The Securities and Exchange Board of India on Tuesday put a disclaimer that regulators were only able to curtail risks and unable to predict when market misconducts take place.

Speaking at a national seminar on investor education in Kolkata, organised jointly by the stock market regulator and Institute of Company Secretaries of India, Sebi chairman G N Bajpai said that by way of corporatisation and demutualisation efforts of stock exchanges, market risks for investors could be reduced substantially.

He said that it was upto the ordinary investor to take an informed decision on when and how to enter and exit the stock markets.

Bajpai said that lack of information among the ordinary investors was the major cause for higher levels of volatility in the Indian stock markets, a phenomenon which was not found in advanced countries where the major players were institutions, pension funds and mutual funds.

He said that Sebi research had found that an ordinary investor was not a much-informed person for which Sebi had organised a series of awareness programmes across the country.