The iShares India fund is down 15.7% this year. The small-company fund is down 4.6%

AINDA, the iShares fund of large and mid-size Indian companies, was down 15.7% in share price from the end of 2025 through Thursday, October 8. ASMIN, the iShares fund of smaller Indian companies, was down 4.6% over those same days. ASPY, a fund that holds the S&P 500, rose 13.5%.

The Nifty 50, India's index of 50 large companies, rose 1.3% on Friday, October 9, and closed at 22,520. The bounce came a day after the index traded at its low of the past year. That is one day, in rupees. The fund figures above are in dollars, and they stop at Thursday.

On Wednesday, October 7, the Reserve Bank of India raised its main policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point, to 5.5%. Governor Sanjay Malhotra also lifted the growth forecast for the year through March 2027 to 7.1%, and put the expected rise in consumer prices at 5.2% for that year.

The rupee is already in the dollar price

AINDA does not track the Nifty. It tracks the MSCI India index, 165 large and mid-size companies.

Through September 30, the version of that index the fund uses was down 9.3% in rupees and 14.9% in dollars. Both figures count dividends, after the tax the index assumes. The dollar number is the rupee number once the currency is converted, and the rupee weakened over that stretch. The fund does not hedge, so a buyer of the US-listed shares gets the dollar result.

The funds are different lists

The share prices below run from the last day of 2025 to Thursday's close. They leave out distributions.

The two broad funds fell by almost the same amount. They do not cost the same.

AFLIN charges 0.19% a year. AINDA charges 0.61%, more than three times as much. Franklin's fund tracks a FTSE India index. The iShares fund tracks MSCI India. HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel and Infosys sit near the top of both. About $252 million of AINDA shares change hands on a typical day, against about $19 million for AFLIN. For a buyer who wants large and mid-size Indian companies, what shows up in the account is the fee, and how easily the shares trade.

Two other funds are built from the Nifty 50.

AINDY seeks to track that index by company size, using a sample of the stocks rather than every name at the index weight. HDFC Bank is 10.4% of the fund. BNFTY seeks to track those 50 companies in equal amounts, so its largest holding is 2.2%. Through Thursday the size-weighted fund was down 18.6%, and the equal-weight fund was down 15.0%. One charges 0.65% a year. The other charges 0.8%.

Banks, fuel and smaller companies

Financial companies are 30.1% of AINDA. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank, the four large private banks, are 16.5% of it together.

In Wednesday's statement, the Reserve Bank of India said the Indian basket of crude averaged $82 a barrel in July and $116.1 in September. The basket is the government's measure of the oil the country imports.

BEPI weights companies by profits rather than by stock-market size. Energy companies are 15.2% of it, against 8.6% of AINDA. Reliance Industries, a group that spans energy, retail and telecom, is its largest holding, at 6.4%. Coal India and ONGC, the state oil and gas producer, sit in its top ten as well. The share price was still down 14.5% through Thursday, close to the two broad funds.

ASMIN holds 456 smaller companies. Its largest stock is 1.8%. Energy is 0.9% of the fund, and financial companies are 15.8%. Industrials, the makers and builders, are 21%. The large funds are a short list of big companies. This one is a long list of smaller ones.

None of these funds hedges the rupee. Through Thursday, the dollar results ran from a 4.6% loss on the small-company fund to an 18.6% loss on the size-weighted Nifty fund.