FII & DII Derivatives Positioning
Who is long and who is short index futures, from NSE's daily participant-wise report — with the day-on-day change, which is the part that actually tells you something.
What this data is
Every trading day after the close, NSE publishes how much open interest each class of market participant holds in equity derivatives — foreign institutions, domestic institutions, retail clients and broker proprietary desks — with longs and shorts counted separately across index futures, stock futures, index options and stock options.
It is the closest thing Indian markets have to a positioning report, and it is free. It is also end-of-day only: there is no intraday version, so anything claiming live FII positioning is inferring it from somewhere else.
The mistake almost everyone makes with it
Every few weeks a headline announces that FII short positions have hit a record and a crash must follow. It usually does not, and the reason is mechanical: foreign funds hold a large book of Indian cash equities, and they hedge that book by selling index futures. The short leg is insurance, not a forecast.
So a deeply negative FII net position is a normal resting state rather than a warning. What moves the needle is the change — a fund that added to its short today made a decision, and a level that has been flat for a fortnight is furniture. That is why the change is printed under every figure on this page rather than buried.
Frequently asked questions
What is participant-wise open interest?
A daily NSE report splitting open interest in equity derivatives across four participant classes: FII (foreign institutional investors), DII (domestic institutions), Client (retail and HNI) and Pro (broker proprietary desks). It shows long and short positions separately for index futures, stock futures, index options and stock options.
Does a large FII short position mean the market will fall?
Not on its own. Foreign funds hold large long positions in cash equities and hedge them with short index futures, so a big net short is partly structural rather than a directional bet. It can persist for months while the index rises. The day-on-day change carries more information than the absolute level, which is why this page shows both.
What is the FII long/short ratio?
Index-futures long contracts divided by short contracts for FIIs. Below 1 means more shorts than longs. Because the position is partly a hedge, the ratio is better read as a trend over days than as a signal in isolation. This page also shows long share as a percentage, which is bounded between 0 and 100 and easier to compare across participants.
When is this data published?
NSE publishes the participant-wise report after market close on trading days, usually between 6 and 7 PM IST. It is end-of-day only — there is no intraday version of this dataset.
Why is retail usually net long index futures?
Because someone has to be on the other side of the FII hedge. Every futures contract has a buyer and a seller, so when foreign funds run a large short book, the offsetting longs sit mostly with retail and proprietary desks. It is a structural feature of the market rather than a signal about who is right.
Is this the same as FII/DII cash market data?
No. Cash-market FII/DII data is the rupee value bought and sold in equities, published each evening by the exchanges. This is the derivatives book — open positions in futures and options, measured in contracts. The two can point in opposite directions, and frequently do, because one is often hedging the other.
Source: NSE participant-wise open interest, published daily after the close. Related: cash-market FII/DII flow, OI tracker, and why DII buying does not stop Nifty falling.