Ye Dil Maange More, Say Market Players But Where Are The Investors

Yogesh Supekar and Karan Bhohniani wonder why a country of 125 crore plus population has just 2.66 crore of demat accounts—they raise their fingers on lack of awareness, education and such activities to tap more investors in the equity markets. Here is what they find: 
 

In the year 2015, as many as 2.41 crore demat accounts were active in a country having population over 130 crore. A year later, number of demat accounts in operations shot up to 2.66 crore marking 10.37 per cent rise on a year to year basis while Indian population went up by just 1.2 per cent. As we file this report, official data suggests NSDL having 1.51 crore demat accounts under its umbrella while CDSL is housing as many as 1.15 crore demat accounts. The numbers above clearly indicate a significant rise in the numbers of retail investors participating in the country’s equity markets irrespective of its highs and lows. While some call it a healthy growth, there are others who believe the rise in numbers of operational demat accounts is anything but impressive. Meanwhile stock exchanges like BSE, NSE, regulatory bodies like SEBI, broking firms and other such stake-holders of the equity markets have been trying to impress the aspiring investors to come and join the market bandwagon.

While all the concerned stakeholders have indeed progressed in line with the stock market growth in India the retail investors are still left with a feeling that they have not benefitted as much as they could and should have. There still is a lurking feeling amongst majority of retail investors that stock market is not the place where decent amount of money can made. The apprehension in the minds of retail investors could be a culmination of several concerns such as

a. stock market is not safe ,

b. stock market is manipulative and prone to scams,

c. stock market is a casino and requires tonnes of money to stay put in the game,

d. too many factors affecting the markets makes it incomprehensible thus making the decision-making task almost impossible