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Option Trading full time can potentially make you broke
I was always fascinated by how the financial world works. Money!! How it moves! How banks work! Everything was fascinating. I was always so keen on mathematics and numbers. So being a responsible adult I did my masters in a quantitative field then took the job in a secure sector and during my job one day suddenly after opening my first brokerage account on a random day of January 2022, I stumbled upon the option chain for a stock. I was only aware of the mutual fund till then. But I had no idea about active stock trading. Life was going uneventful until that day. It was a normal life, the main source of income was my monthly paycheck. I used to roam around, saving some money for mutual fund investments and others for travelling. Life was good and simple back then without any guilt or any regret.
On that strange day when without any YouTube videos, any tips or groups I myself discovered a new and exciting world. That moves very fast, faster than the blink of my eyes. Option trading. I took my first trade without knowing anything about Call/Put, Buy/Sell..
And eventually had my first profit of 330 rupees from 41000. And I was amazed by the fact that I made 330 by clicking a button and I clicked them again then got my first taste of loss 2550 rs. Then again 280 rs. loss. Then again after 1 week I traded without any knowledge on an expiry day( without knowing it) and lost almost 22000 after a potential win of 750 rs.
So I stopped that time. In 2022 I had a monthly salary around 50000. So I lost about half of my salary in 2 days. Then until June I just tried 1 random day in April and lost around 1500.
The rest of 2022 I traded by learning a little bit of trading. Then in 2023 I started to do it regularly with my job. I switched my job that time. Slowly I started gaining knowledge through YouTube videos, podcasts, what is Call what is Put, what is buy/sell, how charts works support, resistance,trend. Some indicators like RSI, Volume, trend lines. And From 2022 to 2024 March I made — 40000 loss in my initial broker account and in another broker account — 98000 loss.
The more I learn about trading the more fascinated I become. I was randomly taking trades, random profits and random losses. The same psychological problems I was facing, at that time I had not that much idea. But I thought about pursuing it full time. Because at that time I made a single day profit of 20000. The more I was running towards it the more I was burning. The profits were small and the losses were also not so big. I used to observe the option price action and take a trade without stoploss or target. And after making profits I used to go again in the market. And turning a profitable day into a losing day.
From July 2024 I started doing it full time. I learnt about the market. Then trading psychology books then option Greeks…The more knowledge I acquired the more conviction I had that I can do this. It started with a 50k account and then blew that within a week or even a day mainly the weekly expiration of index option.
I opened another account with another broker and thought that would help me. Suddenly knowledge became more, I can analyse the market easily, capturing the trend easily, on the first hour able to make 30000–50000 profits from 60000 capital or so. But with this the greed came, I was overtrading, going after the market even after making huge profit and didn’t know where to stop, so lost my capitals.
Full time day trading sounds like fun but it isn’t. The losses kept piling up. The discipline was absent. The edge is there but overtrading overshadowed that.
From 50–60k monthly paycheck to 70–90k one day profits seems not good enough. Where am I running towards?
P.S. : Today I had 90000 capital, I made 1.4lakhs profit (more than 150% return on capital) within 2hrs of trading but then again chasing the market, overtrading and lost the profit then again gain the profit but didn’t stop there ,by 3.15pm lost whole profit and the capital. So I thought of taking accountability for my trading. I will post my daily setup, PnL and capital here. Anyone going through the same journey can share their tales as well.
