Dec21-W5: Retail traders are looted by regulator

In a week when everything went right and I earned well via a methodical system of trading, I had to shell out a hefty amount of ‘other charges’ These are charges collected by dear regulator SEBI for penalizing retail traders like me who do not maintain lakhs of margin. To add salt to injury, it is impossible to know breakdown of these charges, at least on the console of Zerodha.

Rs. 15,000 of profit in the week was knocked away by Rs. 10,000 of SEBI charges. I have no interest in knowing the breakdown anyway. I know the reason. This is my punishment for being over smart and keeping negative margin on Dec 17^th. I thought that as long as I maintain positive margin by end of day, I am ok. However, our dear SEBI can randomly take snapshots 5 times a day and penalize if margin is negative.

Did I deserve to be penalized? Yes

Did I deserve a penalty of Rs. 10,000? Absolutely no

I say this because we Indians perhaps pay the largest taxes in the world for trading in a market where freak trades are becoming common and price determination is done by speculators sitting in Singapore. SEBI has no right to penalize me by this much amount if I committed this mistake for the first time, especially when it can change margin requirements 5 times a day as per its whims and fancies. Couldn’t I had been let go with a warning?

But as always, nobody will care. This piece of blog will just die, just like hopes of several Indian traders who wish for reduced taxes and penalties.

I guess once I become rich enough, I too will trade from Singapore.

So I traversed through the following candles during the week:

Here are the results  

Net Profit (after deducting brokerage)	Capital deployed (approx)	Week’s ROI	Annualized ROI for this week	Total no. of weeks traded till today	Annualized  return till today
Rs. 5327.98	Rs. 1085574.67	0.49%	28.99%	29	52.62%

The following is breakdown of week’s positions

DISCLAIMER: I am not a SEBI registered adviser. All the information provided on this website is for educational / informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.