“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.” — Warren Buffett
Three Indians won the game and lost it anyway. So do 91 out of every 100 F&O traders. Meanwhile, 10 crore ordinary SIPs are quietly winning.
Peak to wreck: how far did they fall?
Grey = the peak. Red = what was left.
You have read the headlines about their fall. Now think about the headlines before it.
A Forbes list with the sixth-richest man on Earth. India’s most valuable startup, endorsed by a Bollywood superstar. A software company so respected it counted a third of the Fortune 500 as clients.
Would you have swapped places with any of them in 2008? Of course. Would you swap today? Not for all the money in the world.
Success is not what you make. It is what you get to keep.
Three Indians who won, then lost
Satyam: the company named “Truth”
₹7,000 cr of falsified profits. On 7 January 2009, chairman Ramalinga Raju confessed that the accounts had been inflated for years. Shareholders lost around ₹14,000 crore (CBI estimate). In 2015, Raju and nine others got seven years in jail.
The exit he skipped: a real business with real clients. A top-five IT company needed no fiction.
Byju’s: growth bought on credit
$22 bn → insolvency. Over $1.4 bn of acquisitions, a $1.2 bn loan default, and a $19 million BCCI sponsorship dispute that pushed it into the tribunal. In 2024, even the founder said the company was worth “zero”.
The exit he skipped: slow down, fix the accounts, keep the cash.
Reliance ADAG: the leverage trap
₹1.7 lakh cr of group debt by March 2018. Anil Ambani lost about $30 bn of wealth in just nine months of 2008. By June 2019, six listed group companies together were worth only ₹7,539 crore.
The exit he skipped: sell assets before lenders sell them for you.
Why smart people don’t stop
Greed is the most expensive habit in finance. And its payoff is badly lopsided:
Nobody offers you this trade openly. It arrives dressed as “one more quarter”, “one more acquisition”, “one more lot”. Taleb warned about a river that is four feet deep on average. Ask anyone who has seen a monsoon: the average is not what drowns you.
The small-scale version lives on your phone
You do not need to cook the books to fall into this trap. You only need a trading app, a Friday expiry and a friend’s tip.
Out of 100 individual F&O traders in FY25, how many lost money?
91 lost (red). 9 won (green). Source: SEBI study, 96 lakh traders.
The newest SEBI study adds the ugly part: about 90 to 92 in 100 traders who lost in the previous two years lost again. Experience did not fix it. Survival did not happen.
Notice who sits on the other side of the trade. Option sellers collect small premiums every month, until the one month that takes everything back. That is “income” today and ruin later. Real investors do the opposite: they take risk now for returns later.
The maths that kills comebacks
Losses are not symmetric. The deeper the hole, the steeper the climb out.
| Portfolio falls | 10% | 25% | 50% | 75% | 90% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gain needed to recover | +11% | +33% | +100% | +300% | +900% |
Leverage makes the first number arrive faster.
Dalal Street has been crashing for 30 years. Survivors still won.
Peak-to-trough falls of the Sensex
−43%. Harshad Mehta scam. 4,467 → ~2,529.
−62%. Global crisis. 21,000 → ~8,000. Back above 21,000 by Nov 2010.
−37%. Covid. 41,000 → 25,981. Back to ~41,000 within 8 months.
−14% so far (Nifty, 1 Oct). Eight straight weekly losses. Result still unknown.
Sensex: the long walk from 100
₹1 lakh in the Sensex of 1979 would have become roughly ₹8 crore on index value alone. This ignores dividends, taxes and the fact that no human held on perfectly. The point: every single crash above is a tiny wrinkle on the right-hand side.
The ones who got hurt worst did not own the index. They owned borrowed money, a single hot stock, or a bet that needed the market to cooperate this month.
The real heroes have no headline
Here is a number you will not see on a TV ticker.
Source: AMFI, September 2026 data. Record SIPs arrived in the same month as the market’s eighth straight weekly fall.
While the rupee weakened, foreign money left and oil stayed expensive, crores of Indians simply let the auto-debit run. No documentary will be made about them. No one will interview a clerk in Lucknow, a nurse in Kochi or an engineer in Pune who invested ₹5,000 a month for 25 years.
But they are the real success stories. The rest is noise.
Your survival checklist
- Never borrow to invest. Leverage turns a dip into an exit. Margin calls follow the market’s calendar, not yours.
- Do not treat F&O as a salary. If 91 in 100 lose, the default outcome is a loss, not an income.
- Cap every single story. Satyam was a Dalal Street darling. No one stock deserves your whole future.
- Read the governance, not only the P/E. Auditor resignations, heavily pledged promoter shares and large “cash” that earns almost nothing are red flags. Satyam’s cash was falsified by over ₹5,000 crore.
- Keep the SIP alive, and check the app less. The plan is being tested. That is not the same as failing.
No one will print a headline about your 30-year SIP.
That is exactly why it works. It is boring, it is slow, and it is still there at the end.
So the next time someone shows you a shortcut, ask the question: if this goes wrong, can I still stay in the game?
Act Smarter. Live Richer.
DISCLAIMER: All views are for education only and are not investment advice. Company events are as reported in the public domain; some matters are subject to ongoing legal proceedings. Market and flow data as reported in news sources (October 2026); historical fall and recovery figures are rounded approximations. Please do your own due diligence or consult your advisor before making any decision.
Sources: SEBI F&O studies (FY25, FY22–FY24 and FY25–FY26 update) as reported by Business Standard, Value Research and Outlook Money; AMFI September 2026 data; CBI and court reports on Satyam; Business Today, Forbes and The News Minute on Anil Ambani; Reuters, TechCrunch and other reports on Byju’s; BSE Sensex history; Business Standard crash-recovery table; Kuber Investing, “When Left is Right and Right is Wrong” (Oct 2026).