Asmita Patel: Wolf without a street

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.

- ANANYA GROVER Mumbai, March 13

The so-called 'options queen' used to run a school, Asmita Patel Global School of Trading, which despite claiming to manage a portfolio of ₹140 crore and handling funds worth ₹283 crore had a turnover of just ₹15.27 crore, according to investigations by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). On the contrary, her courses collected total fees of ₹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.

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 ₹7 lakh for a seven-month course. Post the GST of 18%, the cost came to ₹8.26 lakh. To put these numbers in perspective, a two-year MBA course from the Indian Institute of Management costs around ₹16-27 lakh.