Penny stocks are one of the oldest and most persistent sources of retail investor losses in any equity market. India's market has its own specific ecology of penny stocks, its own patterns of manipulation, and its own regulatory responses that have reduced but not eliminated the problem. This article explains what penny stocks are, why they are structurally dangerous regardless of the specific company or story, how manipulation schemes work in the Indian context, and what the

SpaceX opened its first day of trading at USD 150 per share on Nasdaq on 12 June 2026, an 11.1 percent premium to its USD 135 IPO price. Trading turnover exceeded USD 11.4 billion on debut day. The opening price pushed SpaceX's market capitalisation to USD 2.05 trillion, making it immediately the eighth-largest company in the United States by market value, surpassing Broadcom, Tesla, and Meta at the open. The opening also confirmed what had become arithmetically certain the n

India is one of the largest derivatives markets in the world by volume, yet most retail investors who have been investing in stocks and mutual funds for years have only a fuzzy understanding of what futures and options actually are. They know the terms. They have seen the F&O segment mentioned in market news. They understand it has something to do with leverage and risk. But the actual mechanics, how a futures contract works, how an options premium is set, who is on the other

Imagine you own a small bakery with four partners, each holding a 25 percent stake. One day the business is doing well, cash is sitting in the bank, and one of your partners wants to sell their share. Instead of bringing in an outsider, the bakery itself buys that partner out. Now the remaining three partners each own a larger slice of the same business, without having spent their own money. The bakery used its own cash to shrink the number of owners, and in doing so made eac

The first time most people try to open a stock market account in India, they run into a small wall of terminology. The broker asks whether you want to open a demat account, a trading account, or both. Perhaps a bank representative mentions that you already have a demat account with them. A friend says their broker gave them all three accounts together and they are not entirely sure what any of them does. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. The confusion is understanda

A bonus share is an additional share issued by a company to its existing shareholders free of cost, in proportion to their current holdings. No new money changes hands. The company does not receive any fresh capital, and the shareholder does not pay anything. The shares simply appear in your demat account on the record date. The shares are not conjured from nowhere. A company builds up reserves over its profitable years: retained earnings, the securities premium account, the

The title of this article needs one important clarification before we begin. Category III AIFs are not a way for retail investors to access private global companies. They are a way for investors who can commit a minimum of Rs 1 crore, and in practice often significantly more, to access investment strategies that include private market exposure. The distinction matters. The word retail in financial regulation typically means small investors with modest portfolios. Category III

The Sensex is a stock market index. It is not a fund, not a tradeable security, and not a measure of the total value of BSE. It is a number that tracks the collective performance of 30 carefully selected large and actively traded companies listed on BSE, expressed relative to a fixed historical starting point. The Sensex has been part of Indian financial life for long enough that most people treat the number as self-evident, as if it simply exists and requires no further expl

Every financial centre needs a regulator, and GIFT City has one that is different from anything else in India. The International Financial Services Centres Authority, universally abbreviated to IFSCA, is the single regulatory body responsible for all financial services activity within India's International Financial Services Centres. In practice, that means it oversees everything that happens at GIFT IFSC in Gujarat: banking, capital markets, insurance, fund management, aircr