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Retail investors are loading up on the riskiest assets even as experts flag the many hazards of doing so. Going by history, this will end badly.

Lately, whenever I log in to my trading account, I get this pop-up that I must acknowledge before proceeding.

The caution, while warranted, as we shall see, is not because my broker is concerned about my financial well-being. It is mandated by SEBI which, as a regulator, is clearly spooked by the fancy for derivatives among investors who are usually not fully aware of what they are getting into, especially when markets are at all-time highs and looking very frothy.
Consider the facts—the total number of individual derivative traders was just over 700,000 in 2018-19, per SEBI data. In …