CA75-year-old man got a call from his bank manager begging him to take a loan against his mutual fund portfolio because the manager needed to meet “year-end LAS (Loan against Securities) targets”. A lady walked into my office having lost 40% of her money within six months from margin trades done by her broker. She wasn’t aware of the daily gains or losses being incurred or the high interest charges on the loan taken to fund the margin money. Another doctor friend asked if she should invest Rs5 lakh in a mutual fund. On probing, I discovered that it was a unit-linked insurance plan (Ulip) being mis-sold as a mutual fund. Yet another distressed caller lost all her money in a pyramid scheme her friend coerced her into.
