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DRHP filings hit 10-year high in 2025 despite muted IPO launches
Sundar Sethuraman
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The filing of draft red herring prospectuses (DRHPs) has remained resilient in 2025, reflecting continued optimism in the initial public offering (IPO) market, even as broader equity markets have weakened and primary activity slowed.
Between January and May, 85 companies filed their DRHPs with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the highest tally for this period in over a decade. Among the marquee companies filing offer documents this year are Tata Capital, Urban Company, and Canara Robeco Asset Management.
A DRHP is a preliminary prospectus filed ahead of an IPO and contains key disclosures, including share offer size,
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The Hindu
44 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Taking the bull by its horns
Mumbai's finance community often comes together in ballrooms of five-star hotels and valorises the Indian investor. The financially influential community often speaks in words tinged with nationalistic pride about the continuous increase in registered investors. In 2024-2025, up to 2.09 crore Indians were registered as investors. This number was just 38.5 lakh in 2019-20, before the pandemic. That's a five-fold increase. The suit-clad mutual-fund managers and stock analysts say that this is a reflection of the average Indian's trust in the potential of the nation. Terms like 'financial inclusion' and 'economic democratisation' are often used. In July 2025, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which regulates the capital markets, alleged that Jane Street, an American trading firm, had manipulated the derivatives market, a segment of the financial market. Derivatives are a set of financial products that lock the prices of stocks or indices (groups of stocks such as Nifty 50), for a future date. SEBI halted Jane Street's operations until it paid ₹4,843.7 crore, the profit that the firm had allegedly made. Now, the matter is under investigation. India is the largest derivatives market in the world. In June this year, Reuters quoted the Futures Industry Association as saying that the country 'made up nearly 60% of global equity derivative trading volumes of 7.3 billion in April'. It also said that at least six global trading giants 'are ratcheting up their presence' in India. In September 2024, SEBI brought out a report stating that the aggregate losses from 2022-2024 in the derivatives market were to the tune of ₹1.8 lakh crore. 'Despite consecutive years of losses, more than 75% of those who lost continued trading in F&Os (futures and options, a part of the derivatives market),' the report stated. While there are many reasons for this, analysts say that people look at F&Os for quick returns, since the contracts expire on a weekly or monthly basis, unlike stocks, which are long-term investments. Pump and dump Jane Street, which began operations in 2000 in New York, had a net trading revenue of $10.4 billion as of June 2025, as per Bloomberg, the business news network. Its website claims to have five offices and over 3,000 employees, trading in 45 countries (India is not listed). Nuvama Wealth Management was a company executing Jane Street's trade in India. It is now under the scanner of the Income Tax Department. In April 2024, SEBI carried out an analysis of 'the alleged unauthorised use of their (Jane Street) trading strategies in Indian options markets' and asked the National Stock Exchange to monitor it. Later that year, SEBI issued a circular announcing a series of policy steps to address problems in the derivatives market. These included overtrading in index options on expiry days (Thursdays). Options are financial contracts, a type of derivative. The buyer is simply purchasing the 'option' to buy an underlying asset at a fixed date at a certain price. 'Call options' expect prices to rise, and 'put options' expect prices to fall. SEBI alleged that Jane Street pumped up the price of Bank Nifty — which consists of stocks of 12 large banks — by buying them in the morning. Seeing this, other traders would also buy in, further pushing up the price. The company would simultaneously buy put options on the same stocks/index, which other traders were unaware of. Towards the end of the day, Jane Street would dump the stocks, profiting from the resultant fall. Complexity and drive The complexity of the derivatives market makes it difficult to navigate even for professional traders like Preeti K. Chhabra, founder of Surat-based Trade Delta, a trading firm. 'After having studied the entire subject thoroughly, and trading for nearly one and a half years, I realised that this is a game where nobody knows 100%,' says Chhabra, who started her derivatives trading firm in 2018-19 after almost two decades of working in stock brokerages. Ms. Chhabra began with a capital of ₹90 lakh and lost about half of it in the first few months, she says. Following the loss, she took a year's break to understand the instrument better before she got back to it. She is among the many traders in India who execute futures and options trades for their clients. Social media platforms and even messaging apps like Telegram are rife with futures and options courses for children. In fact, on the days when the Bank Nifty dipped, analysts online gave different reasons for this, not citing possible market manipulation, SEBI said, in its order. Financial influencers are major contributors to financial market education and investment. Street oversmart With a spurt in online trading apps, which charge low commissions, during COVID-19 in 2020, many, including the youth, began accessing financial markets. The entry of new investors at this time drove a bull rally that lasted about four years before the slump to current levels began in September 2024. Bodies like the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) say that increasing financial literacy and awareness is the reason behind the proliferation. The awareness of financial instruments, however, does not translate into an understanding of markets. In its 2024 report, SEBI said that 43% of the people who had lost money were below the age of 30, and 93% of the people in this age group lost money trading in derivatives. Akshay Chinchalkar is the head of research at Axis Securities and actively writes on the professional-networking platform LinkedIn about market trends. He feels that there is too much information out there, which makes it difficult to separate the knowledge from the noise. 'It makes us ponder whether the sheer volume of analysis directly leads to consistent, profitable F&O trading for everyone,' he says. The Association of National Exchanges Members of India said in early August that it's studying ways of helping people move away from derivative trading. One of the suggestions they made was to increase the barriers to entry, so that uninformed or undercapitalised traders don't lose on a gamble. Markets like South Korea and Singapore have such barriers, the association said at a media briefing. SEBI has taken certain measures to control the enthusiasm, like doing away with weekly expiries of derivative contracts for all indices except the main Nifty 50 and the 30-stock Sensex, expecting that this would reduce speculatory trading. This means that contracts need to be held for longer periods in all other indices. However, a SEBI study showed that 91% of individual traders continued to lose money even after reforms. This was down from 93% before the Jane Street episode.
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Business Standard
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Research analysts fail to keep pace with swelling stock investor base
There's only one RA per 73,000 investors now, as against one per 44,000 before pandemic Mumbai Listen to This Article Research analyst numbers have grown slower than India's base of stock market investors. The number of registered research analysts (RAs) grew to 1,584 as of June 2025 from 620 in 2018-19. The number of unique investors has grown to 116.2 million from 27.5 million over the same period. The slower growth of RA registrations has meant that there is only one per 73,000 investors now, compared to one per 44,000 investors before the Covid-19 pandemic. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) recently released frequently asked questions (FAQs) around RA regulations. A regulated RA essentially brings out reports that
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7 hours ago
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Best Mutual Funds: These 6 value schemes delivered over 20% annualised returns in past 3 years
Best Mutual Funds: Before investing in a mutual fund scheme, investors typically examine its past few years' returns and compare them with those of other schemes in the same category. The past performance of mutual funds sets the tone for their future performance. A high-performing fund, for instance, is likely to garner a lot of contributions from new investors, whereas a low-performing fund fails to gain traction over time. Here, we list out the high-performing value schemes that delivered over 20 per cent annualised returns in the past three years. Let us first understand what a value mutual fund is. Value mutual funds refer to those schemes which follow a value investment strategy with at least 65 per cent in stocks. These funds identify securities that are currently undervalued but are seen to perform well in future after their value is unlocked. There are a total of 24 value schemes with total assets under management (AUM) of ₹ 2.01 lakh crore, according to the latest AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India) data as on July 31, 2025. Value Fund 3-year-returns (%) Axis Value Fund 21.45 HSBC Value fund 23.84 ICICI Pru Value 21.05 JM Value Fund 23.34 Nippon India Value 21.19 Quant Value Fund 22.98 (Source: AMFI; regular returns as on 13 August 2025) As we can see in the table above, JM Value Fund delivered over 23 per cent annualised returns in the past three years, while HSBC Value Fund gave 23.84 per cent returns. Other schemes which have delivered high returns include Axis Value Fund and ICICI Prudential Value Fund. Notably, past returns do not guarantee future returns. This means just because some scheme has given exceptional returns in the past, it does not mean it will continue to deliver similar returns in the future as well. Other factors that investors are supposed to consider before making an investment decision include the reputation of the fund house, whether the scheme is active or passive, past performance of the fund manager (in the case of an active scheme), and the overall macroeconomic scenario that prevails, among others. Note: This story is for informational purposes only. Please speak to a SEBI-registered investment advisor before making any investment-related decision. For all personal finance updates, visit here
