The Ugly Truth Behind ₹15Cr Trading : Luck, Skill, Survival & Success | Ashwin Raghavan | FWS 102

You generated 75% returns in 2 and 1/2 months. >> I started with 60 lakhs of my savings from phone pay and within the first 3 months I was up to 98 lakhs. How hard is it to do what you do? Zero being learning how to cycle 10 being cracking the IIT exam. >> It's closer to learning how to cycle and I'll tell you why. These charts are in a way a representation of human psychology with money. So smart money moves into a stock in a measured calibrated way and that stores up on a stock chart. The lowest point of my account was 7.6 lakhs. Over 3 days I actually made it around 2c. You also won this competition the US investing championship for traders and you competed with people from all over the world. >> I joined in and in a week I was up 50%. So I was like okay I'm already in top five if now number one isn't impossible. >> How much of this is luck and how much of this is skill? I wouldn't wish it on anyone. >> So Ashwin, uh, right off the bat, I have never heard a story like yours. A former software engineer who left Phone Pay and then turned 7 12 lakhs to approximately 15 freaking crores in in 2 years. >> Yeah, >> I've never heard a story like this before of a trader. So firstly uh thank you so much for coming on the show and uh I'm going to go deep dive into how you've been able to do this. But before I get into the you know the technical details of what kind of FNO trading you do how how has your life been since you know since this immense transformation like from being you know having less than 10 lakhs to now being a millionaire in like 2 years. >> How is how's life been? So my life was already going on a certain trajectory and I joined Phone Pay in its fairly early days. Uh so I was among the first 40 employees there and uh I was in the room when the app launched, right? Uh so trading in a sense when I switched to it uh it was kind of a reckoning of sorts, right? Where I felt that my career no longer will be all I imagined. Uh I just felt like oh I've lost all my money and maybe I'm one of those people who becomes a classic story of like he had everything going for him but then he chose to do a things of a bunch of things and look at where he is now. So in that sense making money in the market and like now being where I am it feels uh immensely gratifying in a certain sense that uh the money is just a way of keeping scorecard right that you were right about that initial belief you had you also won this competition the US investing championship for traders. Yeah. >> And in you were competing with other people as well. And to be eligible for this competition in the category that you entered in, you should have minimum $1 million account which is a 9 cr portfolio. >> Yeah. >> And you competed with people from all over the world. >> Yeah. >> And you came fifth. >> Yeah. >> In the world. >> Yeah. And you generated 75% returns in not one year, in not 6 months, in two and a half months, >> right? And you came fifth. >> Yeah. >> Tell me about this competition. What is this? And uh take my money. >> So uh the US investing championship, it was started by this professor called Norman Zad. Uh okay. He had this idea that u I mean in economics there's this thing called efficient market hypothesis which says that uh in an efficient market in a sense like you can't generate superlative returns uh consistently right like on say a long enough time frame it things average out and you can't consistently beat the market. So this guy just wanted to put out this competition to show that there are people who do beat the market by a huge percentage and do it consistently, right? And a lot of legendary traders from the 80s, right? Paul Tudtor Jones, Mark Minowvini, these people all like have won it multiple times uh over the years and then they went on to say manage hedge funds or whatever, right? So in a sense I also thought key u I mean let me put myself out there like uh uh in India I had been sharing my verified piano on Twitter uh from time to time but there was no way to show key like this is what I managed to do in a year right uh so after I turned profitable in 2024 I thought I would give myself just one more year uh to kind of show to myself okay I can do something like this and maybe 2026 I'll join but What happened was like uh I didn't join the competition on Jan. Then in March I just looked at the leaderboard and I realized if I did join on Jan 1 I would have been world number one in my division by now. Right. Uh then I felt okay I mean this year is anyway gone. I just have 9 months left now. What's the point of joining now? And they only calculate returns from the day you join, right? >> So I thought let it go like uh next year is my year again. I'm checking my account in like August or September and I realized even if I joined in March, I would still be world number one, right? And I was telling my friends about this and they were like, uh uh you'll say the same thing on December 31st, so why not just join right now? So I just uh decided literally on the night of October 13th key uh I'm joining this. I mailed the guy uh Dr. Norman and he's like okay sure go for it. like I'll have the entry fee for you. It's like $1,000 to enter. Uh uh since I was joining so late, he said it's like $500 for you. I joined in and uh uh in a week I was up 50%. Because at that time what happened the leader was at 100 or like I think 120% or something. So I said to become world number one in 2 and a half months I basically need to double my account, right? Or top five I need like at least 50% or something. Uh so in a week I was up 50%. So I was like okay I'm already in top five if I want to quit but I really pushed myself to do even better. Once you reach 50 you're like okay now number one probably isn't that uh impossible and I closed the year. Actually what did happen was uh on December 30 I was up 120%. And these guys always release uh update the leaderboard once in a month. Okay, so I knew where the leaderboard was till like a month back. So the leader was at 120%, and on December 30 I was at 120%. And I figured I don't know how that guy's December went. Uh let me push myself a little more. There's just like uh all of December 30 and 31st for me. So maybe I can like get some 10 or 20% more and probably win the competition. Then uh that money came all the way down and I ended the competition at 75%. And I got to know the winner was at 115%. So he actually fell 10%. So if I had actually stopped >> I remember I was in Goa at that point and in the middle of my vacation I'm taking >> everybody was in Goa at that point time. We were also in Goa during that time trading. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Wow. What a story. So you would have won. You would have been world number one. So, and guys, I'm sure when you hear these kind of numbers, you're probably like, is this true? Can we believe this? What I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link of his verified P&L if that's okay. I'm going to put a link of his verified P&L which is on uh sensible right? >> So, Sensible is like this company which is a zeroda funded company and traders can sort of connect their data and you can actually verify whether whatever is saying is true or not and you can check it down. Check it out. Check it out in the link below. So, um, Ashwin, I think, uh, um, you have clearly figured out something which millions of people aspire to in this, uh, game called, uh, the stock market casino, and you've clearly figured out how to count the cards to get the luck in your favor. So I want to ask you before I deep dive into the technical details, how much of this is luck and how much of this is skill? I mean uh if you're able to do it over a consistently long time uh then you know it's not luck, right? Uh because even when I started uh I started with 60 lakhs of my savings from Phone Pay, right? And within the first 3 months I was up to 98 lakhs. So I thought I had figured it out. uh later over the course of the next 6 or 8 months uh it came all the way down to 18 lakhs right then I realized that oh uh it was >> 100 98 it became 18 lakhs >> in how much time 1 month >> no no uh like in the first 3 months it was first up 30 lakhs then over the course of the year it came down all the way to 17 or 18 lakhs >> and then that made you like did you like >> have a sleepless night did you cry or were you like chill >> no Uh so a bunch of things >> your life savings that is >> yeah yeah yeah uh so one good thing that happened was like in a year I learned a lot right uh I realized that right now the capital is so low that uh to generate a certain kind of return from it monthly is becoming difficult like it will affect my lifestyle in a certain sense say uh uh one lakh or two lakh say I'm used to having that much money coming as a salary every month and suddenly with 17 lakhs to generate create a lack or something you're finding it very difficult. >> I I would like to know before you became a full-time trader >> you were a software engineer and product manager at Phone Pay. What was your last drawing CTC at Phone Pay before you left? >> Uh I mean see including uh the ESOPS and all of it maybe 60 70 lakhs. >> So you're at a 6070 LPA. Yeah. >> You worked for there for like 4 years. >> Uh 6 years. >> 6 years. >> Yeah. >> And then you quit. >> Yeah. >> Why did you quit? So uh the reason I quit right uh I kind of burnt out after a certain point u the kind of personality I have right I keep pushing myself wherever I am uh and phone pay was a great place to do that in a sense right say you are fresh out of college you're joined as an intern and an app is launching in front of you which goes on to be used by every person around you right like so in an environment like that like I could really I mean uh push myself and in a sense get that kind of returns right I can see my career graph is improving uh say a bunch of my batchmates have gone outside of India or whatever and I realized there's no reason to leave right like I am in the thick of the action here so in every sense like it was a great place where I could push myself right and after a certain point I guess it just reached a point of burnout where I'm not able to say uh do my work at all right I'm staring at my screen and it's in a sense is not making sense for me anymore. You have seen a bunch of interns along with you who have all joined Phone Pay at the same time, right? And you're seeing these people are still able to perform at an elite level and I'm feeling like oh did I just get lucky like as a software engineer I joined some company that company became big, right? That doesn't mean you were necessarily uh that smart, right? Maybe you just rode that wave uh right place, right time kind of thing. So I just took a break. I was uh ready to quit at that point but uh the people there were nice enough to say that like take a sabbatical like uh you have stock options uh that are yet to west don't decide anything in a hurry they saw I was burnt out and took quit but >> they are people who knew me from the start right like I was literally like a kid these these guys nurtured through my career right so they had that sense of like uh this guy needs a break he's figuring it out so for 6 months I was kind of uh like burnt out and depressed right finally like I've reached rock bottom and I've got bored of myself and everything I needed in intellectual challenge and I've started trading now and it began from that place key oh here's a new challenge for you uh you don't know anything about this field beforehand like you get to put some money in you need to daily you get a chance to evaluate whether you're right or wrong in that sense the markets really attracted me uh it catered to a lot of things that I needed at that point. Right. >> So on a scale of 1 to 10, how hard is it to do what you do? >> Honestly, I feel like uh it's not a lot of hard maths or science. Okay. Uh it's just simple logic. >> But right now, can you just give me a number in terms of level of hardness? Okay. And if you're saying if it's not so hard, let's uh let me give you a scale which people relate to. Zero being learning how to let's say cycle and 10 being cracking the IIT exam. Where does this fall? So, okay, it's closer to learning how to cycle and I'll tell you why. Uh when you learn cycling, right, uh you don't learn like how a gear works or how a chain works, how aerodynamics works. You just sit on a cycle and you start learning on the way, right? I would say trading is kind of like that. So that is why I said it's more like cycling in the sense I try to intuitively see that okay say a call option for those of you who don't know about it is say uh some stock is say at 200 and you get to take a bet that the stock will reach 250 by a certain date. Okay. And you just need to put a small amount for it to take that bet. Uh but if you're right, it could multiply into a much bigger number like 10x, 20x, 100x, any kind of return could happen on a trade. Imagine you just know this much about a thing like options. What do you do? One is you learn more about options to kind of get into it with a view to trade it, right? Uh >> you know how to price options and all that. >> No. So I was just like okay uh this is a thing which is at say nifty is at some level if it goes up to a certain level I make money. So I've put some money into it. Like you can get into an options contract as low as like a few hundreds or a few thousands, right? That is how a lot of people do get addicted to it, right? They see it as a lottery ticket in that sense. To be honest, for me also like I didn't think it would become a big amount of whatever. I was like let's see. Everyone talks about it. I want to understand this. Put some money and I'm seeing it fluctuate. >> How much did you start by putting you had 60 lakhs of savings to start off? I think the first few days I had put around like 50 60,000 and it used to very quickly move like I needed a certain kind of movement to get excited right uh in the sense the moment I'm putting money and when the numbers started moving my brain is trying to build some kind of mental models right what is affecting this movement up uh at some point I'm looking at say some open interest data things like that I'm randomly hearing about things some of these things I have over time built in intuitive sense of like how options lose value over time, say why a certain strike price option is priced a certain way. You're just building mental models for it, right? So, at some point, uh I was telling my brother uh that I'm trading options and he was like, do you use spreads? What do you do? So, I was like, oh, what is spread? So, I just looked up spreads on varsity and I realized, oh, this is something I have actually do on my own. It's something I have already figured out, right? So at some point the positions had become so big that I'm doing certain things to kind of derisk my position right and this is something which intuitively came to me and which a lot of people do also learn in the textbooks. So at every point I had certain kind of validation that what I'm doing uh I am at least intuitively following the right path to teach myself trading right >> but isn't this a little bit of a dangerous way to learn because there is money on the line and without learning you have gotten into it and you're trying to figure out by looking at the numbers on the screen. >> Uh is this something that you recommend for other people to do? >> No no of course I don't recommend anyone do that because like uh I wouldn't wish it on anyone. the journey I had, right? Like having 98 lakhs uh once and then down to 17 lakhs and wondering how many months of rent you can now afford, right? Like I would make money over a long time consistently and in one or two days I would like uh do something so stupid that I would lose like months of runway, right? So the lowest point of my account was 7.6 lakhs, right? Uh over 3 days I actually made it around 2CR. Uh then over 2 days like I again lost a lot of money. uh first actually in a month it went from 7 1/2 to 11 lakhs. Then there were three days when I just bought puts. Okay. Way uh out of the money puts >> and uh in one day >> you could have wiped out your capital if it went in. >> Yeah. So in a sense like uh say daytoday it was like that key 11 lakhs have uh is my portfolio value on day one and I have bet like say five or six lakhs or around seven lakhs in options which could go to zero if I'm wrong same day zero DT uh puts and the other is me again nifting uh shorting nifty which is again a bet that it will go down but it won't go to zero right so basically what had happened was when my account became so low. I was like at this point the opportunity cost of staying out of the workforce is more like I might as well like do one last thing. If it works it does otherwise I'm going to a corporate career. >> So uh yeah so >> so in 3 days you made 7 and 1/2 lakhs into >> so first no actually it took a month for 7 and 1/2 to 11 but 11 to 3 cr was over 3 days like >> okay so then after that you were like okay okay we're back we're back guys. Yeah, you had a chance. Don't screw it up one more like now go back to safe strategies like >> okay >> uh so then I switched to like individual stocks and >> uh okay I think we have to talk about my strategy itself now to realize why I took the decisions I did right uh >> please tell me your strategy >> so okay uh say you're trading in the market there's uh or say investing in general there are two kinds of approaches to it right fundamental analysis and technical analysis In fundamental analysis, you're actually learning about a stock, a company, its promoters, the industry, everything, right? Uh then you realize okay this uh company has a fundamentally good story and I think that is why this company will go up and the stock price will go up. Okay. uh technical analysis is a totally different approach where you're just looking at how the price of a stock moves and the volume of trading activity that happens in a stock and trying to determine whether the stock price will go up and down or down. Right? So in a sense it's more of a mathematical approach to it. Uh why should it work like why can you tell whether a price will go up or down just on the basis of uh like the stock price, right? How do you know whether a company will go up or down? Because when a fundamental investor right the first kind who actually studies a company when he builds a thesis that uh this company will go up finally he will put his money where his mouth is right uh so a lot of smart money starts to move into the stock. So smart money moves into a stock in a certain kind of measured calibrated way and that stores up on a stock chart uh on a candlestick chart. So this is something uh which has worked from a century. Okay. like uh even in 1920s in the stock market uh when the great depression and all of that happened even then there are people who are talking about a certain kind of primitive technical analysis and people say that with AI HFT and all of this the kind of uh trades which work then don't work anymore but you can see the same kind of setups show up on the chart through the ages right and why does that happen because these charts are in a way a representation of human psychology techology with money, right? You can come up with all kinds of complicated maths and models for how a share price will go up, but at the end of the day, people are making emotional decisions or whatever practical decisions, right? And finally coming up with a price for a stock that reflects the collective psychology of our civilization in a certain sense, right? And that doesn't change like whether it's AI, whether it's electricity coming or whatever there might be a certain kind of way a stock price moves but before it goes up or before it goes down there's a similar kind of pattern that you see on the chart. So that is what I try to trade on. Uh that's my approach to trading where I look at stock charts and uh >> so basically you're a technical trader. >> Yeah, I am a technical trader. >> But you didn't read any books about it. So you how did you learn all of this on the job? because I've seen there are textbooks which are you know like 500 pages big for you know FNO trading. >> So how did you learn all of it without you know I'm sure there's a lot of theory which has been written about it but how did you do it without reading any of these things? So uh in a certain sense right not reading about it uh helped me investigate the subject from a lens of a skeptic right uh initially when people told me that they trade on the basis of certain patterns which come on a chart I was like what is this is this astrology for traders right like they see a certain kind of patterns on a chart and trade off it so my first six or seven months in the market I didn't look at charts at all I just thought it was something which fake traders uh use to actually trade it doesn't actually work right so but I used to look at things like open interest data and stuff like that uh which tells you how much money is uh in calls sold at a certain level or put sold at a certain level those kinds of things I used to look at but charts always some was something I didn't uh pay heed to but then uh I used to follow Abid Hassan on Twitter the founder of tw sensible right so he supposed to put this daily market analysis. He was the one who s gave me a certain kind of template for what you do in a market day, right? I have never worked in a finance company or whatever. So I don't know what a trader days does daytoday. Yeah. >> So I am just doing a bunch of ad hoc stuff and I was like oh if I was in a company or something it would be very obvious that these these 10 things you look day right so when Abish started to put out his daily market analysis he used to talk about open interest data FI DI data and the last segment used to be charts which I initially used to ignore but over time I started to respect his opinion so I was like if a guy like him is talking about it let me look more into to it and uh still I didn't again read any theory. I was just like okay let me I know what a candle represents right opening closing high and low okay this is what a candle is representing and I'm just looking at it over time uh a turning point for me was uh there's this guy Mark Minowini again a US investing championship winner three time uh and he has written a book called trade like a stock market wizard okay and uh in that he started to explain charts in terms of stories uh It's a very it's not like a silly book or it's a rigorous book itself. There's a lot of proper math also, trading math also. >> You read that book? >> Yeah, I did read that book. And uh he talks about how like a certain kind of pattern predicts that uh stocks will go up. Okay. It's a volatility contraction pattern. That's a primary pattern that I trade on. And the reason I love that pattern is it talks about a certain kind of demand supply and how prices vary to reflect that truth. >> Tell me explain this to me. What is volatility contraction? >> So okay uh let's talk about it in terms of a story right? Say you are into a stock uh which started at 100 rupees when you got in say like four or five years back uh and over the last 3 four years or four five years like it has gone up three times or four times. Okay, the 100 rupees stock is now at 400 rupees. Okay, suddenly one day the price corrects to say uh from 400 to 350 or 300, right? You are suddenly starting to feel like oh no uh should I start to book profits, right? Is this thing going to go to zero or whatever? like uh so you start to book some profits in that say you started from 100 you're happy it went all the way up to 350 you sold some at that time if this stock is genuinely good it is already on the radar of spark money right like people say big hedge funds or whatever they will take this chance to use this correction to get into that stock okay so when they start to build up a position in a stock what do you think happens say you are going into a market tomorrow like a literal like vegetable market or something and say there's just like some exotic fruit which costs uh 100 rupee and it's the end of the day and the shopkeeper wants to get rid of it. Okay. So he is willing to reduce the price to 80. Okay. Uh but over time like word goes around that it's like a great fruit whatever demand in it goes up then he is realizing even by end of day right to get rid of his entire inventory he just needs to price it down to 90 from 100 over time his whole inventory is going out like he doesn't even have stale stock by the end of the day right what does it tell you about the price of this fruit it is going to go even further up right that is how it works in terms of stock also Everything in the stock market is something you should be able to correlate to what is happening around you because finally all of these are extra layers between what is actually happening right there's a great business or there's a great asset or something which people are now interested in and who will have a genuine value more genuine value in the future. So you are getting into that and whenever people get into that it will be a certain kind of behavior. Every time the stock corrects a bit, people will try to get into that, right? And over time, there's a certain kind of say ascending triangle pattern kind of forming where the price like whenever it falls, it comes back up like a smaller fall, smaller fall. So the volatility contraction the volatility is of the price that starts to contract lesser over time and uh the volume dries up in that stock or commodity like uh because at some point no one wants to sell right but people want to buy finally like what is happening if someone is if no one is willing to sell something uh how does a buyer finally get that thing he offers more right he's offering more he's offering more at some point everyone gets worried that this is something to get into and people are offering more and more and more and the price shoots up. Right. >> Euphoria. >> Yeah. So that is when a breakout happens. That's my entire job like to catch these breakouts. Right. >> That's what happened with our commodities gold. >> Yeah. So I got into gold back in November 2024. Uh I took 10x leverage on my account and I bet almost my entire account on it and uh that is how I've had this kind of insane return. Right. Uh you're the one who made the most amount of money in gold in India. >> Good. >> Everybody made uh 140% 160% returns or 200% returns >> but you made 600 700% returns in gold. >> Yeah. I mean Yeah. So for much of it I was 10x leveraged right and a lot like somewhere between 50 to 100% of my capital would be in that trade. Right. >> At what point did you get into gold? At what price? >> Uh okay. Uh the point the good thing about looking at charts is I hardly ever know the actual price numbers. Okay? Like if you ask me nifty gold, I just don't remember the numbers for me. I'm just looking at it in terms of chart how is it the pattern looking? >> You don't care about the intrinsic value, current price. >> No, I have no idea of the intrinsic value. I never bothered to learn about fundamentals. >> You just look at the you just try to predict what the herd will do and try to ride the wave. Yeah. Uh the herd are more about where the what the smart money is doing. The herd may be more in number but they don't have a say in the stock. Right. But you >> you're saying you try to ride the wave of the smart money. >> Yeah. >> So right now you're like okay I'm done with FNO. I have 15 crores. Now I'm going to play the cash segment. So now what is the realistic expectations that you have when you are entirely in cash trying to do swing trading across commodities and equities? what is the kind of um returns that you sort of tell yourself that I have to hit year on year because that number could be anywhere from 25% to 36% to 60% like the late Rakkesh Juna. So how do you think about it? >> Uh first of all like uh I still do use leverage. uh >> okay >> because I generally try to give advice assuming that a person shouldn't go through that entire down uh journey that I had uh because I used leverage foolishly right to lose that much money uh like I can tell myself as much as I want that it's still but there was some amount of luck a lot of luck probably involved in those three days where my account went up that much >> but you just said that you stopped doing FNO so >> yeah yeah no so I'm just saying that leverage the moment I tell someone that it's okay to do they will do a series of mistakes I feel if they don't have experience which will cause them to lose a lot of money right uh so I would ideally say to be able to to able to be able to get better at predicting whether something will go up or down you don't even need to put money right you can just do paper trades for a while uh but I personally couldn't do that because I needed to see how the price is moving and wanted to study myself through it like how much psychological pain can I handle right when a move is going against me. Uh so I mean see I still do a bunch of uh like I do futures still I don't do options anymore because time works against you my whole uh >> why why time works against you on options >> say you're betting on horses okay uh there are like say five to 10 horses and there's one or there are like two three horses which everyone expects to win based on past record or whatever there's one horse which is old and almost limping right no one expects that horse to win. Okay, say you want to make a betting market on this race, right? Uh so the people that everyone expects will win. The horse which everyone expects will win. Say you put 100 rupees, the return won't be very high, right? Like 100 maybe you can make your money 110 or 120. But say uh you want to take a bet on the limp horse, right? the guy on the other side he's like you just give me that uh money like I'm sure I will win this right so he'll reduce the price right to get into that bet maybe like 1 rupee or two rupee right so uh that is what happened so uh and with every pass okay now say the horse race has started uh you have taken a bet on the limping horse because you just had little money and you bought a penny option in a certain sense right uh and then the race starts By the halfway mark, imagine the race is going as predicted. The good horses are in the lead, your limping horses behind, but at the midway point some random say gunshot or like something goes on the side and all the horses in the lead say they get distracted. Okay. So you the those horses all started going helter skelter. Your horse which was way further behind that is unaffected by it. It has suddenly overtaken everyone and by the 70% mark it's in the lead. Okay. So now suddenly right if someone wants to take a bet that this limping horse will win now it's still possible more than at the start of the race right such a thing could happen right so the price of the bet needs to reflect that thing uh so uh say when I took a bet at the start of the race that something will go up uh this limping horse will win the race versus me taking a bet when 70% of the race is over to some of the value of that bet has been lost over time itself. The premium has been lost. So that's time decay, right? So my skill in a certain sense is predicting which horse will win, right? Or in case uh of the stock market what will go up or what will go down but I may be wrong about the exact timing of it. Okay? like it might take one week two week it might have a small correction in between but I don't want to lose all my capital if there's a small one more shakeout in between and then the move up happens right so what I do is like uh I options pay since you're losing to time and you could lose your entire capital if you are wrong uh say nifty is at 25,000 you took a bet it will go above 25500 if nifty ended at like say even one point below the entire option has lost its value. Right? You were wrong by say one point but earlier itself it might have cost you something to enter the bet right. Uh that premium has already gone over time and uh so yeah I mean for all those reasons like if I am wrong uh or if I'm correct and it is just taking more time for that bet to play out I don't want to lose money on it. A stock you can always hold. A future you can always hold or just roll over. But time isn't working against you. Right. >> Got it. So basically you're saying that in an option uh time is working against you meaning that if your bet is wrong you lost the whole value but in futures you can roll it over so you're not losing >> especially on the buying side like not on the selling side. So in the so that's the thing which happens in the options market right buyers are usually retailers right who try to buy these penny options but like a horse racing that's the institution they know people will take these bets for cheap and they like uh so about uh selling right option selling it's called eat like a chicken poop like an elephant right like you will make money in small amounts like for a long time but every once in a while smart money is wrong by a huge extent. So then they can like lose a lot uh over time right so then you build spreads or whatever to risk manage your risk right uh that's a reason to also say systematize processes after a certain point right >> because uh you can really go wrong when things are going wrong right in a day that's how people wipe their capital right uh >> got it so yeah so coming back to the question what returns now are you expecting in your portfolio >> I expect a lot from myself all the time right uh what I can do is take money out of the market right uh but uh say I have 14 15 CR right now like I don't again want to uh be in a position where I tell the people that I've lost that too completely right that would just be stupid at this point uh but if I also don't want to change my very aggressive >> strategy would lower the trust in you like like even if you've done it >> and you've lost again then people will feel >> yeah they'll attribute luck right uh so like I said last year in the US investing championship I joined in uh October and I was able to generate 75% for the >> two and two and a half months uh though I didn't want to give myself the excuse this year that I didn't start from the start of the year right so this year I joined from Jan 1st itself and uh uh >> the competition >> yeah the competition uh still in the milliondoll division and even in that you have categories whether you're taking leverage or not. So I am in the leverage division. Uh so I mean the results aren't out yet. >> So January month is over. How much? >> So January month is over but they publish it with 1 month gap so that they can verify everyone's return and everything. So they haven't still published it but I have submitted 142%. For JAM >> 142% in 1 month. >> Yeah. So >> so 1 million became 2 million. >> Yeah. I mean 2.4 million. So basically I think you would not be happy with anything less than 10x in one year. That's the >> No. No. So there is a lot of luck involved, right? I would be very foolish to expect this to happen year on year, right? If I can compound that that rate like uh I mean you could become the world's richest person, right? If you can do that every year for a few years, right? But no like uh right now >> I think as the capital scales it becomes difficult and >> yeah yeah also like uh I am a trend follower and uh >> trends will not be there all the time. >> Yeah like gold whatever it has happened like everyone is like I mean blown right but what has happened so that is a once in a lifetime trade that is also the reason I was so leveraged at that point. So >> perfect I think uh Ashwin um now let's get to the rapid fire round. I'm going to ask you some quick questions and I want some quick answers. The first question is what is that one mistake that destroys traders. >> Uh I think like have a hard stop-loss. Uh right in the sense don't you don't need to recover money from the same thing that you lost money in. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Most amount of money you made in a single year in terms of profit. >> I guess this last year itself, right? uh like I mean it's publicly out there. My last 365 days uh verified PNL >> uh as of this morning I think it was 14.5 CR or something. >> 14.5 CR in one year. >> Yeah. >> Most amount of money you lost in a single day. >> Uh how much was it? I think like 67 C I mean it wasn't a loss of capital but like say uh trade is up 7CR and I haven't booked the profit and it has all come down uh to zero right okay >> but then I turned the other way and sorted it and then it recovered to say don't even remember how much it recovered I think one year or something I got finally out of that trade but yeah >> if you could change one FNO regulation tomorrow what would it be? No, I feel like uh I have absolutely like no problems with all the changes because I in a way see it as my edge, right? uh >> uh for a while when a new regulation comes like there are inefficiency in in the market and if you are someone who can read charts like you see things right so uh I mean I feel like there are people much smarter than me out there who make these rules like I am not the data set that >> it's catering to right >> what is that one book that you recommend for someone who's starting to learn how to trade which will like set them up at least you know 80% of the of the way it'll get them to the place where they should get and then they can actually go start trading. >> Uh I think varsity is a good enough resource uh at least to know what all is out there. The learning bit itself it will come from experience and after a certain level of comfort with reading charts or whatever trade like a stock market wizard by Mark Menovia. >> Okay. And after my last question is at what trading capital can I actually quit my job and do this full-time? So to each person like I don't know their lifestyle right say like even on say 40 lakh or something if you are willing to say go to a like not a metro or something maybe you can make it last for a certain amount of time but the biggest risk is like you don't know how the economy will shape over time right tomorrow inflation happens or like you are unemployable or whatever you have to come back like you have just uh set yourself back by so many years, right? And people might not be so kind to you when you try to reenter the market >> uh the career path, right? So I would say yeah, I mean you need to be very sure like uh no one decides to like one day suddenly become a doctor, right? Like or say a cricketer at certain point in their life. But look at the statistics like you might as well have better luck being a doctor, right? Like it's not like 1% of the people really make a lot of money, right? So look around you like in a group of 100 people, are you that 1% who will like come out of it uh without scars and can you do it without having financial responsibilities and >> and yeah my last question is what is the minimum number of hours you should give until you can become like a really successful trader? Like you said you spent 2,000 3,000. Yeah, I mean see uh it took me 2 and 1/2 years to finally turn profitable and in between I lost my account twice, right? Uh so I'm just saying that 2 and 1/2 years was probably like 2,000 hours or whatever, right? And that's just this full-time like I'm not doing any other job at that point. This is all I'm doing. So yeah. >> Got it. All right, guys. I think um probably you're absolutely blown away by looking at these numbers and hearing these numbers and you're probably wondering how can I also do this. Um so I think uh it's easier uh I mean it's harder than it sounds as he says he's blown his capital off capital a couple of times. So don't get FOMO. Start off with a small capital which you're okay losing and then slowly slowly you can start building confidence and it's okay if you can't make thousand% returns you know as long as you're making returns which uh is better than what you used to do. So if there are any questions that you felt like I did not ask please drop them down in the comment section below and we will try answering them. And if there are any future guest recommendations that you would like me to bring on this channel, please drop them down below as well. Whether it is a trader, a mutual fund in mutual fund manager, a CIO, PMS fund manager, whatever it is, please drop them down below and I will try to get them on the next one. On that note, I'll see you in the next one. 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