This Profitable F&O Trader Takes Only 35 Trades a Year | Big Bull Series Ep 94

Can you really make money in F&O? This Big Bull episode puts a profitable derivatives trader in the hot seat. He is an engineer-MBA from Ratnagiri who says he has been profitable every year for six years. We go through his Kotak P&L, his backtests, his strategies and his worst drawdown, line by line. If you want a realistic look at profit in F&O, profit in options trading and derivative trading profit, this conversation shows that it is possible, but only with serious work and patience behind the scenes. What you will learn? 🚀 Why profitable traders think differently. He never took a loss he had not planned. His rule from day one was to cut a position when the premium moved against him by a fixed multiple, never to sit on hope. 🚀 How he started small. He began with a Zerodha account in 2020 and a “learning cost” of just ₹2,000. He lost his early capital within months, then spent 12 to 14 hours a day on Zerodha Varsity, books and videos before risking real money again. 🚀 The options buying lesson. His first option buy went in the right direction and still did not make money. That was his first real encounter with time decay (theta) and expiry, and it pushed him toward options selling. 🚀 Options selling with defined exits. He sold out-of-the-money puts near daily-chart support and cut the trade if the premium doubled or halved by plan. He also shares a monthly option selling cushion using about 15 delta strikes and 30 to 45 days to expiry. 🚀 The 9:20 straddle and curve fitting. He explains how he backtested multiple entry times, why a result that works at only one timing is curve fitting, and why the strategy faded after more traders crowded it and weekly expiry changes loomed. 🚀 Trend following with Supertrend and a moving average. He walks through a one-hour candle system on Nifty with a 50-period moving average used only for entry and Supertrend as the trailing stop. He shows a live chart example of how the stop and exit work. 🚀 STT and charges explained with real numbers. In his own example, selling one Nifty futures lot cost about ₹788 in charges, of which ₹731 was STT, against ₹85 on the buy side. 🚀 He explains why this changes the break-even point, and why he moved to synthetic futures, where the same trade cost roughly ₹130 to ₹150 in his example. 🚀 Synthetic futures explained simply. Buying a call and selling a put at the same strike, how it mirrors a futures position, and why the margin stays the same. 🚀 Position sizing and leverage. He keeps leverage at about 2x, does not buy options until he has a sizeable account, and trades only 30 to 35 times a year with this system. The challenges he faced and how he handled them? 🚀 Early losses and emotional pain. Even small losses felt huge at the start. He solved it by shrinking size, writing every trade in a notebook and setting alarms for each entry. 🚀 Tax and charge pressure. Rising STT and wider bid-ask spreads cut into returns, so he rebuilt his execution rather than abandoning the market. 🚀 His worst phase, February and March 2026. A long-only system met a falling, choppy market and gave back a large part of the previous year’s gains. He had not yet built a short side. He then added a smaller short system, gold, and an options selling cushion. 🚀 Random closing candles. He discusses how the new closing auction session can create odd last candles on the spot chart that flip indicators, and why he is considering switching to futures charts. Mindset takeaways for loss-making traders 🚀 Rules first, prediction never. He says he has no idea where tomorrow’s market will go. 🚀 Backtest thoroughly across bad years like 2020 before you trade a dollar of real money. 🚀 Tweak your system, do not jump strategies. He used four strategies in six years, and each grew out of the last. 🚀 Cut your size when drawdown crosses a limit such as 5% to 10%. 🚀 Be honest about luck. He openly calls one early winning trade luck. 🚀 Tell your family. He says many loss-making traders never do. Fill this form to appear on Big Bull Series Podcast: https://forms.gle/jMC9iJW1g4cGkjZw8 Install Stock Pathshala for LIVE classes and Webinars now: Visit: https://stockpathshala.com/ Stock Pathshala on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de... Have you been scammed? File Complaint here - https://aseemjuneja.in/ Open Demat in Zerodha: https://shorturl.at/4LzRl Chapters: 1:33 - From engineer to business owner 5:26 - The ₹2,000 learning cost 7:50 - Learning options 15:28 - The ₹3 lakh loan and family reaction 22:26 - Quitting business for full-time trading 31:31 - The 9:20 straddle days 34:43 - Discovering trend following 38:02 - The Supertrend system 47:33 - The real cost of STT 1:01:02 - Real P&L walk-through 1:12:05 - Option selling as a cushion 1:29:36 - How SEBI rules affected Trading 1:36:21 - Advice for beginners