The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s-SEBI’s regulatory measures helped reduce aggregate retail investor losses in the equity derivatives segment by 18 percent to Rs 91,685 crore in FY26 from Rs 1.12 lakh crore in FY25, Finance Ministry informed the Parliament on August 11.
The average per person loss for those who traded in futures & options (F&O) was at Rs 1.16 lakh in FY26, as compared to Rs 1.14 lakh in FY25. In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said SEBI observed a decline in the number of unique individual investors participating in the equity derivatives segment as well as a reduction in trading activity following regulatory interventions introduced from 2024. Overall turnover in equity derivatives also moderated and decreased to Rs 202 lakh crore in FY26 from Rs 213 lakh crore in FY25, according to the minister.
SEBI has put in place regulatory and surveillance measures for effecting market stability and for the protection of the interests of investors in the stock market, the ministry stated. The market regulator’s measures included rationalisation of weekly and monthly index derivatives products, higher contract sizes for index derivatives, increased tail-risk coverage on options expiry days, upfront collection of option premiums from buyers, removal of calendar spread treatment on expiry days and intraday monitoring of .
In May 2025, the introduced additional measures to streamline expiry days across exchanges and strengthen risk monitoring and disclosure in the F&O segment. However, collections from the securities transaction tax (STT) on F&O trades surged to Rs 27,695 crore from Rs 7,893 crore a year earlier, Chaudhary said.
Experts believe the decline in retail F&O losses reflects the fact that SEBI’s tighter rules are curbing excessive speculative trading. However, they caution that the higher average loss per trader and rising STT collections show activity remains significant. However they believe sustained investor education, risk awareness and stronger monitoring is still the need of the hour.