MTF books are growing across brokers despite the broader markets going nowhere. This isn’t like the Korean markets, for example, where the markets are up 150% in the last year alone, and people are borrowing to ride that rally. Our situation is different.

The big risk with MTF is the risk of the stock becoming illiquid in case there’s a sharp market fall. If a stock moves more than the margin provided (say 20%), the bad debit is on the broker. The odds of recovering a loss from a customer aren’t that great.

The risk shoots up when the collateral is stocks. A customer pledges Stock A, gets 80% margin on it, and uses that to take further positions worth 400% in the same stock. If that stock is a mid or small-cap stock, circuits kick in, and there’s simply no exit if markets turn around. Nearly 50% of the entire industry MTF book is non-F&O stocks.

While we still don’t allow collateral margin for buying MTF, competitive pressure would mean we will have to. There’s significant risk on the customer, but also on the broker. While our MTF book has grown meaningfully over the last 16 months, it’s still only about 25% of our networth. For some brokers, this number could be closer to 500% which is the maximum regulator allows.

If markets crash, brokers could end up holding losses from MTF positions they can’t exit and that puts the entire ecosystem at risk.

MTF seems like easy money for the brokers. But the Risk Management team at brokers has to make sure that on one bad day, you don’t give it all back. 😬

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