More middle-class Indians making big gains from bourses than before: Study

A study of retail investment in the stock market suggests that the bourses may be generating steady profits for more middle-class Indians than before

In stock market parlance, “meme stock” was certainly the word of the year. Coined to mean those stocks that gain sudden popularity on the internet with resultant high prices, it was used to derisively describe the behaviour of retail traders globally who entered the market in huge numbers in the two Covid-19 years.

A recent study, “Market Concentration and Retail Participation in India”, by the National Stock Exchange economics team led by their chief economist Tirthankar Patnaik shows unlike these impressions, the retail inves­tors, at least in India, have not performed inconsistently. They have not chased penny stocks as a