on their perception about factors considered by FII in their investment decision. In this context this paper studies perception of market participants about major determinants of FII investment decision and extent to which investors are influenced by FII investment.