Share market basics
Selling shares you do not own, expecting to buy them back cheaper; in Indian cash equities this is allowed only within the same day.
Short selling means selling first and buying later, to profit from a fall in price. In the Indian cash market, retail traders can short a stock only intraday: you sell in the morning and must buy back before the close, or the broker squares off the position. If you hold a short overnight in the cash segment without delivering shares, it goes to auction and you pay a penalty. Suppose you sell 100 SBI shares at ₹800 at 10 AM expecting weakness, and buy them back at ₹792 by 2 PM; the gross gain is ₹800. If SBI instead rallies to ₹815, the loss is ₹1,500. For multi-day short positions, traders use futures or buy put options instead. The risk in shorting is that a stock can rise without limit, so a stop loss is essential, and short squeezes on good news can be violent.
VideoA share is a portion of a company. The share market is where those portions change hands. Here is how it works, what you can trade in it, and why most people who trade actively lose money.
VideoThe share market runs on two activities that look alike and are nothing alike. Investing is owning a business for years. Trading is profiting from price moves over hours or weeks. Mixing them up is behind most early losses.
VideoTrading comes in a few distinct forms, and the one you pick decides how much time, capital and stress it takes. This lesson explains intraday, swing, positional, futures and options trading with Indian examples.
