Foreign Institutional Investors: Fair-Weather Friends or Smart Traders?

We examine a theoretically robust but previously undocumented issue of what drives foreign portfolio investments into emerging markets. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are often blamed as fair-weather friends who pull out their investment at the first sign of trouble. Using a bottom-up approach, we explore this possibility. We demonstrate the influence of the firm-specific factors such as size, book to market ratio, the riskiness of the stocks, stock prices, dividend yield, liquidity, leverage, and earnings on the FII ownership. We find no evidence to show foreign investors as fair-weather friends. Instead, they are smart traders who follow a diligent investment strategy. We suggest reforms in corporate governance and improvement in financial fundamentals of the companies to attract FII ownership. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40953-021-00233-3.