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?"