India's stock market decline wipes out $1.3 trillion in market value – can investors stay optimistic?

More than $1 trillion has been wiped off from India's stock market after investors turn to China. Has the emerging-market darling hit rock bottom?

Red Fort in Old Delhi, India
(Image credit: Getty Images)

India’s “loyal retail traders” are being tested like never before, says Chiranjivi Chakraborty on Bloomberg. A long stock market boom ran into trouble in September, when an unanticipated economic slowdown and analysts’ downgrades to companies’ earnings forecasts knocked India’s richly priced shares – $1.2 trillion has since been wiped off valuations. Global funds withdrew an estimated $26 billion between October and February.

Local investors had kept things ticking along, but even they now appear to be losing enthusiasm, with inflows into domestic mutual funds down 30% since a record high in October. India has been an emerging-market darling in recent years, with the BSE Sensex Index surging 187% between the March 2020 Covid trough and September 2024. Yet, since then, the index has slipped more than 10%.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.