iShares MSCI India Small-Cap ETF

SMIN

Valor de mercado US$ 712 mi

India and China ETFs are trailing AI-driven U.S. markets. Explore the reason behind the fall and what to expect ahead.

Nearly 40% of India's coal-fired power plants are operating with critically low fuel ​stocks due to a surge in power demand amid ‌hotter-than-usual weather linked to El Niño, government data showed on Monday.

India needs to review some of its financing rules and develop a stronger talent ​pipeline to achieve its ambitious goal of expanding nuclear ‌power capacity to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2047, officials and industry executives said on Wednesday.

India is likely ​to receive below-average ‌monsoon rains in September after ​precipitation in ​August was 16% below ⁠average, the ​weather department said ​on Monday, raising concerns about farm ​output and ​economic growth in Asia's ‌third-largest ⁠economy.

India, tracked by the iShares MSCI India ETF, underperformed with a -8% return versus EEM's +35% over the past year. The 40+ percentage point performance gap signals investor avoidance, but the underlying reasons challenge surface-level assumptions.

Foreign investors continued pulling money from Asian equities in July, but the headline outflow masks a striking shift underneath: capital moved away from the region's biggest AI winners while selectively returning to markets with less dependence on the semiconductor boom. Investors sold a net $25.48 billion of shares across seven major Asian markets during the month, extending the region's foreign-selling streak to nine months.

India's top information technology companies are expected to report another subdued quarter, as AI-driven pricing pressure, weak client spending, and global geopolitical turmoil continue to weigh on growth, nine brokerages said.

Shares of Indian banks rose more than 1% on Tuesday, making them the top-performing sectoral gainers after the Reserve Bank of India issued detailed guidelines for a concessional foreign exchange swap facility that lenders can use for overseas borrowings. The move forms part of a broader package of measures announced by the central bank to attract foreign capital into the country at a time when India's economy is facing growth and inflation challenges.

Aggressive buy-sell dollar/rupee swap operations by the Reserve Bank of India over the past 10 days have pushed foreign exchange hedging costs to their lowest levels in two months, while contributing to a recovery in the rupee ahead of a closely watched monetary policy decision. One-year hedging costs have fallen sharply from a mid-May peak of 3.50% to 2.92%.

Venugopal Garre, Managing Director and Head of India Research at Bernstein, discusses India's AI ambitions. He sees opportunities in India's capital equipment and data center developer companies as ways for investors to play the proxy AI trade.