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Why can’t some holdings be pledged?

Some holdings cannot be pledged for the following reasons:

  • Stocks or Mutual funds that are not present in the approved list of securities cannot be pledged. The approved list of securities that can be pledged can be found by visiting zerodha.com/approved-securities.
  • Member-wise limit for the security is reached: The total quantity of each approved security that can be pledged is limited at the trading member level by the clearing corporation. Holdings cannot be pledged if the overall maximum pledge limit has been reached for the instrument. In such cases, this message will be displayed on Console when trying to place a pledge request.

  • The derivative segment isn't active: Holdings can only be pledged if the F&O segment is activated in the Zerodha account. The following message will be displayed when placing a pledge request if the F&O segment isn’t active. To know the steps to activate F&O, see How to activate F&O?


  • If the stock’s VAR is 100%: Stocks with a VAR of 100% cannot be pledged as they are considered to be risky, and a margin will not be provided against them. The list of these stocks can be identified with a 100% haircut request in the provided sheet. Additionally, if a stock has already been pledged as collateral and its VAR reaches 100%, further shares cannot be pledged.

Example Scenario

Assume Mr X have 100 shares of company ‘A’ and pledged 50 of them. If the company's VAR reaches the threshold of 100%, Mr X will not be able to pledge the additional 50 quantities.

  • Pledge requests for securities under the lock-in period will be rejected.
  • A fractional quantity of mutual funds schemes and ETFs cannot be pledged as pledge requests can be placed only in multiples of 1. To learn more, see What is a fractional share?

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