The Household Ledger — what the market promised, what it took

1 · The ledger, before costs

Derivatives are zero-sum before costs: every rupee one side loses, another side gains. SEBI's study says so in its own words — "the aggregate losses of individual traders were broadly matched by the aggregate profits of corporate and institutional participants." This table is exchange data for the whole population, squared-off profit and loss, FY25 and FY26.

FY26 gross, scaled to the individual loss. Source: SEBI study, 20 Aug 2026. L0

2 · Then the costs, paid by individuals

On top of the ₹72,243 crore that went to the other side, individuals paid ₹24,859 crore in costs in FY26: brokerage about 44% (~₹11,000 crore), securities transaction tax 27% (₹6,645 crore), exchange fees 16%, GST 11%, stamp duty and SEBI fee about 2%. The study's own footnote says its cost figure covers about 80% of turnover, so the true cost is nearer 1.25 times — roughly ₹31,000 crore. Net of costs, in the fifteen-broker sample that covers about 90% of individuals, the loss is the ₹91,685 crore the headlines carried. Over two years, FY25 and FY26 together, individuals lost ₹2.03 lakh crore after costs — more than the ₹1.81 lakh crore of the three years before.

For those who lost, costs were 35% of their gross loss (44% in FY25). 4.4 lakh people were profitable before costs and net losers after them.

3 · How concentrated the winning side is

The common frame is "foreign investors against Indians". The study's data does not support that cut. Proprietary desks — exchange members trading their own money — are about 60% of all turnover; FPIs about 7%. And the proprietary category includes foreign-owned firms that trade as Indian members (Jane Street's Indian entity is one). The honest cut is local proprietary desks versus foreign portfolio accounts, and most of the money goes to the former. Inside the proprietary category the money is concentrated to a degree the headlines miss:

So roughly ₹40,000 crore of FY26's ₹58,000 crore institutional gain went to about twenty entities. The study states the dependency itself: "options liquidity is closely tied to the continued participation of these few large firms."

4 · Why options lose whichever way the market goes

The study separates futures from options by quarter. In futures, individuals are mostly long and their results track the market: +₹3,741 crore in Q1 FY25 when the Nifty rose 7%, −₹8,081 crore in Q4 FY26 when it fell 15%. In options, individuals lost every single quarter — including Q1 FY26, when the Nifty rose 9% and they lost ₹18,878 crore. Direction is irrelevant, because what is being traded is mostly time:

A same-day, out-of-the-money option is a ticket whose value decays to zero by the close; the seller on the other side is usually a hedged market maker keeping the decay and the spread. That is a description of the product, not a suggestion about which side to be on.

5 · Who the 88 lakh are

6 · Who bears the damage

The average loss of ₹1.17 lakh hides the shape. 77% of traders lose up to ₹1 lakh and account for about 10% of losses. 2.7% of traders — 1.88 lakh people — lost over ₹10 lakh each and account for 49% of losses. 4,783 individuals lost over ₹1 crore in FY26. Over two years, 13,663 people lost more than ₹1 crore (average ₹2.2 crore) against 1,842 who made more than ₹1 crore — seven to one; in the ₹1–10 lakh band it is twenty-one to one. Even the twenty highest-turnover individuals in the country were net losers. And the winners are shrinking: average profit per profit-maker halved between the two study periods, from ₹3.09 lakh to ₹1.46 lakh. L0

7 · By state — the map exists

The study's annexure gives the picture state by state (Table 45). The loss rate is above 85% everywhere. Where it is highest — Assam, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh — is also where trading turnover is the largest multiple of what people actually own.

Full state table to follow once Table 45 is transcribed row by row — it becomes the second column of the Commons Atlas beside the CSR map.

The same shape as the CSR map

Our first series showed where India's corporate social spending goes: ₹61 a year reaches each poor person in Bihar, ₹64,308 in Goa. The money follows factories, not need. This series shows the mirror image: where household money leaves, and the states where it leaves fastest relative to what people own are the same states the CSR money never reaches. Two flows, one pattern: attention and capital priced against where need is.

8 · The ecosystem that runs on the flow

The fiscal line grows while the regulator tries to shrink the base. We record that as a tension in the public record, not as a verdict on anyone's intent.

9 · When the rules were enforced

Two cases mark where the regulator drew the line — one a large foreign-owned firm trading through local entities, one a domestic social-media network. Both matter here: the first shows the other side of the ledger in the open; the second is what "organising retail" against institutions runs into.

The line between "liquidity provision" and "manipulation" in the first case is one of degree: options exposure six times the cash being moved.

10 · What the November 2024 measures did

SEBI's own reading: the measures "moderated participation but did not fundamentally alter trading behaviour." The numbers behind that sentence:

11 · The household balance sheet, and where the savings go

Two numbers are often quoted about households, and both are usually quoted wrong. Savings did not "collapse to 5%" — that figure is net financial savings in FY23; net financial savings were 7.0% of national disposable income in FY25. Debt is higher than the commonly cited 41%: the Reserve Bank puts it at 45.5% of GDP (Sept 2025), with more than half of household borrowing now for consumption rather than housing. And the same households are, in aggregate, the most disciplined savers the market has ever had: SIP inflows hit a record ₹32,297 crore in August 2026; domestic institutions now own more of listed India than foreign ones. Both columns are true at once.

12 · How to read the grades

All figures verified 23 September 2026. Nothing on this page is scored, ranked or combined into an index. Still to do: transcribe Table 45 in full; read the RBI FSR and Annual Report pages directly and upgrade §11.

Sources

• SEBI, Study: Profitability of Individual Traders in the Equity Derivatives Segment, FY25–FY26, 20 Aug 2026 — PDF (91 pages) · study page
• Demographics as reported — Business Standard, 23 Aug 2026 · CorpLawUpdates summary
• Securities transaction tax — Business Standard, 18 Sept 2026
• NSE revenue and offering — Upstox, Sept 2026
• Zerodha FY26 — Entrackr
• Global derivatives volume 2025 — FIA
• Jane Street — SAT status, Feb 2026 · JSI Investments filing · Capitalmind on the mechanics · Oxford Business Law Blog
• Suitability rules — as reported · Millennium — BusinessWorld
• SEBI finfluencer order, 23 May 2026 — ANI
• RBI Financial Stability Report, June 2026 — household debt, Business Standard · RBI Annual Report, May 2026 — savings, Business Standard
• AMFI, Aug 2026 — SIP ₹32,297 cr · Ownership — Business Standard · GDP — Business Standard
• CSR figures — The CSR Misallocation Index · How we make these reports

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