Ten questions to ask any advisory before you pay

A stock advisory subscription is a contract with a stranger about your money. These ten questions take under an hour to ask, cost nothing, and separate an accountable research service from a sales pitch. We answer all ten about ourselves at the bottom.

Published 6 September 2026 · Potoos Research Services

The checklist

Ask these in writing, on WhatsApp or email, and keep the replies. Written answers cost a legitimate service nothing and cost a dishonest one everything, because vague answers photograph badly. If a sales conversation keeps steering you away from these questions and back to how good the calls are, that steering is itself the answer.

1. What is your SEBI registration number?

   The first question, and the only one with a binary answer. A Research Analyst's number begins with INH. Do not accept a certificate image, a bio line or a confident tone: search the number yourself on SEBI's public register and match the registered name and city to the website in front of you. Our four-step guide shows exactly where to click. No number, or a number that returns someone else, ends the conversation.

2. Who exactly am I dealing with?

   A registration belongs to a specific person or entity. Ask who the registered analyst is, who the compliance officer is, and where they are. If the website will not put a real name and city against the registration, you have no counterparty, only a brand. Names on the register and names on the site should match without explanation.

3. How is your record of calls kept, and do losing calls stay visible?

   Most people ask this the wrong way round. Under SEBI's advertisement code, in force since 1 May 2023, a registered analyst may not publish past performance, win rates or return figures in public. So a public track record page is a warning sign, not a credential. The right question is about record-keeping. Is every call dated and kept? Do the losses sit next to the gains? Is anything edited or deleted afterwards? And can a subscriber see the whole record in context? We have written out how our own record is kept and where it lives.

4. What does one call actually contain?

   A bare ticker with "buy now" is noise. A recommendation you can act on and audit carries an entry range, staged targets, a stop-loss decided before entry, and written reasoning you are able to disagree with. Ask to be shown the structure of one call, not its outcome. The outcome tells you about one day; the structure tells you about the service.

5. What are the fees, and how do they sit against SEBI's cap?

   A registered Research Analyst cannot charge a family more than Rs 1,51,000 in a year. Anyone quoting a bigger package, or a ladder of ever-costlier "VIP tiers", is telling you they operate outside the rules or outside the registration. Ask for the full fee in writing, whether anything else is charged later, and how it is collected.

6. What risk disclosure happens before I receive anything?

   A genuine service writes down the risk before it takes your money. That means the standard market-risk warning, a risk profile of you as a client, and clear statements of what is not being promised. If signing up is just a payment link and a welcome message, the service has skipped the step that exists to protect you. Ask what happens between your payment and your first call.

7. What capital does this service assume I have?

   A subscription fee is a fixed cost, and fixed costs are just arithmetic. The smaller your capital, the bigger the share the fee takes before the market has said a word. A service happy to sign up someone with Rs 10,000 has either not thought about whether that can work, or does not care. We suggest a minimum of Rs 50,000 for our own plans. We would rather say that here than find out with you later.

8. Will I be required to trade F&O, intraday or with leverage?

   Derivatives and leverage are separate skills with separate risks. SEBI's study of individual traders in equity derivatives, published 20 August 2026, found 87.7% ended the year losing money. A service that pushes every subscriber into options, whatever their situation, is chasing excitement rather than fit. Ask whether there is a cash-equity-only path, and whether it is a real desk or an afterthought.

9. What is your grievance route?

   Every registered intermediary must publish one, and behind it stand SEBI SCORES and SMART ODR, which you can use yourself. Find the grievance page on their website before you pay. If it does not exist, or is a dead link, you have learned how a future complaint will go.

10. What happens when I want to leave?

    Ask what the end of a subscription looks like before you see the start of one. What happens when the term ends? Does anything renew automatically? Do you keep access to the record of calls issued during your term? What are the exit terms in writing? A service confident in its work has no reason to make leaving confusing. Get the answer in writing before you pay, and keep it.

11. How much will I make?

    The trick question, and it belongs on the list because the answer sorts services faster than anything else. Any number you get back, any "average monthly return", any "90% accuracy", is either made up or against the rules. No genuine service controls what the market does, and no registered one is allowed to advertise returns. The only honest answer is a refusal with a reason, which is why we wrote a whole page on what a paid advisory can and cannot do for you.

Our own answers, briefly

Registration INH000027380, registered to Vinoth Kumar S, Chennai, who is also the compliance officer; verify it on SEBI's register using our own guide. Every call carries an entry range, staged targets, a stop-loss set before entry, and written reasoning, delivered in the Potoos app the day before the market opens. The record is kept in the app, dated, losses beside gains, nothing edited after the fact: the full description is here. Plans are Rs 2,999 quarterly, Rs 5,499 half-yearly and Rs 9,999 annual, under the legal cap, listed on the home page. Risk profiling is part of signup. Suggested minimum capital Rs 50,000. Two separate desks, and the positional equity desk never requires a derivative or screen time. Grievance route is in the footer of every page, backed by SCORES and SMART ODR. And we will not tell you how much you will make, because nobody honestly can.

Common questions