(MENAFN- IANS) Mumbai, July 10 (IANS) Top four online trading platforms together lost nearly 20 lakh active investors in the first half of the calendar year (2025), data available on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed on Thursday.

The decline comes despite the markets remaining firm during the four consecutive months.

The first half of this year has been difficult for Groww, Zerodha, Angel One, and Upstox, the top four brokers in India in terms of active investors. In June alone, they lost about 6 lakh users overall.

Strict rules for trading in the Future and Options (F&O) segment, enforced by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the market regulator, are the main cause of the decline in the number of active users of the major brokers.

Since the market regulator tightened the rules for trading in the derivatives segment last year, investors are becoming less interested in the sector.

Since the year began, Groww, the biggest broker in the nation by number of active investors, has seen a drop of six lakh active investors. Over 5.4 lakh active investors were lost by Zerodha, the biggest broker in terms of revenue, during the same time frame.

Angel One lost over 4.5 lakh active investors, while over 3 lakh active investors were declined from Upstox's user base during the above said period.

These four firms together added nearly one crore new active investors in 2024, when trading activities in F&O were hitting all-time highs. However, their user base declined a bit this year.

In a similar vein, demat account growth slowed to its lowest level in eight quarters. Compared to 6.93 million in the first quarter of the fiscal year, only 6.91 million new demat accounts were added in the first quarter. As of the end of June, there were 199.14 million demat accounts with NSDL and CDSL, up from 196.62 million in May.

The tense reaction from investors has been exacerbated by the uncertainty surrounding corporate earnings over the past two quarters. Amid the uncertainty surrounding the tariff agreement, the domestic market has been trading cautiously in recent weeks.

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