Worth twenty minutes

Investor awareness

Your rights, your responsibilities, and the approaches that separate people from their money in this market every single week.

Investments in securities are subject to market risks; read all the related documents carefully. Registration granted by SEBI, membership of an exchange and certification from an examining body in no way guarantee the performance of the intermediary or provide any assurance of returns to investors. Nothing on this website is investment advice or a recommendation to deal in any security. A stop-loss is a trigger to place an order and not a guarantee of a price. Leveraged positions can lose more than the amount committed. We will never ask you for your password or your one-time password.

Your rights as an investor

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To receive a copy of every document you signed and of the Rights and Obligations, the Risk Disclosure Document and the Policies and Procedures. To receive a contract note for every trade within the prescribed time, showing brokerage and each charge separately. To receive your funds and securities within the prescribed period and to have your running account settled as prescribed. To receive statements of accounts and of holdings. To nominate a nominee, or to opt out of nomination. To have your complaint acknowledged and resolved within the published timelines, and to escalate it to the exchange and to SEBI if it is not. To deal only with registered intermediaries and to verify their registration before you do.

Your responsibilities

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Complete your KYC accurately and keep it current. Give your own mobile number and email address and keep them current, so that every alert and statement reaches you and nobody else. Read the Rights and Obligations and the Risk Disclosure Document before you trade. Pay margin and dues on time, from your own bank account. Check your contract notes, ledger and holdings statements and raise a discrepancy promptly. Keep your credentials to yourself. Do not hand your account to anybody to operate.

Deal only with the registered, and verify it yourself

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Deal only with a SEBI-registered intermediary, and check the registration on the SEBI website rather than taking it from a letterhead, a certificate shown on a screen or a message. Verify our details against the registers published by SEBI, the exchanges and the depository. An intermediary's registration number is public information and so is its current status, which takes a minute to check and has saved a great many people a great deal of money.

Nobody may promise you a return

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Assured returns, guaranteed profits, fixed monthly income from trading, profit-sharing schemes and tips with a success rate are not permitted in this market, and anybody offering them is either unregistered or acting outside their registration. Do not transfer money to an individual's account, to a scheme, or to anybody who asks you to trade through their login. Report the approach to us and to SEBI.

Protect yourself against the common frauds

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Nobody from a registered intermediary will ever ask for your password, your one-time password or your authenticator code. Do not install an application, an extension or a remote access tool because somebody on a call asked you to. Do not trade on tips received through messaging groups, social media or a video that promises a method. Verify a payment link before using it and pay only to the account shown in your own account statement. If money has moved, report it to your bank at once and to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.

Keep your contact details and your nominee current

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Update your mobile number and email address with us so that you receive every alert, contract note and statement directly. Record a nominee, or formally opt out of nomination, so that your family is not left with an avoidable process at the worst possible time. Check your demat holdings statement from the depository, which reaches you independently of us and is the simplest way to confirm that what you believe you hold is what you actually hold.

Understand what you are buying

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Where to find the official material

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The short version

Dos and don'ts

Twenty lines. If you read nothing else on this page, read the right-hand column: almost every loss that is not a market loss begins with one of those ten.

Do

Deal only with a SEBI-registered intermediary, and check the registration on the regulator's own website before you deal.
Read the Rights and Obligations, the Risk Disclosure Document and the Policies and Procedures before you trade, not after something goes wrong.
Give your own mobile number and email address, and keep both current, so every contract note, statement and security alert reaches you directly.
Nominate, or formally opt out of nomination, so your family is not left with an avoidable process at the worst possible time.
Pay only from a bank account in your own name that is mapped to your account, and only to the account shown in your own statement.
Check every contract note against what you actually did, and read the charges line at least once properly.
Reconcile your demat holdings against the statement the depository sends you directly, which does not pass through us.
Keep a record of your complaints: the date, the ticket reference and the reply. It is what an escalation is built from.
Place protective orders rather than relying on being at a screen, and understand what a stop-loss does and does not promise.
Ask us, in writing, about anything you do not understand, and keep the answer.

Do not

Do not share your password, your one-time password or your authenticator code with anybody, including somebody claiming to be from us.
Do not let anybody else operate your account, however well you know them and whatever they promise. It voids the protection the account carries.
Do not act on tips from messaging groups, social media, a video or a stranger on a telephone call, however convincing the track record looks.
Do not believe an assured return, a guaranteed profit, a fixed monthly income from trading or a profit-sharing scheme. None of them is permitted.
Do not transfer money to an individual, to an unregistered entity or to any account other than the one named in your own account statement.
Do not install an application, a browser extension or a remote access tool because somebody on a call asked you to.
Do not sign a blank or incomplete form, a power of attorney you have not read, or a document whose copy you are not given.
Do not trade a derivative, an intraday product or a leveraged position until you can explain what happens when it moves against you.
Do not ignore a security alert about a sign-in, a password change or a withdrawal that you did not make. Act on it immediately.
Do not reach the platforms through a link in a message or an email. Type the address or use your own bookmark.

If you have already shared a credential or sent money. Change your password immediately from a device you trust, telephone us on the number published on the contact page, dialled by you and not taken from the message that worried you, and put it in writing from your registered email address. Where money has moved, report it to your bank at once and to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. Acting in the first hour matters more than anything else you can do.