.....and then I became a trader

It dates back to sometime in my engineering days. Solving puzzles used to be a lot of fun. I used to find and solve puzzle from websites, had subscribed to a daily puzzle mailer and was mostly lost in one puzzle or another. It was the third year of my 4 year graduation degree and things were going smoothly. A significant amount of time was spent on PC- mainly FIFA, puzzles and browsing randomly. A meaningful chuck of time was being spent on cricket, volleyball and football fields (especially at nights, in Hostel lawns). And B-Tech..oops, yeah I used to manage the cut-off attendance to appear in exams.
So, puzzles then. It was more of a ego issue to solve any given puzzle then anything else; though I loved spending time on them. I was good at solving the straight logic, mathematical ones- probability ones. It was the lateral thinking ones which usually gave me tough time. And then there is this thing about puzzles that you can't get it out of your mind until you solve it or get the answer form some where.
It was around the end of third year that the anxiety about future (post B-Tech) started to grow big. People were attending MBA coaching, personal development classes, other exam preparation classes etc. And it usually starts to bother you also, when everyone around suddenly starts getting serious. Two or three companies came for "paid" summer placements (You see, paid internships in engg. were a rarity that time; don't know what's the scene now).
Its then I started seriously thinking about what's going to happen. Though, I never got any close to qualifying for any of those internships but the jolt was received.
I liked solving puzzles as I mentioned. And from the given options- Job/MBA/Civil services; MBA attracted me the most. It was more because of CAT then anything else that motivated me towards MBA; more specifically IIMs. CAT was (is?) one of the toughest entrance exams in the country and it mostly involved aptitude based objective problem solving. And I liked solving puzzles!
Don't know exactly when, but I started preparing for CAT. Probably it started during my summer internship (@ TATA Motors, Lucknow). Chapra Ji and Rahul (PG mates at Lucknow) had loads of MBA prep material. It was a boring time both at the company and apartment and the prep material got to my rescue.
Then, back in college (4th year) I accelerated the prep. Mostly used to solve test papers borrowed from people who had joined some test series or the other. Since, those days around 150 questions used to come in CAT and the cut-offs were around 50 ques hence one question paper served two rounds of Mock Test prep for me.
CAT happened and I got a decent percentile. And that was it! That was the end of my planning. All I wanted was to crack CAT!! Nothing more, nothing less. But now the GDs and interviews loomed large. I had never been good in those (and haven't improved much yet!) and actually hated preparing GD-PIs. Though, eventually got through one of the IIMs (the GD-PI stories not relevant here). I chose Finance and Operations as majors since I could never withstand the gyan of Strategy and Marketing and more importantly, was poor at CP (Class Participation).
So, Finance then. And I learned about markets, trading, derivatives etc.

Interesting then! Dots joined? Puzzles->CAT->Finance->Trading

And now straight to trading. I like this game, because in order to succeed:
1-You don't need to market yourself
2-There are no unwritten rules, no side shows, no backbiting
3-You don't need to agree with any one else, nor do you have to convince others to agree
4-You take a call, you take the award/loss
5-Most importantly, there are no favorites

But its not just a game; its a university in itself. You would learn more about human emotions/psychology then anywhere else. It was a healthy green start for me; but it all turned red in a blink of an eye. You see, the fall is always steeper then the rise! As the returns turned from green to red so did I; from investor to trader.
So what are the learnings till now? There are quite a few and will detail out in coming posts. For the time being, the summary:
- Please, please, please decide before hand how much you want to make (exit point) and how much you can afford to lose (stop loss)
- Never get carried away with your initial view; ultimately market is the king (Bhav bhagwan che!)
- Please share all investment and trading details with your spouse. You see its always better to at least have emotional support in case you lose the financial one

Good bye for now. Promise, the next posts would follow soon.