Retail investors sold stocks worth Rs 12,000 crore in Q3. HDFC Bank among top 10 sells

Retail investors, who are typically known to buy at the peak and sell at bottom, were smart enough to use the boom seen in the December quarter to sell stocks worth over Rs 12,000 crore. Not that small investors had a hunch about an impending crash in HDFC Bank in January, but they somehow used the rally to sell the underperforming stock.

Retail shareholders, as defined by those with investments up to Rs 2 lakh in the counter, sold 1.43 crore shares of HDFC Bank which has lost 16% of its value so far in the quarter, shows data from PRIME Database.

The retail arm sold over 1 crore shares of Reliance Industries (RIL) but bought 14.5 crore shares of Jio Financial Services during the quarter.


Other top sellers include TCS, Infosys, Bajaj Finserv, Avenue Supermarts, HUL, Tata Elxsi, IRCTC and BSE.


Stocks that retail investors bought in Q3

On an overall basis, retail holding went up in 1,007 companies listed on NSE in the last quarter. The average stock price of these companies in the same period increased by 13.99%, shows the data.

Besides Jio Financial, retail investors bought Paytm, IDFC First Bank, Suzlon Energy, Ashok Leyland, Ircon International, Adani Total Gas, SBI Cards, Rajesh Exports and Maruti Suzuki during the quarter.

Retail share by value in companies listed on NSE went down to 7.57% as on December-end from 7.62% quarter-on-quarter. In value terms, retail holding rose 13.27% QoQ to Rs 27.11 lakh crore in Q3.

When looked at from the perspective of the number of retail shareholders, it went up in Suzlon Energy, IRFC, Reliance Power, Tata Motors, IDFC First Bank, Rattan India Power, Jaiprakash Power Ventures, Tata Steel, Tata Power and Adani Total Gas. On the other hand, the number of retail shareholders went down by 1.95 lakh in LIC. Others in the list include Infosys, IRCTC, RIL, IEX, DMart, Bajaj Finserv, Wipro, BPCL and Jubilant Food.

The report also highlights the continuing overwhelming presence of retail investors in mid & smallcap companies, which institutional investors typically stay away from.

"As on December-end, while the value of the 5.83% held by FIIs in all companies listed on NSE was Rs 65.11 lakh crore and the value of the 6.16% (by number of shares or share by volume) held by DIIs was Rs 57.15 lakh crore, the value of the huge 16.29% (by number of shares or share by volume) held by retail was only Rs 27.11 lakh crore. The picture is very different if one looks only at Nifty-50 companies; the retail share in these companies was a meagre 6.81% (by number of shares or share by volume), declining marginally to 6.53% in case of top 100 companies listed on NSE," said Pranav Haldea of PRIME Database.

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