India had a trading guru who sold courses to 400,000 students and collected $63M in fees. When the regulator opened the students' actual brokerage accounts, two-thirds had lost money after graduating, and the guru himself was down $450,000 in his own account. Funny anecdote, but it's the whole Indian market in miniature: the regulator's own study found 91% of retail derivatives traders lose money, with $11B evaporating in a single year. They keep coming anyway. Brokerage accounts went from 40 million to 130 million in five years. The house running this casino is the National Stock Exchange of India: half of all equity derivatives contracts traded on Earth go through this one venue, and 60% of its revenue comes from it. The regulator is throwing everything at shrinking the game, and that exact house starts marketing a $3B IPO next week. The question: would you buy the world's most profitable exchange, built on a product its regulator wants less of?
Why it matters · Capital does not only flow toward AI infrastructure, it burns somewhere too. Half the world's equity derivatives now change hands in India, 91% of the people doing it lose, and the house is going public.