Think broader and more probabilistically. You can’t toss a coin and get heads twice and say i have a magic coin that only lands heads. You need a larger sample size.
It is not.
There has to be some one on the opposite end of a winning outcome.
The fact that you ended up in profit means some one ended up taking the loss.
yeah. Competition and survival is the core of it.
Different people come with different needs and get them fulfilled.
- Some trade/invest with edges in different timeframes. They make money, but even here edges can evolve and you have to compete and survive. Many people might be trading similar edges, those with inferior edges or bad risk management may not be able to survive tough periods and exit while those who survive might profit. In case of investment, people without edges wont beat the market but might still make money due to upward drift in stocks. People here may also be providing liquidity to market, or taking liquidity moving price to more fair price in the long run.
- Some come to learn and pay tuition fees while they learn
- Knowingly or not, some/many come to market to gamble and make quick money. They pay for fulfilling their gambling desires. If they gamble without risk control, they get wiped out.
- Some might want to do timepass and engage socially with people / boast etc. Profit and loss is incidental
- Some may want to hedge their positions and they pay to the market for it.
- etc etc
All of this results in price discovery and average joe can invest in diversified market at fair price. Lack of price discovery can lead to people with info getting much better prices than they should. This is just me speculating, but i think active trading/investing is important for price discovery.
I don’t do that. I am not blind or greedy.
There is some method behind what I am doing, of course that could be insufficient.
Of course, someone lost so I won, but they may have lost only a little bit too, and they may make profit with someone else.
The lines goes on 
no, the line doesn’t go on. You need to understand the fundamentals of F&O. All F&O contracts have a settlement date(settlement day=expiry day). When settled they no longer exist, so all positions are converted to cash or equity. I.e the line ends and the sum is negative(including charges).
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I know that.
Expiry ke tareekh pe options mitti mein mil jaate hai
I did not say that exclusively to contracts. I was saying in general, trading, investing all combined 
What i said above applies in general too. The only exception being, cash market ( where the bag is passed on from one idiot to another).
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Just to add on to all that you said. It is still opportunity forgone for the seller. So considering that it is still a negative sum game. When overall market cap increases it will look like all the buyers and sellers on net basis are positive. Again if you consider taxes and charges it may still be negative sum game. Some cash market stocks even go to 0.
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Every equity market participants pretty much rely on positive drift (assuming that asset prices will always go up, in the larger time frame).
But this time frame doesn’t always have to be in years, it can take decades!
(example of the largest equity market, the US s&p 500 drifted sideways with zero appreciation for more than two decades in 70s-80s.)
God forbid, our markets are suddenly seen as massively overpriced and like the Nikkei, not appreciated for 3 decades and counting.
Yes many think market always goes up.
While there always exists the possibility of Indian market stagnating, the context in which such stagnation happened in other countries is also to be seen.
Although I am aware of valuations going high without any real earnings, but if they are justified to some extent, because of interest rates being low, increasing domestic consumption, financialization of assets theme, government support, India as an emerging market for FIIs etc, I don’t think the longevity of negative returns may happen. There are lot of regulatory things and big money moves that are beyond me.
So, this to some extent is personal, and perhaps, if froth is removed, and if there is low participation, which can happen anytime, it means single digit returns for a while.
All the analysis and massive risk, is it really worth the returns?
You can purchase government bonds for 8% returns (some even higher), while the interest rate is at around 6%.
The average government bond rate for the past 3 decades has been at least 10%(conservative estimate). While the total return of nifty (including dividends, bonus, etc) has been 15%.
So, the question is, is it sensible to risk potential massive loss and the insane swings of nifty for a potential extra 5% return?
Each one’s situation is different, and now that we have so many options to choose from, we can choose whichever is best for us.
Market is big money’s ( Rich person’s) business arena. 5-10% on Big money is Big money and its lucrative as we can put in and out easily with lots of tax benefits. So , if you have large money to manage you will find it very lucrative to keep in the market( with lots of diversification strategies) for smaller sum its pointless to waste time . Learning and skill development in trading is different point to invest your time otherwise for passive investment with small allocation is not worth the time. So , as world offer so many option it up to the individual to fingure out what’s good is it to you
Large part of the return from debt will be gone after adjusting for inflation. Look at real rates and then equity returns will make more sense - atleast it deserves some part in portfolio if you don’t have better options.
Equity has worked well for me over around 15 years now. Anyway, for the first time i don’t have equity MF holding anymore.
And that is because, moved to direct equity or debt?
Moved to trading.
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So no separate direct equity PF? All in trading?
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yeah. Trading does better than index in returns and in risk, so have been shifting money in steps and now all out. Just couple of stocks left in portfolio now back from when i did not know anything, will probably sell those soon too.
I don’t have any edge in long term investing, so no sense in investing directly in stocks yet and so far have not yet moved up from intraday. Probably in future i will try to invest systematically dunno.
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Are you saying you don’t have edge in long term investing, or there is no edge in long term investing?