Survivorship has a register.
Stock-picking stories are told by the winners. The exchange keeps a quieter ledger of everyone else, and it is far longer than most investors imagine.
Between 2013 and 2025, BSE’s own register records 1,281 companies compulsorily delisted: removed by the exchange or the regulator for non-compliance, fraud or plain corporate failure. Alongside them, 169 left voluntarily and 132 disappeared into mergers. These were all real companies that real investors once researched, believed in and bought.
Compulsory delisting is close to a total loss in practice: exit windows are short, buyers are scarce, and holders “usually get little or nothing”. A hundred-odd forced exits every year is the base rate hiding underneath every confident stock tip: the denominator the success stories never mention.
Diversification is the unglamorous answer. A fund holding fifty businesses can absorb a delisting as a bruise; a concentrated personal portfolio absorbs it as a broken plan. Concentration is a professional’s tool with professional risk controls around it: which is precisely where PMS structures, run with stated processes, differ from weekend stock-picking.
A diversified SIP core first, and if concentration tempts you, see how professionals do it with controls.
Source: BSE delisting register, 2013–2025 (bseindia.com). For education only, not advice. Prospar Consulting LLP.