👥 Participant Positioning
NSE publishes who holds the derivative positions — foreign investors, domestic institutions, proprietary desks and clients — but the file is a raw CSV nobody reads. This is the same data as a positioning table: who is long, who is short, and what changed since yesterday.
🧭 Today's read
In index futures, foreign investors are net short (288,428 contracts) while clients are net long (241,420). The two sides are positioned against each other, which is the normal state of a futures book — every long has a short.
Index futures — net position
Long contracts minus short contracts in index futures, by participant category. The four lines sum to roughly zero by construction — every long has a short — so what matters is who is moving, not the level.
Open interest — positions held
Contracts outstanding at the close, by participant.
| Participant | Index fut long | Index fut short | Index fut net | Stock fut long | Stock fut short | Stock fut net | Total long | Total short | L/S ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreign investors | 48,406 | 336,834 | -288,428 | 3,448,501 | 2,947,706 | 500,795 | 6,150,334 | 5,636,299 | 1.09 |
| Domestic institutions | 40,741 | 27,774 | 12,967 | 365,915 | 4,599,506 | -4,233,591 | 522,918 | 5,058,047 | 0.1 |
| Proprietary desks | 64,601 | 30,560 | 34,041 | 906,936 | 413,857 | 493,079 | 5,436,946 | 5,291,014 | 1.03 |
| Clients (retail + HNI) | 297,981 | 56,561 | 241,420 | 3,469,998 | 230,281 | 3,239,717 | 14,231,354 | 10,356,193 | 1.37 |
Day-on-day change in net position
What actually moved. A large change in a small book matters more than a large standing position that did not move.
| Participant | Index futures net change | Total net change |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign investors | 1,613 | 2,926 |
| Domestic institutions | 109 | 24,328 |
| Proprietary desks | -4,194 | 119,737 |
| Clients (retail + HNI) | 2,472 | -146,993 |
Index options — positions held
Long and short in index calls and puts. A short call and a long put are both bearish positions, but only one of them has unlimited risk.
| Participant | Call long | Call short | Put long | Put short |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreign investors | 690,977 | 959,379 | 1,299,085 | 668,632 |
| Domestic institutions | 8,009 | 2,390 | 57,485 | 200 |
| Proprietary desks | 1,111,636 | 1,081,869 | 1,192,066 | 1,083,208 |
| Clients (retail + HNI) | 3,604,780 | 3,371,765 | 3,094,248 | 3,890,845 |
Trading volume by participant
Contracts traded on the day, as opposed to positions held. High volume with little change in open interest is intraday activity.
| Participant | Index fut long | Index fut short | Index fut net | Stock fut long | Stock fut short | Stock fut net | Total long | Total short | L/S ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreign investors | 9,610 | 7,997 | 1,613 | 246,628 | 285,398 | -38,770 | 6,385,876 | 6,382,949 | 1.0 |
| Domestic institutions | 177 | 68 | 109 | 104,281 | 84,504 | 19,777 | 112,336 | 88,008 | 1.28 |
| Proprietary desks | 10,806 | 15,000 | -4,194 | 317,735 | 310,177 | 7,558 | 48,931,333 | 48,811,596 | 1.0 |
| Clients (retail + HNI) | 29,439 | 26,967 | 2,472 | 250,336 | 238,901 | 11,435 | 40,025,892 | 40,172,884 | 1.0 |
Questions
Who are "clients" in this data?
Everyone who is not an institution or a proprietary desk — retail investors, HNIs and non-institutional corporate accounts, trading through a broker. It is the largest category by number of participants.
What is a proprietary position?
A broker trading its own capital rather than a client's. Prop desks are usually the most active and the most market-neutral category, since much of their book is arbitrage and market-making.
If FIIs are net short index futures, is that bearish?
Not by itself. A large part of foreign index-futures shorting is a hedge against a long cash portfolio, so a rising short position can accompany rising cash buying. That is exactly why this page sits next to the cash-flow page rather than replacing it.
Why do the long and short columns not balance across categories?
They do balance in total — every contract has a long and a short. Individual categories are net long or net short against each other, which is the information content of the table.
How to read this page. Everything here is a description of data the exchange has already published — it is not a forecast, a recommendation, or a signal to buy or sell. Labels such as "accumulation", "short buildup" or "support" name a pattern in the numbers, nothing more. Derivatives carry leverage; a hedged institutional position and a directional retail one can look identical in this data.
Flash Finance is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser. Exchange data is sourced from NSE's public end-of-day files and may be revised by the exchange. Verify anything you intend to act on against the exchange's own records.
Data as of the 2026-09-18 session · built 2026-09-20 22:25 IST · source: NSE participant-wise open interest and trading volume files. Figures are as published by the exchange and are for information only, not investment advice.
