New Delhi. The Indian stock market has shown a good rise in the last few months. From Sensex, Nifty to Bank Nifty are near all time high. But the surprising thing is that common investors are seen running away even in the midst of this rally. Small investors were showing more interest in selling their stocks. This trend seemed shocking to many people, because usually when the market goes up, retail investors are the first to jump in. But this period of 2025 was different, because the growing market did not attract investors.
The stock market has shown tremendous recovery in the months of October and November, but despite this, common investors were seen continuously selling their holdings instead of being happy seeing the rising prices. According to NSE data, retail investors made huge sales of about Rs 13,776 crore in October and about Rs 11,544 crore in November. This happened when the market environment was continuously becoming positive and a good rise was seen in the major indexes.
Sensex and Nifty gave positive returns
During these two months, Sensex and Nifty gained 4% and then 2%. Midcap and smallcap also saw a rise in October. BSE Midcap was up around 4.7% and Smallcap was up around 3.22%. However, the atmosphere changed a bit in November and fluctuations started increasing. Midcaps were up just 0.4%, while smallcaps fell 3.4%. This volatility caused psychological pressure for small investors, as they were already facing market shocks since the beginning of the year.
While the major indexes rose by about 4% between January and September 2025, the midcap index fell by 3% and the smallcap index fell by 5%. This difference seemed to have a clear impact on the thinking of small investors. As soon as the market went up in October-November, many retail investors considered it an opportunity for profit booking.
What do experts say
According to Santosh Meena, Research Head, Swastika Investmart, recently there has been a tremendous rise in gold and silver, due to which a large part of the investors have shifted from weakly performing stocks towards these metals. He says that the speed of buying shares directly has decreased, but regular investment through SIP is still strong. Apart from this, a large amount of money is going into multi asset allocation funds, which provide balance in a volatile market.
In fact, from the beginning of 2025, gold and silver gained such momentum that many investors considered them a safer and more profitable option than the stock market. Gold has increased by 61% so far this year, while silver has increased by almost 96%. Such returns attract the attention of any equity investor.
Along with this, the consecutive IPOs this year also pulled away the money of retail investors from the main stock market. This year, about 95 companies launched IPOs, the total size of which was approximately Rs 1.61 lakh crore. This is the largest figure of any calendar year so far and surpasses last year’s record.
More IPOs are also a reason for this
Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Investments, says that due to the huge IPO, continuous selling by promoters and withdrawal of foreign investors has weakened the liquidity in the market. As a result, the interest of common investors has decreased. During festivals and wedding seasons, people generally consider gold, fixed deposits and cash to be safer, hence they stay away from equities. Also, even before major developments like India-US trade agreement, Federal Reserve and Reserve Bank policies, many investors prefer to stay out of the market after making profits.
Nevertheless, Vinod Nair believes that the overall market environment is positive and investors will continue the strategy of buying on dips, as the outlook for 2026 looks stable and promising.
Retail investors were not very active in the market throughout 2025. In the entire year, they have made a net sale of about Rs 17,900 crore, whereas in 2024, the same investors had made a huge purchase of Rs 1.66 lakh crore. In 2025, retail investors bought only in four months (January, February, July and August), while in the remaining months they kept selling continuously.
