HOW SEBI PLANS TO NUDGE YOUR INVESTMENTS

FEW people can disagree that the mutual fund industry in India is preventing a dramatic collapse in share prices. Foreigners have dumped Indian shares relentlessly in 2026. Most of the supply of shares was absorbed by the domestic institutional investors.

- RAJAS KELKAR

Your saving and investing habits are helping protect equity markets from a potentially vicious selloff. The appeal of major tech companies like Nvidia and Apple, and chip makers in Korea, Taiwan and China, is drawing foreigners away. That is reflected in the major underperformance of the Nifty 50 compared with the Korean and Taiwanese benchmark indices this year.

A new Securities and Exchange Board of India consultation paper published last week proposes to strengthen the wall of your money by letting your employer deduct money from your salary every month into MF schemes of your choice. That is a major step towards nudging you to invest more via an automated process. It is similar to the way money is deducted from your account and deposited into your provident fund account. Sebi seems enthused by the shift in household allocation away from physical assets like real estate and gold towards financial assets like equity, debt, and other asset classes, either directly or through mutual funds.