New Delhi, Dec. 26 -- The latest data from SEBI suggests that retail investors are losing $12 billion a year in futures and options trading, said Saurabh Mukherjea, Founder of Marcellus Investment Managers.

"Typically, the person losing this money is a 30-40-year-old male from small-town India, and the average such investor is losing about Rs.1 lakh annually," added Mukherjea.

Those stark remarks, made during a recent episode of the Coffee & Investing podcast, have reignited debate around one of India's least-discussed financial fault lines: the growing retail participation in the futures and options (F&O) market.

The scale of the problem, he explained, is not anecdotal. It is backed by hard data from the Securities and Exchange Board ...