SEBI has introduced rules for investment advisers which specifically require anyone giving investment advise to register with SEBI.
This has to be through a “Self Regulatory Organisation”. You should be a member of that organisation, and THAT organisation should then forward your request to SEBI. AMFI and IRDA are examples of SROs, but I don’t know any others.
The concept of investment advise is not clear – they say that if the adviser is compensated in some way (receives some “consideration”) then he is an adviser. Except those that are in a different business than advising people about investing.
This blog runs ads, but there is no fee for reading it. I’m not sure if this comes under the heading of investment adviser but I sure hope not. I have a big fat disclaimer I have mentioned that none of this should be construed as investment advise and all that, but again, I don’t know if SEBI will try to place me as one anyhow.
A good thing is that no fee is required to be paid to SEBI for registration. Another interesting thing is that any fee-based advise requires advisers opening up their statistics, performance etc. which can help people decide if they should use the service. This would be good for people such as PMS providers (portfolio management services) which seem to be quite opaque.
But in general I hope this does not make it messy for anyone to provide investment gyan or stock specific information on the internet, though I feel the courts will protect our freedom of speech. Yet, you never know.
