Indian stocks posted their biggest weekly gain in six years, and the Indian stocks best week came as falling crude prices and limited exposure to artificial intelligence stocks helped them weather a global tech selloff. The Nifty 50 rose 8.6% and the Sensex gained 8.8% in the week ended Friday 6 November, their strongest performance since February 2021, when optimism around India’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign powered a market rally. On Friday, the Nifty rose 2.01% to 25,030.35 and the Sensex gained 2.17% to 81,028.02, both closing at over eight-month highs.
The Indian stocks best week extended a winning run to a seventh straight session for both benchmarks, their longest winning streak in 14 months for the Nifty and 26 months for the Sensex. Foreign investors, who had largely shunned Indian equities this year, made their biggest purchases in about six years in the four days through Thursday, fuelling the rally. On Thursday 5 November alone, foreign institutional investors bought shares worth about 150 billion rupees, or 1.6 billion dollars, their largest single-day net purchase in nearly six years. The Hindu BusinessLine put the exact figure at 14,974.68 crore rupees.
The gains of the Indian stocks best week stood in stark contrast to the region’s tech-heavy markets. South Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Nikkei fell around 6% each on Friday, while Taiwan’s market declined 4.5%, tracking a sharp overnight retreat on Wall Street amid concerns over returns from massive artificial intelligence investments. The Nasdaq sank 5.5% on Thursday, the S and P 500 slid 4.4% and the Dow Jones fell 3.4%, after weak Qualcomm results and concerns over slowing spending on AI infrastructure. The selloff wiped around 2.5 trillion dollars off United States stock market value in a day.
Indian stocks best week and what drove it
The Indian stocks best week had several drivers working at once. Brent crude fell about 16% to near 99 dollars a barrel, easing the import bill for the world’s third-largest oil importer. The rupee gained 1.2% to 93.91 per dollar over the week. A decisive Democratic sweep in the United States midterm elections on 3 November raised concerns that tighter regulation could slow data centre expansion and curb AI infrastructure spending, which pushed global funds to rotate out of United States technology stocks. Strong second-quarter earnings from heavyweights including Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel and Mahindra and Mahindra gave the rally a domestic base.
The Indian stocks best week was led by heavyweights. Reliance Industries, India’s largest company by market capitalisation, reported a record consolidated net profit of 29,550 crore rupees for the second quarter of 2026-27, up 33.8% year on year. Among the top weekly gainers, Shriram Finance led with a rise of nearly 17%, followed by Bajaj Finance and Mahindra and Mahindra, which gained over 15% each. HDFC Bank jumped around 14%, while Reliance added over 13%. HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank rose 13.8% and 12.4% respectively, their strongest weekly gains in around six years. Investor wealth rose by nearly 29 lakh crore rupees during the week, with the combined market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies reaching 503.11 lakh crore rupees.
Indian stocks best week and the tech contrast
The Indian stocks best week also showed up in the technology sector itself. The Nifty IT index surged 778 points, or 2.37%, on Friday to an intraday high of 33,616.20, its highest level in nine months, after rallying 16.03% over the preceding month. Indian IT firms were seen as relatively insulated from the capital-heavy AI investments that triggered the global selloff, and the index gained 0.4% on Friday to take its two-day advance to nearly 2.9%. Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Investments, said Indian equities defied a global rout, extending their winning run as investors treated the home market as a relative safe harbour amid turmoil abroad.
The rally came after months of selling pressure through August, September and October, amid escalating tensions in West Asia and concerns over their impact on global energy prices. The Nifty and Sensex are still down 4.2% and 4.9% in 2026, against gains of 7% for MSCI Emerging Markets. The Indian stocks best week does not erase that gap, but it marks the first time this year that foreign money has returned at scale, and the market now heads into the Diwali week with momentum it has not had since February 2021.