If you've heard traders say "FIIs are heavily short on index futures" or "Client longs are piling up at the top," they're reading NSE's Participant-Wise Open Interest report. It's a free daily report, published by NSE, that breaks down open interest by who's holding it — FII, DII, Pro, and Client. This guide gets you to the report and through reading it.
You'll end up with: the report open in front of you, and the ability to read what each participant's Long and Short OI numbers actually mean.
Before You Start
- A basic sense of what open interest means (see "What Is Open Interest (OI) in the Stock Market?" if you need the primer first)
- A browser and internet access — no login or account needed for this report
Step-by-Step: Finding the Report on NSE
- 1
Open nseindia.com in your browser.
- 2
Go to the Reports section and select Derivatives reports.
- 3
Find the Participant wise Open Interest report in the daily reports list.
- 4
Pick the trading date you want — it defaults to the latest session.
- 5
Download the CSV or view it directly on the page.
Note
This is end-of-day data for that trading session, published once daily after market close — not a live feed. Don't refresh it expecting intraday updates.
Reading the Columns: FII, DII, Pro & Client
The report breaks OI down by instrument — index futures, stock futures, index options (calls and puts), and stock options — with a Long and a Short column for each, in number of contracts, for every participant category below.
- FII (Foreign Institutional Investors). Foreign funds and FPIs trading through registered accounts. This is the most-watched row on the report — FII index futures positioning is the single number traders check first, because the size of foreign money moving in one direction tends to actually move the index.
- DII (Domestic Institutional Investors). Indian mutual funds, insurers, and similar institutions. Don't expect this row to mirror FII in scale — most DIIs have limited or no mandate to trade derivatives directly, so DII index F&O numbers are usually much smaller than FII's.
- Pro. Proprietary desks — brokers and trading firms trading their own capital, not client money. Pro flow tends to be fast-moving and short-horizon, often reacting to the same triggers as FII but on a smaller book.
- Client. Everyone else not classified above — retail individuals, family offices, and other non-institutional accounts. It's the broadest, most mixed bucket on the report, not a clean read of "small retail traders" alone.
What Rising or Falling OI by Participant Means
A single day's number tells you where positioning stood at that day's close — nothing more. What traders actually track is the trend across several sessions: is FII index futures Long OI climbing day over day, or is it Short OI building? A rising Long-Short ratio for FII on index futures near a key level is often read as institutional conviction; a falling one, the opposite.
The pattern some traders watch closely is divergence — FII adding index shorts while Client OI keeps adding longs at the same level. It's a commonly discussed setup, not a guaranteed signal: participant OI tells you what's positioned, not what happens next. Treat it as one input alongside price action, not a standalone call, and this isn't investment advice — no OI pattern here promises a specific outcome.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Treating the report as a live, intraday feed.
It's end-of-day data, published once per session — check it after close, not during the trading day.
Reading one day's OI change in isolation.
Track the Long-Short ratio over several sessions before drawing a conclusion.
Expecting DII numbers to move like FII's.
DII derivative participation is structurally thinner — a small DII number isn't unusual.
Assuming Client means only small retail traders.
Client is a catch-all for every non-institutional account, not a pure retail-sentiment gauge.