March — 2026 Results
The Operations Trader3 min read·Just now--
Beware the Ides of March
A bit of Roman history to start us off. Julius Caesar was warned by a seer (astrologer) that he would be assassinated in March.
The warning was simple: “Beware the Ides of March.”
Of course, he didn’t listen — and got killed.
The same thing happened to me. I got killed in March. Unfortunately, there was no seer to warn me. I think (maybe) if a seer had told me, I would have listened. (Maybe.)
Now, the strategy I’ve been following is to sell stock options 30–45 days before expiry, at around 20 delta or 1 standard deviation. In general, that’s considered the “safest” zone, because statistically you have about an 80% probability of success. This is essentially a Short Strangle — and as everyone knows, the risk is unlimited loss.
March 2026, however, came with a different personality. Implied Volatility (IV) — a.k.a. the fear factor — was elevated. I have never actively traded in a high IV environment before. The result? I took a bucket full of losses.
This all happened within the first few days of March. My positions in Tata Steel, Bajaj Finance, and Reliance took the biggest hits.
So, what do you do when you take large losses early in the month?
There’s a simple strategy that works 100% of the time: stay out of the market.
Don’t trade. Don’t overthink. Just stay the hell away.
That’s exactly what I did. After those losses, I significantly reduced my trading for the rest of the month. I only took small index positions on expiry — mainly to rebuild confidence.
So, what was I doing during this time?
Processing emotions. And thinking about what I could have done better — especially from a risk management perspective.
It took me a few days to recover from the stress and the emotional hit of losing that much money. But the lessons I learned were hard — and intense.
On the trades that went against me, I did try to manage them. The goal was to convert unlimited loss into defined loss — and to some extent, that worked. But since this was my first real exposure to this kind of volatility, I ended up cutting positions early rather than holding them closer to expiry.
Now, was that the ideal thing to do? Probably not.
But I got wound up. Emotional. And at some point, I just said, “f**k it,” and exited everything.
Then I lay down on the ground, curled up into a ball… and stayed there for a few hours.
Here are March 2026, results:
