MUMBAI: New rules introduced by markets regulator Sebi to curtail excessive speculation and trading in the futures & options (F&O) segment have reduced aggregate losses incurred by retail investors during fiscal 2025-26, but per-investor loss has increased a bit, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.Starting Nov 2024, Sebi had made several changes to the trading rules for F&O, including increasing margins and contract sizes. Those changes curtailed aggregate losses incurred by retail investors in the equity F&O segment to Rs 91,685 crore in FY26, down from about Rs 1.1 lakh crore in FY25. However, average per-person loss jumped marginally to Rs 1.2 lakh in FY26, from Rs 1.1 lakh the previous year.
However,average per-person loss jumped marginally to Rs 1.2 lakhin FY26, from Rs 1.1 lakh theprevious year
The detailed reply in Rajya Sabha by Pankaj Chaudhary, junior minister for finance, showed that both the number of retail investors in the segment and overall trading turnover fell in FY26. While there were 98.1 lakh retail traders in the equity F&O segment in FY25, in FY26 that number fell to 78.6 lakh. Also, trading volumes in the F&O segment assigned to retail investors fell from Rs 213 lakh crore in FY25 to Rs 202 lakh crore in FY26, the written reply by the minister showed.“Following the regulatory measures, Sebi has observed a year-on-year decline in the number of unique individual investors from 98.1 lakh to 78.6 lakh and net losses of the individuals from Rs 1,11,788 crore to Rs 91,685 crore in the equity derivatives segment in 2025-26, compared to the previous year,” the minister said.In his reply, the minister also listed the measures taken by Sebi since Nov 2024 that led to this decline in losses incurred by retail investors, trading volumes and the number of traders in the equity F&O segment.The measures included rationalisation of weekly index derivatives products, increase in tail risk coverage on the day of options expiry, higher contract size for index derivatives and rationalisation of monthly index derivative products.
