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Your app is SEBI-registered. Your US shares may not be!! A lesson to all those BLIND GLOBAL INVESTORS from India. On 15 October 2026, around 30 Indian investors found their US portfolios sold without consent. Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Amazon, Alphabet, AMD. One portfolio was reportedly sold in two minutes, and the money was put into a thinly traded Chinese stock that then fell nearly 60 percent. Reported losses: Rs 4.26 crore for one investor, Rs 29 crore for another, and over Rs 100 crore in total, based on just two investors. The real figure could be higher. The platform is Stockal, a Bengaluru fintech. Many victims came to it through HDFC Securities, whose partnership with Stockal ended in July 2024. Stockal is SEBI-registered. So why are investors struggling to get help? Its SEBI registration is as a stock broker on BSE, which covers trading on Indian exchanges. But US stocks work differently. Your money leaves India under RBI’s LRS route, and your shares are held by a US broker, here DriveWealth, regulated by the US SEC and FINRA, not SEBI. The badge on the app may relate to one part of the business, while your money sits in another country, under another set of rules. What happened next shows why this matters. Stockal said it found no breach and that logins may have been phished. DriveWealth said it was not at fault and had no obligation to fix the account. The accounts were frozen while the stock kept falling. One investor got no trade alerts and was contacted only three days later. Now investors are going to the police, SEBI and the US SEC at the same time. Three companies, two countries, several regulators, and no one clearly responsible. US markets have done well, and global investing has become a trend. Most people asked: how much can I earn? Very few asked: if something goes wrong, whom do I approach, and how do I get my money back? Before investing even one rupee abroad, ask: What is the platform registered for, and does it cover my US shares? Which company holds my shares, in which country, and in whose name? If my account is hacked, who is legally liable: the app or the foreign broker? Does any protection cover fraud, or only the broker going bankrupt? Will I get an alert for every trade? Can I check my holdings directly with the foreign broker? If an Indian partner exits, who is responsible for my account? Is two-factor authentication on for both the app and my email? If you cannot answer these, you are not investing yet. You are trusting a chain of companies you have not checked. A registration badge is a starting point, not a safety net. Share this with someone who just started investing in US stocks. Based on Moneycontrol’s report. These are allegations; the investigation is ongoing. #SEBI #USStocks #GlobalInvesting #InvestorAwareness #LRS #PersonalFinance #FinancialLiteracy