Agra investors peeved at alleged unauthorised transactions

As the market slowly edged towards a semblance of normalcy on Monday after a week's rollercoaster ride, investors in Agra protested vociferously against stock sub-brokers and franchisees, who, they claimed, had debited their portfolios to clear their margins without authorisation.

A number of such investors flocked to the offices of franchisees and sub-brokers demanding an explanation for selling off their stock options without authorisation. Investors claimed they lost huge sums of money due to such sub-brokers.

One such investor, who lost almost his entire portfolio when his broker sold his stocks in a lean market on Friday in order to recover the margin money, said that the brokerages appeared to be unconcerned with the interests of their clients and were only busy in recovering margin money from their clients as fast as possible, sending out margin calls in bulk and debiting the client's portfolio without authorisation.

He said that some of the investors were now planning to file criminal charges against one such brokerage house for having defrauded them.

When contacted, the brokers gave a different version. Rakesh Singh, manager, Anagram Securities said that having faced losses to the tune of over Rs 2-3 crore in seven trading days, almost all the brokerage houses were intent on playing safe in this uncertain market and were advising their clients to assume a defensive stance for some time and hold on to their portfolios till markets achoeved some stability.

He added that in some cases the clients were unable to clear their accounts for the future options purchased by them. Since most brokerage houses extended a 5-day margin to the client,when the client did not respond to margin calls sent out by the broker, there remained no option for the brokers except to debit the client's portfolio to recover their money.

Currently, he said, the majority of investors were in no mood of making any changes in existing portfolios and the people who were still investing were also more keen on holding stocks, instead of investing in future options in a volatile market.