Trading vs investing in India
The real difference between the two disciplines, and how to tell which one you are actually doing.
Read →Resources
The trading resource library
How to use this library
Everything Bharath Shiksha publishes is free, and this page is the map to it. The guides are grouped in the order most traders actually need them: start with the foundations, build the psychology and discipline that keep you consistent, then work through risk, execution, and the money and tax questions. The tools at the end let you put the numbers to work, so you can size a position, measure your edge, and estimate your costs before they eat your returns. Read straight down if you are new, or jump to the topic you came for.
Nothing here is gated and nothing is filler. Each guide is written to be read once and used for years, and each calculator does one job well. If you are not sure where you sit, the free diagnostic at the bottom of this page will point you to a sensible starting place in the curriculum.
Start here: foundations
How much money to start trading
The honest starting-capital floor, derived from your smallest position and your per-trade risk budget.
Read →Setting up a trading account
What a demat and trading account needs, and the settings to get right before your first order.
Read →Technical analysis for beginners
What to learn first, in what order, and the beginner mistakes that waste the first six months.
Read →Psychology and discipline
Trading psychology
Why FOMO, revenge trading and fear take over, and how to build the emotional control that lasts.
Read →Trading discipline
How to follow your own rules under pressure, and the systems that make discipline the default.
Read →Common retail trading mistakes
The mistakes Indian retail traders make most often, and the structural fix for each one.
Read →Finding a trading mentor
How to judge whether a mentor is worth learning from, and the red flags that mark a course to skip.
Read →Risk and edge
Risk management in trading
Position sizing, stops, R-multiples and the capital-preservation rules that keep you in the game.
Read →Risk of ruin, explained
The mathematics of going broke, and why bet size decides survival more than win rate does.
Read →Measuring your trading edge
What an edge really is, how to measure expectancy, and the sample size that proves it exists.
Read →Scaling trading capital
When and how to add capital as your process proves out, and the risk rules that scale with it.
Read →Stop-loss placement
The structural approach to stops, ATR-based distance, and the discipline to honour them once set.
Read →Orders and execution
Limit order vs market order
When each order type helps and when it costs you, and how spread and slippage decide the call.
Read →Trade management
What to do after entry: scaling, trailing, partial exits and the discipline behind each move.
Read →Large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap stocks
How the market-cap segments differ in liquidity, volatility and risk, and where a beginner belongs.
Read →Supply and demand trading
How to mark the zones where price actually turns, and trade from them instead of chasing.
Read →Money, tax and investing
Trading taxation in India
STCG, LTCG, F&O and intraday tax, STT, and the filing deadlines that protect your loss carry-forward.
Read →ETF investing in India
How ETFs work in India, where they fit alongside active trading, and how to build exposure simply.
Read →A career in trading
What a realistic path into trading looks like: skills, capital, timelines and honest expectations.
Read →Free tools and calculators
Trade journal grader
Log a trade, grade the execution against your process, and see exactly where discipline leaks.
Open tool →Position sizing calculator
Enter your stop and risk budget to get the position size that keeps every trade inside your rule.
Open tool →Risk of ruin calculator
Estimate the odds a losing streak ends your account, given your win rate and bet size.
Open tool →Expectancy calculator
Turn your win rate and average win and loss into a single expectancy-per-trade figure in R.
Open tool →Kelly calculator
Find the mathematically optimal bet fraction, and see why trading a fraction of it is safer.
Open tool →Cost estimator
Add up brokerage, STT and the other charges to see the real hurdle every trade must clear.
Open tool →All calculators
The full calculator suite: compound returns, drawdown recovery, R-multiple and the rest.
Browse all →Educational note. Everything in this library is published for education, not investment advice. Bharath Shiksha is an educational publisher, not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst, and nothing on these pages is a recommendation to buy, sell or trade any security. Any monetary example is illustrative only.
Chart and candlestick patterns
Cup and Handle: Where the Definition Does the Work
The cup and handle carries more clauses than any other pattern in common use. Coded in full and detected across 9,000,000 generated daily bars, it fired 443 times. Removing the clauses one at a time shows what the specificity actually buys.
Read →Elliott Wave, Audited
The three hard Elliott rules coded and tested. On a simulated series with no wave structure in it, 12,209 labellings of the same 140 bars satisfied every rule. What the framework can be asked, and what it cannot.
Read →Flags and Pennants: The Pattern Is the Impulse, Not the Shape
Flags and pennants, written as a definition strict enough to run, detected across 1,800,000 generated daily bars, and measured against a forward-only base rate. The central test varies the impulse threshold alone and reports what it bought.
Read →Morning Star and Evening Star, Measured
The classical star definition requires gaps. Coded strictly it fires 1,176 times in 1,800,000 generated daily bars; coded the way most detectors code it, 8,490 times. What the gap clause is worth, measured against a forward-only base rate.
Read →Shooting Star and Inverted Hammer: One Bar, Two Names, Two Stories
The shooting star and the inverted hammer are the same bar. Only the prior trend separates them. One coded definition, 23,436 detections across 1,500,000 generated daily bars, and a measured test of whether the two names describe anything different.
Read →The Inside Bar Is Not a Pattern, It Is a Measurement
An inside bar is a discrete measurement of range contraction. Coded and detected across 750,000 generated daily bars, it predicts nothing about direction and something about size, and the continuous measure it stands in for does the job three hundred times better.
Read →The Wedge: The Same Shape Means Opposite Things
Rising and falling wedges, coded as the triangle definition with one clause turned around, detected across 750,000 generated daily bars, and the context claim tested directly. Three in four resolved the folklore way, and the context effect turned out to be the control.
Read →Triangles: One Mechanism, Three Names
Ascending, descending and symmetrical triangles, written as a definition strict enough to run, detected across 750,000 generated daily bars and measured against a forward-only base rate. Includes the with-the-trend finding this page published and has since withdrawn.
Read →Options strategies, priced
Calendar and Diagonal Spreads, Computed
An options calendar spread is not the futures calendar spread. It sells a near expiry and buys a far one at the same strike, and it is described as a way to harvest time. Computed here: the value profile, the decay differential, and the volatility exposure the time story hides.
Read →Delta Hedging: What It Costs to Stay Neutral
A written index call, hedged with futures at eleven frequencies on 20,000 simulated paths. The optimum leaves 14.4 percent of the premium at risk. Below about eight lots, whole-lot granularity means the hedge cannot move at all.
Read →IV Rank vs IV Percentile, Computed
Both measures implemented and run on a seeded simulated volatility series. An engineered single spike puts IV rank at 7 and IV percentile at 85 on the same session, and the forward test shows the raw level predicting better than either.
Read →Protective Put or Stop Loss: What Downside Protection Costs
Both put a floor under a position. Only one of them holds. A seeded simulation runs 200,000 identical paths through three regimes and prices the difference: the stop was hit on 29.7 percent of paths, a quarter of those exits gapped straight through it, and 47 percent recovered before the horizon. Illustrative and simulated.
Read →Straddle vs Strangle: Buying Movement, Not Direction
A computed comparison of the long straddle and the long strangle on an illustrative index. Both breakevens, the percentage move each one needs, the crossover where the cheaper structure stops being the better one, and how often a simulated series actually travels that far.
Read →The Butterfly: A Bet That Nothing Happens, Priced Precisely
A long call butterfly computed in full: 6.36 to one reward to risk, a 23.49 percent chance of landing inside the band, and an expectation of zero. Why those are one fact, plus four legs of charges.
Read →The Covered Call, Priced
A computed covered call: 200,000 simulated months, the full outcome distribution, and the expected value of the upside surrendered against the payment received. At a 12 percent assumed drift the payment is 91.3 percent of what was given away. Illustrative and simulated.
Read →The Iron Condor, Computed
A four-leg iron condor priced leg by leg, then simulated against the same distribution the prices came from. The share of profitable expiries and the expectancy are computed side by side and turn out to be close to independent. Illustrative and simulated.
Read →The Ratio Spread and Its Ruin Risk
A call ratio spread computed in full on illustrative data: four expiries in five finish in profit, the expectation is zero, and the loss arm has no bottom. What a payoff diagram cannot show you.
Read →The Vertical Spread, Priced in Full
A computed vertical spread on an illustrative index: both payoffs, both breakevens, the exact crossover where a plain option overtakes the spread, the four-leg charge stack, and why a defined maximum loss turns position sizing into division.
Read →The Volatility Skew: Why Puts Cost More Than Calls
Index puts trade at a higher implied volatility than equidistant calls. A computed page: the curve across strikes, the rupee asymmetry, and a simulation showing the skew emerging from a negatively skewed return distribution.
Read →What Actually Happens When an Option Expires
Index options settle in cash. Single-stock options settle in shares. An illustrative Rs 11,250 premium becomes a Rs 12,00,000 delivery obligation, and settling costs 47 times what an exit costs. The operational reference for Indian options expiry.
Read →Indicators
Ichimoku Cloud: Five Lines, Measured
All five Ichimoku components computed from their definitions on 600,000 generated daily bars. One line is the exact average of two others, three principal components explain 100 percent of the computed set, and the lagging span read where it is drawn is the next 26 bars of return.
Read →Quant and systematic
Monte Carlo for Traders, Demonstrated
Reorder the same 240 trades and the worst drawdown moves from 14.7 percent to 24.6 percent at the 95th percentile. A seeded simulation showing why your equity curve is one draw from a distribution, and what that does to position size.
Read →Parameter Sensitivity in Backtesting, Demonstrated
A worked parameter sweep on an illustrative simulated series. A real edge sits on a plateau; a fitted one sits on a spike. On a series with nothing in it, peak-picking still promised 2.57 percent a year and delivered a loss.
Read →Pine Script Tutorial for Indian Traders
A working Pine Script v6 tutorial: the once per bar execution model, a complete indicator, a complete strategy, and a measured account of how repainting, unconfirmed bars and zero costs distort a strategy tester result.
Read →Statistical Arbitrage, Computed Honestly
Statistical arbitrage is not arbitrage. A seeded simulation shows where the edge comes from, why Indian charges take 85 percent of it, how long a broken relationship takes to detect, and why the technique does not scale.
Read →Stock Screener Strategy: Encode a Thesis, Not a Shopping List
A screen is a written belief, compiled. On an illustrative simulated universe of 400 instruments, four criteria cut the list to 28, a fifth cut it to one, and one of the four removed nothing at all. How to translate a thesis into criteria, thresholds and a testable list.
Read →The Execution Gap, Quantified
A seeded model of the six execution costs between a backtest fill and a live one. A 30 basis point paper edge met a 44.5 basis point stack and finished 14.6 basis points under water. Where the breakeven sits, and why turnover decides everything.
Read →Walk-Forward Analysis, Demonstrated
A worked walk-forward test on ten years of illustrative data. The optimiser promised 34.2 percent per window and delivered 6.4 percent. Why an optimised backtest is a measurement of the past, not a forecast.
Read →Market structure
GIFT City IFSC: A Foreign Jurisdiction Inside India
GIFT IFSC is treated as offshore for currency and regulation while sitting on Indian soil. What that structure is, who may actually use it, and a computed comparison showing the currency conversion costs more than every tax exemption combined.
Read →High-Frequency Trading in India, Explained
A modelled latency budget for a colocated participant against a retail one, the point at which the speed disadvantage stops mattering, and what the rules actually say about colocation and tick-by-tick data.
Read →Market Making Explained, Demonstrated
A simulated market-making business, run and decomposed. Gross spread revenue of Rs 26,011 a session, Rs 22,004 of it lost to adverse selection, and what the same two risks cost you the moment you rest a limit order.
Read →Fundamentals and accounting
Accounting Red Flags in Indian Filings
A worked forensic screen on constructed Indian filings. Reported profit up 154 percent, cash from operations up 20 percent, and a five-test screen that wrongly flags two clean companies and misses a drifting one. What forensic analysts actually read.
Read →Discounted Cash Flow, Decomposed
A complete DCF built on a constructed illustrative company. 54.6 percent of the computed value sits in the terminal value, and a grid of 63 defensible input pairs produces a highest answer 2.95 times the lowest. Why a DCF is a sensitivity instrument, not a price oracle.
Read →How to Read a Contract Note, Line by Line
A contract note is the legally significant record of your trades. This page constructs one, recomputes every charge from the trade details, and gives you three checks you can run on your own. All figures illustrative.
Read →Promoter Pledging: Why the Percentage Is the Wrong Number
Promoter pledge is reported as one percentage. A seeded simulation of the collateral loop shows two constructed companies with the same 60 percent pledge behaving completely differently, and names the variables that actually decide the outcome.
Read →The Cash Flow Statement, Walked Line by Line
A full three-section cash flow statement built from constructed accounts and reconciled line by line. Two companies report identical profit and 105.2 crore rupees of different operating cash. Then three ways the headline moves without a false statement. Illustrative and simulated.
Read →Why Your Three P&L Numbers Never Match
A constructed trading year computed three ways: the platform figure, the ledger figure and the taxable computation. Twelve items account for the whole difference, reconciled to the rupee. Illustrative and simulated.
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