Individual traders continued to lose heavily in India's equity derivatives market in FY26, even as overall retail participation moderated after regulatory tightening and a slowdown in speculative trading. A new Sebi study showed that nearly 88% or 9 out of 10 individual traders still incurred losses in FY26. The share of loss-making individuals declined 3.2 percentage points from 90.9% in FY25.
Sebi study showed individual traders posted aggregate net losses of about Rs 91,685 crore in FY26, compared with about Rs 1.12 lakh crore in FY25. The fall in total losses came mainly because the number of active individual traders declined, not because outcomes improved meaningfully for those who continued trading. Average loss per trader rose marginally to about Rs 1.17 lakh during the year.
