Did traders lose money today?

If you flipped a red card today, you are not alone. Most days, more traders lose money than make it, even on days when Nifty closes higher. This is not bad luck. It shows up in the official numbers too.

What SEBI’s data says

SEBI’s study of the 2024-25 financial year found that about 91% of individual traders in equity futures and options made a net loss. Their combined losses grew by around 41% from the year before, to roughly ₹1.05 lakh crore. You can read the findings in Business Standard’s report on the SEBI study. The 3:31 Flip shows the same picture, one trading day at a time.

The five reasons we see on red cards

When traders tell us what went wrong, the same stories come up again and again:

• Moving or ignoring the stop loss. The trade hits the stop, and the trader holds on, hoping for a bounce. A small loss turns into a big one.
• Overtrading. Ten trades in a day instead of one or two good ones. Every extra trade adds brokerage and another chance to be wrong.
• Position size too big. Putting a large part of the account into one trade means one bad move can wipe out a week of gains.
• Revenge trading. After a loss, jumping straight into another trade to win it back, usually without a plan.
• Buying options without understanding time decay. An option can lose value even when the market moves your way, if it moves too slowly or too late in the expiry.

Green day or red day, what to do next

A single red day is not a problem. A pattern of red days with the same reason is. That is why we ask what happened, not how much. Look back at your last five cards in the history strip. If the same mistake shows up more than twice, that is the one thing to fix first.

On a green day, write down what you did right while it is fresh. Most traders only review their losses, so they never learn what their good trades have in common.

Learn to trade with a plan

At 9AM Traders Academy in New Delhi, every class is taught live by a teacher who answers your questions, with no recorded lectures and small batches. If your red cards keep telling the same story, a structured course in options buying and risk management is the fastest way to change it. Check how many traders lose money today, then come back tomorrow at 3:31 PM and flip again.