Bull markets spawn many cock-and-bull stories. Finfluencer Asmita Patel, who called herself the She-Wolf of the stock market, is a great example. The so-called ‘options queen’ used to run a school, Asmita Patel Global School of Trading, which despite claiming to manage a portfolio of Rs 140 crore and handling funds worth Rs 283 crore had a turnover of just Rs 15.27 crore, according to investigations by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). On the contrary, her courses collected total fees of Rs 104 crore during 2019-2024.
Clearly, she was making more money by teaching students to trade, instead of trading per se – her forte. That, at a time, when SEBI’s study has revealed that over 93% of individual traders in the futures and options segment (F&O) incurred losses between 2022 and 2024.
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The school ran seven courses – Master’s in Price Action Trading, Let’s Make India Trade, Options Multiplier, Trend Following Income System, The Freedom Project, OneLife and Unleash The Trader Within – with the promise that students will recover the fees during the course through trading.
The courses were expensive, too – around Rs 7 lakh for a seven-month course. Post the GST of 18%, the cost came to Rs 8.26 lakh. To put these numbers in perspective, a two-year MBA course from the Indian Institute of Management costs around Rs 16-27 lakh.
The list of deceptions, according the market regulator’s interim report, is rather long. For one, providing a non-GST option for fees by depositing cash or through bank accounts of companies like King Traders, Gemini Enterprises and United Enterprises – all allegedly connected to Asmita Patel and her family. However, the school told SEBI that employees were siphoning off money.
Patel impressed upon students that trading was a better option than taking up job/business. She even asked them to exit mutual fund investments since they can identify multi-baggers themselves (“jo aap khud kar sakte ho”, she said).
Students were also encouraged to take loans for the course and even provided loan agreements. “Just make sure that you’re borrowing,” she said in one of the course. If you’re borrowing it, it should not be more than 18%.” And worse,
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