Karthik decided to become a serious trader on a Tuesday, which he later admitted was the first mistake. The second mistake was deciding that a serious trader needs serious equipment.
“You cannot trade properly on a laptop,” he told his sister. “Professionals have multiple screens. One for charts, one for news, one for the order window.”
“How much will you trade with?” she asked.
“Five thousand rupees. To begin.”
“And the monitors will cost?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Thirty-two thousand. But they are an investment.”
His sister, who worked in an accounts department and had developed an eye twitch for exactly this kind of sentence, said nothing and left the room.
The three monitors arrived on Friday, along with a desk riser, a keyboard with lights, a mousepad the size of a small roti tray and a chair that Karthik described as “ergonomic” and his mother described as “a throne for a king with no kingdom.”
On Monday morning he sat down at 9:10 sharp. The market opened. The left screen showed charts. The middle screen showed news. The right screen showed a live feed of other traders talking confidently about things that had already happened.
He bought a stock at 9:17. At 9:19 it moved against him. He looked at the left screen, the middle screen and the right screen, and each one gave him a different opinion. The chart said hold, the news said sell, and the man on the right screen said “this is just a healthy correction,” which in trading is a phrase used by people who are not holding the stock.
At 9:41 he sold, down ₹180. At 9:55 the stock reversed and went up. He bought it again at a higher price. At 10:20 it fell again.
By lunch he had lost ₹610 on a trading capital of ₹5,000, which is the kind of mathematics that makes you understand percentages very quickly. By evening, he had lost ₹1,150.
He closed the laptop, then remembered it was only one of three machines and turned off the other two. The room fell dark. Only the keyboard glowed, faintly, like a tiny disco for one.
His sister looked in. “So, how was the first day?”
“I learned something,” said Karthik. “The monitors are fine. It was the trader who lacked resolution.”