A summary of the day's market activity.
Indian gold exchange-traded funds took in ₹4,451 crore of net money in September, the biggest monthly inflow so far in FY2026-27, according to data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI). The September haul was 71% higher than August’s ₹2,597 crore and came despite a 3.5% corrective dip in gold prices that month.
AMFI supplied the figures. Adil Chacko at Anand Rathi Wealth told reporters that a mix of geopolitical tensions, higher crude and a rise in India VIX of more than 25% from its September lows helped push investors toward gold as a hedge. The piece also noted a much larger inflow earlier this year - about ₹24,040 crore in January 2026, when local gold prices were approaching ₹1.75 lakh per 10 grams.
The flows suggest two behaviours running together. Some investors appear to have used the September price pullback to add exposure, while others may simply be responding to recent strong performance - the write-up calls this recency bias. At the same time, equity funds continued to attract substantial money: AMFI recorded ₹38,307 crore of net inflows into equity mutual funds in September, so this is not evidence of a wholesale shift out of stocks.
The data matter because ETF flows influence domestic demand for allocated gold and can feed through to physical markets and premiums. But the story is mixed: the inflows reinforce gold’s role as a portfolio hedge amid geopolitical and inflation worries, yet they also carry the hallmarks of momentum-driven buying. The original piece points out that, over long five-year periods, Indian equities have tended to give better risk-adjusted returns than gold - a reminder that large ETF inflows do not settle the question of where gold belongs in a long-term allocation.
Source: Livemint
