I never traded F&O. Not because I didn’t understand it — but because I did.
F&O is borrowing money to speculate against people who are better than you, faster than you, and have more of it than you.
That’s not a market. That’s a trap with a timer.
A SEBI study covering FY22–FY24 found that 93% of individual F&O traders incurred losses, with aggregate losses exceeding ₹1.8 lakh crore over three years. In FY24 alone, 7.3 million traders lost an average of ₹1.2 lakh each. The winners? Mostly FPIs and algo traders.
I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly — including in people I know. It’s why NoTradeZone exists.
1. Influencers sold them the dream
It starts with a YouTube video. Someone in a rented Lamborghini explaining how they cracked the market. A course for ₹4,999 that promises a system. Screenshots of winning trades with no context of the losing ones.
The message is always the same — F&O is a hack. Easy money for smart people.
So someone with a decent salary, an idle savings account and a Zerodha login thinks — why not? Imagine having money sitting in an account with nothing working for it. The buying instinct kicks in immediately.
That’s how it starts. Not with greed. With hope.
2. Winning feels like skill. Losing feels temporary.
The first win is the most dangerous moment in a trader’s life.
F&O addiction works exactly like alcohol. You drink when you’re happy. You drink when you’re sad. The reason changes — the behaviour doesn’t. Eventually you’re not drinking for a reason anymore. You’re just drinking.
F&O traders win one trade and feel like geniuses. They lose three and feel like they just need one more to get back. The market becomes the reason for everything — and the solution to everything.
That’s not trading. That’s dependency.
3. Hope keeps the account alive until it’s zero
You start with ₹1 crore. It drops to ₹50 lakh. Any rational person would stop, reassess, accept the loss.
But the brain doesn’t work that way. You don’t see ₹50 lakh. You see the ₹50 lakh gap between you and where you started. And you think — I just need to trade this back up.
So you trade the ₹50 lakh. It goes to ₹25 lakh. Same logic applies. You trade that too.
The account doesn’t blow up in one bad trade. It bleeds out through hope.
4. They’re borrowing to speculate without knowing it
Most retail traders don’t think of F&O as borrowing. But that’s exactly what it is.
You’re not buying a stock with conviction and holding it. You’re taking a leveraged position on a direction, in a timeframe, against a deadline. You can be completely right about where a stock is going and still lose everything because expiry came first.
That’s not investing. That’s speculation with borrowed time and borrowed money.
5. The math is against you before you start
F&O is a zero-sum game before costs. After brokerage, slippage and taxes it becomes negative-sum. That means even if every retail trader were equally skilled — most would still lose.
The winners in FY24 were FPIs who made ₹28,000 crore and proprietary algo traders who made ₹33,000 crore. That’s who is on the other side of your trade.
6. “I’ll make it back elsewhere”
Three versions of the same lie:
Next trade will fix it — revenge trading dressed as confidence.
Salary will cover it — using income as permission to take reckless risk.
Another idea is there — jumping to the next shiny setup before learning anything from the last loss.
Each one sounds like a plan. None of them are. They’re just ways to avoid sitting with a loss long enough to understand it.
Why NoTradeZone exists
I didn’t build this to tell people not to trade.
I built it because the most profitable decision I ever made was understanding what NOT to trade — and why.
F&O is not suitable for most retail investors. It is a product designed for speculation, sold as opportunity, and marketed by people who profit from your participation — not your success.
The edge is not in trading more. It’s in knowing exactly when not to.
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About the Author
Jonathan — Endurance athlete. Investor by discipline. I document real trades in real time — entry prices, thesis, risks and honest updates. No tips. No calls. Just disciplined thinking, publicly archived.
All views expressed are personal. This is not investment advice. Please consult a SEBI registered advisor before making investment decisions.