How to learn the share market from zero: a 90-day plan

You learn the share market from zero in three stages: understand how the market works, learn to read a price chart, then practise with no money before you practise with a little. Ninety days, at 45 to 60 minutes a day, is enough for the first two stages and the start of the third. It is not enough to become a profitable trader. Most people who trade lose money, and the goal of these 90 days is competence and an honest decision, not income.

Before day one: what you are actually learning

"Share market seekhna" (learning the share market) can mean two different things.

• Investing: buying shares of businesses and holding them for years. Slow, boring, and the way most people who make money in the market actually do it.
• Trading: buying and selling over hours, days or weeks to profit from price moves. Faster, harder, and where the losses are.

This plan teaches the shared foundation, then leans towards trading, because that is what most searches for "share market kaise sikhe" are asking about. If by day 90 you decide investing suits you better, the plan has still done its job.

What you need: one hour a day, a notebook or spreadsheet, and zero rupees for the first two months. Do not open a broker account on day one. It is the fastest way to start trading before you can read a chart.

Weeks 1 and 2: how the market works

Spend the first two weeks on vocabulary and mechanics, not on charts and not on stocks to buy.

By the end of week two you should be able to explain, in your own words: what a share is and why its price moves; what NSE and BSE are; how an order travels from your phone to the exchange; what a demat account does; the difference between intraday, delivery and F&O; and what brokerage and taxes cost per trade. Start with What is the share market and Types of trading.

If you prefer a video walkthrough in Hinglish, the free two-hour Trading for Everybody course covers this stage. Free is the right price for this stage, whichever source you use.

Also in week one: pick one large stock and one index to follow for the whole 90 days. SBI and Nifty are fine choices because they are liquid and covered everywhere; any large, liquid stock works. Each evening, write down the close and one line about why it moved, if you can find out. This is not analysis yet. It is building the habit of paying attention.

Weeks 3 and 4: reading a chart

Now open a free charting tool and learn what a chart says.

Week three: candlesticks. What the body and wicks mean, what a doji, hammer and engulfing candle look like, and why a single candle means very little on its own. Candlestick patterns for beginners is the starting point.

Week four: support and resistance and trend. Draw the levels on your one stock and one index every evening. Note where price stalled, where it broke through, where it came back to. Compare your lines with what happened the next day. You will be wrong often. That is the exercise.

Skip indicators entirely for now. RSI and moving averages are easy to add and hard to interpret, and beginners use them as a substitute for reading price. Two weeks of drawing levels by hand teaches more than two months of indicators.

Weeks 5 to 8: paper trading with rules

Paper trading means placing trades on paper, or in a simulator, with pretend money and real prices. Four weeks of it, done properly, is the most valuable month in this plan. Done casually, it is worthless, so here are the rules.

1. Write a one-page plan first. Which instrument, which timeframe, what a valid setup looks like, where the stop goes, where the target goes, and how many shares. One setup only.
2. Give yourself a pretend capital of ₹1,00,000 and risk 1% per trade. Position sizing and the 1% rule has the formula.
3. Mark your levels before the market opens. No trade outside the plan, ever. A trade that made money but broke a rule is recorded as a rule break.
4. Every trade has a stop and a target at entry, and a risk-reward ratio of at least 1:1.5.
5. Log every trade in your journal the same day. Aim for at least 30 trades over the four weeks.

Paper trading does not teach you what fear and greed feel like. Nothing does except money. What it teaches is whether you can follow your own rules when nothing is at stake. If you cannot, real money will not fix that.

Weeks 9 to 12: small real size

Now, and only now, open a demat and trading account if you do not have one. Then trade real money at a size so small that losing it is annoying, not painful.

• Delivery or intraday in your one stock, 1 to 5 shares at a time. At ₹500 a share, that is a position of a few thousand rupees and a risk per trade of a few tens of rupees.
• Keep the same one-page plan, the same journal, the same 1% rule. On a real ₹20,000 account that means risking about ₹200 a trade, or less.
• No F&O. No leverage. No tips from anyone, including friends and Telegram groups. If someone offers you a call, you have not yet learned enough to know why it is wrong, which is exactly why you must not take it.
• Do not add money to the account during these four weeks, whatever happens.

Expect to lose a little. The purpose of this month is to meet your own emotions: the urge to move a stop, to take one more trade, to check the app forty times. Write those down too. They are the real curriculum.

If you have a job, keep it. Should you trade while working a job explains why that is the right setup for learning, not a compromise.

Throughout: the journal and the weekly review

Every trade, real or paper, goes into a trading journal with at least these fields: date, instrument, setup, entry, stop, target, size, exit, result in rupees and in units of risk, whether the plan was followed, and one sentence on how you felt.

Every Sunday, spend 30 minutes on it. Count the trades, the win rate, the average win versus the average loss, and the number of rule breaks. Over 90 days, the rule-break count is the single most predictive number you will produce. If it is not falling, more knowledge will not help yet.

Day 90: how to decide what is next

By now you have around 40 to 60 logged trades and three months of daily attention to one stock and one index. You can answer three questions honestly.

• Did I follow my rules most of the time? If not, the next 90 days are a repeat of weeks 5 to 12, not a new course.
• Did I enjoy the process, not just the wins? Trading is mostly waiting and record-keeping. If that bored you, long-term investing may suit you better, and there is no shame in it.
• Is my journal showing an edge, or nothing yet? Nothing yet is the normal answer at 90 days. It means keep going small, or decide that a structured course with feedback would speed up the next stage.

Whatever you choose, you are choosing with data, not on a friend's screenshot. That is the whole point of the plan.

Common mistakes

• Opening a broker account in week one and trading before knowing what a candle is.
• Learning ten indicators instead of one setup.
• Paper trading without rules or a journal, then claiming it "does not work".
• Starting with options because they are cheap. They are cheap for a reason.
• Following tips during the learning phase. You learn nothing from a win you did not understand.
• Adding money after a losing week to "recover". That is the account-ending habit, learned early.
• Judging 90 days by profit. The score is rule adherence and understanding.

Key takeaways

• Learn in order: how the market works, then charts, then paper trading, then small real size.
• One stock, one index, one setup. Depth beats breadth for a beginner.
• Paper trade with written rules and a journal, or do not bother.
• Real money comes in week nine, at a size where losing is annoying and not painful.
• At day 90, judge yourself on rule-following and understanding, not on rupees.