Foreign investment surge fuels spectacular rally in India’s smallcaps amid bubble alerts

livemint.com:

MUMBAI:Small-cap stocks had a spectacular rally the previous fiscal year, much of it driven by foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) betting on smaller Indian companies even as the surge sparked fears of a bubble caused in part by some murky transactions.In the financial year 2023-24 (FY24), about 35% of the total ₹2.08 trillion of FPI equity investments in India were channeled into the top 100 companies of the BSE Smallcap index, totalling ₹71,631 crore and making up 70% of the overall investment into smallcaps, according to BSE shareholding data analysed by Mint.This influx of investments contributed to both the Nifty Smallcap 250 and the BSE SmallCap index, which comprises 946 companies, outpacing returns from the benchmark Nifty and Sensex indices last year.And while the shareholding data for the first quarter of the current fiscal won't be available before 30 June, the BSE SmallCap has already outperformed the Sensex by over 6% since 1 April 2024, with a return of 9.6%, compared to Sensex returns of 3.6%.However, the rapid rise has not gone unnoticed by regulators. In March, Madhabi Puri Buch, chair of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, warned of “pockets of froth" in the overheated small-cap and mid-cap markets.Mint previously reported (here, here, and here) about the potential involvement of Dubai-based hawala operator Hari Shankar Tibrewala in funnelling illegal proceeds from the Mahadev online betting scandal into Indian small-cap stocks.Nevertheless, the surge of foreign investors into India’s small-cap market has provided a semblance of stability.“FPIs could continue to invest in fundamentally sound small caps which are reasonably valued," said SK Joshi, executive director at Khambatta Securities.