My journey of learning & sharing-
My journey of sharing my learning in markets started in 2003 purely by accident. My elder brother was a full time lecturer in those days and his colleague requested me to help one of his students for a summer project in equity derivatives. Since the request came from brother's colleague whom I respected, I said yes. The MBA student came to my residence on two weekends where i guided him through his doubts and troubles thereby helped him complete his project.
On the last day, he asked me whether I'd like to teach?

In 2008, when terrorists attacked Mumbai on 26/11, 27/11 was the monthly expiry of derivatives contract.
I was employed as Head-Institutional Derivatives in Bank Sponsored Brokerage firm with office in Maker Tower Cuffe Parade Mumbai.
We had anticipated around 500 Cr+ worth rollover on expiry day. We were a new setup barely 4 months old & falling markets had made life tough already.
The terrorist attack started around late evening & i was lucky to be home at 6 PM that day instead of taking my usual 9:25 Panvel Local from Platform No 1 in CST Station

Batsmen and Technical Analysis:
There are many different types of batsmen who entertain us throughout their careers with their display with the willow.
Broadly there are two types of batsmen
1) Technically Perfect
2) One with Artistic Touch Today we'd focus on the second type i.e. One with Artistic Touch.
In the category,few players name crops up in mind
1) GR Vishwanath
2) Azharuddin
3) D Gower
4) VVS Laxman
5) M Waugh
6) SC Ganguly
7) C Hooper
8) S Fleming
9) R Kanhai
10) R Mahanama
11) M Jayawardhane
12) Z Abbas

My experiments with books .The latest one A cow for her milk,
A hen for her eggs,
And a stock, by heck,
For her dividends.
An orchard for fruit
Bees for their honey,
And stocks, besides,
For their dividends.
—John Burr Williams,
The Theory of Investment Value

That's some opening

We are pleased to announce our mega webinar titled "Consumption Consuming Consumer: There are no free lunches " on Saturday & Sunday, December 12-13,2020 from 9 AM onward.

For early bird registration click here
rzp.io/l/0o0lzvVB Its been nearly two decades, we have told that India is a consumption story. MNC brands have come to India since the time Sushmita Sen became Ms. Universe in 1994 immediately after the doors of our economy were opened in 1991-92.From toothbrushes, to air conditioners to electric

Trading Derivatives in India : After two decades since inception, is it time to raise the bar and the barrier?
Having started my career in Equity Derivatives as early as around the start of the segment, I have had the fortune to observe my more than fair share of ups & downs. There have been a great deal of changes in regulation, compliance, margin requirements, selection of stocks, lot size changes, participation of institutional investors and launch of new products etc. in these 20 years.

But few things that have remained unchanged are:

Indian Options Markets in last decade : IPL Style of Cricket

IPL started in 2008, a year which signifies correction and/or capitulation for Global Financial markets. In India, Nifty peaked in Jan'08 & bottomed in Oct'08.

So how do we correlate Options Trading & IPL? IPL brought a revolution to the game of cricket. Unknown talent started to rub shoulders with legends on the field that they would have never imagined. Unknown talent were coached by the best in game. Unknown talent started to bought/sold in Auctions at astronomical prices.

Careful Discretion: Challenges of a trader in Private Sector Insurance company in India.

Since 1997-98, Insurance sector was opened up for private players in India who have grown steadily over past 2 decades to become a force to reckon today.
So how does a trader execute trades? Assumptions
1) The Private insurance is mid level player in the sector, ranked between 5-8 position among 20 players.
2) The story is set in the period between 2011-2014.
3) Big Funds used FIX and/or 1 Touch DMA for execution whereas medium funds used Manual/FIX for execution

Parabolic SAR: The lesser known creation by J Welles Wilder.
Parabolic SAR (parabolic stop & reverse) is a method devised by J. Welles Wilder Jr., to find potential reversals in the #market price direction.
It is a #trend following (lagging) indicator & may be used to set a trailing stop loss or determine entry or exit points based on prices tending to stay within a parabolic curve during a strong trend.
The indicator generally works only in trending #markets & creates "whipsaws" during sideways phases. Thus, Wilder recommends first establishing the

Relative Strength Index (RSI): An excellent work by J Welles Wilder often abused for wrong reasons:
The relative strength index was developed by J. Welles Wilder & published in 1978 book, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems, & in Commodities magazine (now Futures magazine) in the June 1978 issue.[1] It has become one of the most popular oscillator indices.Wilder believed that tops and bottoms are indicated when RSI goes above 70 or drops below 30.Traditionally, RSI readings greater than the 70 level are considered to be in overbought territory and

Street Fight in a Morning Meeting at an Institutional Brokerage one day (set up in 2011-2013)

Every team goes through tough times & ours was no different either. Characters in play are
Head Equity: HoE
Head Sales: HoS
Head Research: HoR
Head Sales Trading: HoST
Chart: TA
F&O: DA Analyst Call Signs
Telecom: TRAI
BFSI: NPA
Metals Mining: Coal
Oil&Gas: Methane
CapGood&Power: Circuit
Pharma: Viagra
Economist: Deficit
Automobile: Chetak
Technology: Cloud
Cement&Construction: Sand
Real Estate: ReRA
FMCG: Pedigree
Midcap: ChotaChatri

When the stock we bought on breakout doesn't move an inch? Behind the scenes insights for the Retail Investor

Many time it happens that we buy a stock in the morning after getting a buy signal on the end of day charts overnight. We do so at the opening trade and are then witness painful price action when we see the stock oscillating between -1% to +1% from its previous day close throughout the day and sometimes the same continues for even 5-10 trading sessions. We wonder, who is the enemy of our breakout & how he is managing to peg the stock in range

Believe in Destiny but before that believe in self
It was sometime around 2004-2008 (that is not important in context with the story) when I was employed with one of the largest Debt Market Brokerage firm in their Institutional Equities division as a Chief Technical Strategist I had been employed with the firm for more than a year now and my life was set and smooth. Reach office at 8 AM (markets used to open at 9:55 AM those days), release the daily market outlook report to institutional clients, attend morning meeting (I preferred the term"mourning')

Margins for Futures are computed using a statistical concept called VaR (Value at Risk) which essentially implies that margin collected should be large enough to cover the loss on the open position in 99% occasions. Greater the volatility of the stock/index, greater the risk and therefore greater the margin.
Now when a stock/index rises, it usually does in an orderly fashion e.g. for Nifty to rise from 6825 to 12430 it took around 3 years and 11 months. In that period, volatility by and large came down or remained stable considering that in markets

Looking at FII buy sell data to gauge the mood of Foreign Portfolio Investors in India?

Will this uni dimensional approach yield the desired results for someone who is looking to invest in Indian Equities post a 40% decline from the Jan 2020 peak? Just crunching FII data may not be the only way to look at Indian Equities which are part of Emerging Markets as per the FPI classification. A different yet simple strategy needs to be adopted in these tough time before investing in an EM like India.

Thought process matters.

Global Financial Markets: Risk off or Risk On : Analyze-Evaluate-Decide-Execute
The recent selloff in financial markets globally has raised an important question i.e. is it just the impact of the pandemic #coronavirus or is the something more than what meets the eye? Will things come back to track faster than the collapse or is this just the beginning of a painful downward trend in markets worldwide? In simple words, are we in Risk Off or Risk On? Should we look for value buys in decline or should we look to exit longs in counter trend bounce

My Journey in Financial Markets:
Hi,
My name is K Anant Rao and am a financial market professional for past 18+ years now. For 14-15 years, I was gainfully employed in diverse roles as Technical Analyst and/or Derivative Strategist in equity brokerage firms and later graduated to become head of institutional equity sales trading and alternative research. Though I began my journey in Retail Broking but spent 80-90% of my professional career servicing institutional investors consisting of both domestic and foreign.

Everybody Lies: My one such experience in Institutional Broking
Characters:
Investment Manager: IM
Equity Research Analyst: ERA
Equity Sales Manager: ESM
Equity Trading Head: ETH
Equity Dealing Member: EDM
We wont be ever revealing the names of individuals or companies. It was first half of year 2013 our ERA & ESM both arranged a meeting for an IM of large fund who was managing around 12-15K cr. of corpus. The said IM was keen to meet a then Nifty-50 PSU Banking (non SBI) top management just around the time when quarterly results were due.

My 1st tryst with a Institutional Sell Recommendation
It was Dec'03 near Christmas and I was working in a broking firm as Jr. Research Analyst. One evening our sales trader as me & my Sr. to a fund house for a customary meeting with a Sr. FM. We sat for the meeting around 5 PM My Sr. who also is my teacher, started the discussion on broader markets both local & global followed by which sectors to look forward for alpha generation. My Sr. was already 2 decades into Mkt. Analysis was type casted as bear in the institutional equities space for sell ideas

Life after the #CoronaVirus in equity markets:
Its still early days as #CORONAVIRUS continues to wreak havoc on equity markets worldwide, shattering confidence
and destroying wealth of investors simultaneously. However this too shall pass is what one can say at this juncture. Having said that, there is a section of investor society which thrives on such corrections irrespective of they being a natural calamity(प्राकृतिक आपदा)or Man Made Crisis(मानव निर्मित विपदा) by investing at the fag end of such said corrections as one gets good bargain for money.

2004 में एक बार जब मैं अपने गुरु के साथ अपनी कंपनी के रिसर्च मीटिंग में शामिल हुआ, चर्चा का विषय था,इस महीने कौन से स्टॉक में निवेशकों को निवेश की सलाह देनी चाहिए. मेरे गुरु Technical Analysis के हेड थे और हमारे कंपनी के Fundamental Analysis के हेड, मेरे गुरु के प्रत्येक stock सलाह का खंडन fundamental के आधार पर किये जा रहे थे.