I am a CMA professional working as CFO. Lost money in F&O for years. Not because I didn’t know what I was doing wrong — I knew exactly. I just couldn’t stop myself at the right moment.
So I pulled my complete Zerodha trade history and analysed it properly.
What I found:
I lost ₹87,000 specifically in the 9:00–9:45 AM window across my accounts
I placed 81 trades in a single day in a revenge spiral
40% of all my trades were on Thursday — expiry day — buying cheap 0DTE options that theta was destroying
My only profitable hour across the entire dataset was 12 PM to 1 PM — I never knew this
Then I analysed 4 more Indian traders’ data — 17,596 trades total. Same 4 patterns in every single account regardless of broker or city.
The one trader with positive P&L? He had 7% Thursday trades vs my 40%. 4% 0DTE vs my 39%. Never traded before 10 AM.
He didn’t have a better strategy. He just avoided the worst behaviours.
I am building something around this — not tips, not signals. A behaviour guardrail. Would love to hear — what is the single worst trading habit you have that you wish something had stopped you from doing?
These days, after seeing the recent trends on forums, my first instinct when I read statements like this is to quickly scan the thread to see if they’re trying to sell something, apps, links, or whatever.
Coming back to the topic, I haven’t back-tested this yet, but from my experience,
Some habits I wish I had more self control on are ,
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Open the Charts / Trading Panel only after 10 AM.
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Stay away from buying Index Options and deal with Index futures ( but the capital requirement is a real bottleneck for me here) .
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Buy only if the price for that instrument has closed on a 15min candle above yesterday high, and the opposite for sell.
If I could effective implement these myself, I would be in a better position in terms of controlling intraday trading losses.
This is exactly the insight that led me to build something around this. You already know what you should do — open after 10AM, avoid index option buying — but the market opens and the impulse takes over.
That gap between knowing and doing is what I am trying to solve. Working on a behaviour guardrail for traders — not tips, not signals. Would love to connect and share more details directly if you are interested.
I cut" my profits too early.
this is one of the most common patterns I found in the data too. You cut profits at ₹500 because you are scared it will reverse. Then you hold a loss at -₹2,000 hoping it will come back. Net result — your wins are small and your losses are large.
I found this exact pattern across multiple traders I analysed. Even with a 50% win rate you can still lose money if your average loss is 2-3x your average win.
The fix is not strategy — it is a pre-set exit rule that you commit to before the trade, not during it. What stops you from holding your winners longer right now?"
How to trade onions and cauliflower? How much capital required for trading those?
Sir don’t troll
Here I’m developing genuine solution…
I’m not selling any tips…
It’s purely behaviour study and based on personal behaviour study we suggest what not to do.
Our core focus is what should be avoided not what should be done
Sir,
What you are doing is throwing around numbers (that’s all they are right now), with some form of commercial intent.
5 Rs on margin.
Fair point. Let me be transparent.
I am building something — yes. But I have not mentioned it or linked anything in this post. The numbers are from real Zerodha tradebooks — my own and 5 others who shared their data with me.
The reason I shared the data here is simple — I wanted to know if these patterns are real for others too. The responses so far suggest they are.
If you think the data is wrong or the patterns are inaccurate — genuinely happy to discuss. That feedback is more useful to me than anything else.
Nonsense, you did try. It got marked as spam.
Different people do different things and might have different patterns. I think we need to use our brains a bit too.
Also stuff like this suffers from small sample issues. At best you can get an idea but we need a large data set to verify which is hard to do with manual trades. And - Things can change too, trading is hard.
Both fair points — let me address them directly.
On the spam flag — yes, I shared a link in a reply earlier and it got flagged. I removed it immediately and learned from that. The original post has no link and no product mention. That was a mistake I corrected.
On sample size — completely valid criticism. 6 traders and 17,596 trades is a small sample. I never claimed otherwise. But SEBI’s own study covers 1.13 crore traders across 3 years and shows the same patterns at scale — 93% losing money, average ₹2L loss per person. My small dataset is consistent with that larger picture.
The purpose of sharing here was not to prove a universal law. It was to ask — do these patterns resonate with real traders? The responses suggest they do.
If you have traded F&O and your experience is different — genuinely curious to hear it.
You did not learn, you claimed that you did not share any link after having done so and got caught.
If this is how you, or AI text that your probably copy, come to conclusions, then good luck with your trading.
There is no reason to believe that a common analysis can be applied to a combination of different types of trades, that does not make much sense to me. Some things can be common due to constraints or luck, but seldom do we have common rules.
Just because most people lose, it does not mean your study on your dataset becomes valid. That does not compute, but so called AI probably doesnt understand yet. Maybe one day we will get real AI and then it will become impossible to not be drowned by it in forums if misused by people.
You think so ? Cool.
Nothing wrong with trying to find patterns and then trying to verify them. I doubt a group study has any use. And your underhanded promotions and jumps to conclusions just reeks of spam. Anyway dont feel like talking to AI text anymore.
What does ChatGPT say?
Who are the others ?
the other traders are friends and contacts who shared their Zerodha and Mirae Asset tradebooks with me voluntarily. I analysed the data manually. No AI was used to generate the findings — just Python for data processing and my own pattern recognition.
Happy to share more details directly if you are interested.
Share here.
Happy to share. I analysed 7 Indian traders’ data — 17,909 real F&O trades across Zerodha and other brokers. The most surprising finding: three traders had 50-66% win rates and still lost money heavily. One trader won 66% of trades but his average loss was 3.5x his average win. He felt like he was trading well. The math said otherwise. Building a tool that shows this ratio prominently — because nobody else is showing traders this number. Will share more when ready
Excited to share some FICTION from my side 
Studied 11 professional algo traders’ performance — more than 25,783 real trades on Nifty Options. The biggest insight? Profit had less to do with accuracy and more with payoff ratio. One trader was right only 38% of the time yet led the pack — because his average win was 4x his average loss. Another had a 70% win rate but drew down hard. Accuracy feels rewarding, but expectancy decides everything.
anyone else have fake data? 
Everyone has to start somewhere. There are basics, but its something one should know.
Its good insight. Neither win rate nor average win means anything on its own. I dont know whether there is market for something as basic as this. Good luck, but please dont advertise here.
Anyway, if someone feels he is doing well even when pnl is clearly down, then nothing can be done. Some basic awareness is necessary.
Also, Just knowing all of this does not give any edge.