The start of my trading!

After almost 5 years of playing around in the market, I believe, I have now set myself for profitable trading. I was introduced to trading by my friends. None of them were full-time professional traders. I was amazed by the way stock market works. I was amazed by the way macro-economic factors play in every day activities. I am convinced now that - If played professionally, stock market can be used to make good returns.

I started of with intraday trades and burnt my fingers badly! Then I moved into more SIP kind of regular stock purchase in the cash delivery segment. In most cases this worked well. However, the recession of 2008 wiped away lots of money. GMR moved from Rs. 235/- a share to Rs. 35 a share. Think about it... Rs. 1 Lac invested would have become Rs. 15000. This is big loss! Fortunately, those were my formative days and hence I had not invested such big amount. My total investments across all shares were just totalling to Rs. 40,000.

One friend of mine suggested that I should learn F&O. That's the place where you make 20K or lose 20K in one trade within a few days (often less than 3 sessions). I know there is too much at stake, but, this time I was conscious that my purpose is not to make profits but to learn. I did several mistakes such as:
1. Sigining up with poor broker - Many times the ticker instrument will not work. I cannot even login.
2. Underestimating the brokerage charges - For even one lot in futures, you may spend close to Rs. 400 per trade (buy + sell + STT etc) if you are on ICICI Direct.
3. While placing stop loss, not placing full quantity. I purchase two lots. When I use the square off feature, by default only one lot is populated. I often miss to notice and change this.
4. Being a victim of Greed and Fear. This is a long story. I will talk about my experiences in detail under various context later in my blogs.
5. Going with tips from TV, magazines and websites. On few occasions these tips have been correct. But, I lacked patience to wait.

Now, I will start tracking my trades, my rationale behind them and start recording my profits and losses. Let's see if my learnings and strategy works.