Top Questions

What is Trade Central?

Super Admin
I created this thing ;-)

Trade Central is your one stop destination if you're aspiring to be a trader or already a professional trader in stocks, commodities or currencies market. Trade Central journals system (https://www.tradecentral.in/) can help you immensely in getting better at trading and you can use this community to ask questions about journals system or trading in journal. You can also share your experiences by responding to questions that interest you.

We started Trade Central with an objective of educating and helping new traders learn how to trade safely and profitably. You can ask any question related to trading, technical analysis, fundamental analysis, price action, trading strategies or anything else related to the subject.

IMPORTANT - Please note this platform is not meant to give recommendations for buying or selling stocks and we request the users also to avoid posting trade ecommendations. However, feel free to share your analysis, charts or any other information which could be useful for other traders to learn from.

Happy Trading!!!

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Should I use technical analysis or fundamental analysis?

Super Admin
Love watching prices go up and down :)

If only there was an easy answer for this ;-)

Anyhow this question has more to do with your personality and psychology than a simple this or that kind of answer. Fundamental analysis is typically used by investors who are there for the long haul and don't mind waiting for years to see fruitful results as a successful outcome of their research. On the other hand, technical analysis is typically the tool of traders who have a smaller time horizon in their mind, from intraday to a few weeks. If you have the patience for long haul then fundamental analysis may be your calling but if you aren't willing to wait that long, technical analysis may be your thing.

Having said that, this does not mean that both do not work together. In fact, both work great together if used properly. It's not uncommon to find trader/investors using both in tandem. The timeframe used for analysis may be different for investors and traders.

But that's not all there is to it. There are pros and cons for and against both of them, other than the personality type fit. One popular argument in favor of technical analysis is that it inherently covers the risk management aspect (stop losses, position sizing) when implemented properly so your losses are typically smaller than your wins. On the other hand, once you're convinced that a stock looks good after your fundamental research then you wouldn't mind buying more, aka accumulate, when the stock goes down. One could argue that you're adding to your losses hoping that eventually the stock would go up. That might happen but in stock markets there is no guarantee of anything, Even if the stock turns in your direction, it may do so very slowly. There are so many examples where a stock either moved so slowly or stayed in the same zone for years that inflation itself would have beaten the returns (if there were any) hands down. On such case is ITC as on writing this answer which is still hovering around the same price zone since 2013/14 levels.

Coming to technical analysis, one popular argument against them is profits are quick but smaller whereas you can catch mutibaggers only via fundamental research. This is generally true since with technical analysis you have fixed profit and loss targets for each trade and you book your profit or loss once they get hit. Now the stock could keep going up even after you exited your long trade so you would miss that profitable ride.

Eventually, there is no right or wrong way. Use them both if you can irrespective of you are primarily interested in just one of these approaches. As mentioned before it all boils down to your own personality and you should pick the one which suits your better from the perspectives mentioned above.

Hope this helps!


What is price action?

Super Admin
Love watching prices go up and down :)

Price action is exactly what it says it is. It's the way price acts or moves, and it is studied by plotting the price using charts. This movement of price is the basis of technical analysis as traders study charts to identify patterns that they beleive can help them predict the price movement.

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Trades use various kind of charts, e.g. candlesticks, renko, bars, heikin ashi among others to help them derive meanings from price movement, e.g. bullish hammer pattern formation after falling prices in a stock may be considered as a signal of trend reversal. Apart from the patterns, traders use supports and resistance, trendlines, trading volumes and other information as they see fit to make sense of price action.


Should I sell a PUT, or buy a CALL if I am bullish on an underlying? Which one is more profitable?

Super Admin
I would happily strangle ...

Simple answer to your question would be that buying the call would be more profitable if you disregard the other aspects assuming your view turns out to be correct. 

However things are never that simple, isn't it? Let's consider the other aspects which can't be ignored when trading options. For your buy call to make money, underlying not only needs to move up as per your prediction but also fast enough to counter the theta decay. Even if the underlying move in your direction but takes its own sweet time to do that, you'll end up losing money. On the other hand, if you sold a put instead of buying the call then you just have to be right about the direction, e.g. underlying won't go down below the strike price at which you sold the put. As long as price stays up even by a rupee above the strike price at the time of expiry, you'll make money. Time also works in favor of option writers.

Option buying can seem more lucrative compared to option writing (selling) when you consider the reward that you make when you win compared to the reward option seller would make in the same trade. Selling options also require more capital and margin compared to buying options so it generally works better for the big guys (HNIs, funds, MFs etc). As option buyer, your risk is limited to the premium that you pay but your risk can be theoritically unlimited when selling options. 

Generally speaking, if you have enough capital to trade options and you're in for a long haul then writing options could work better for you. Chances of winning in favor of option writers are 2:1, considering they only need to be right about where the prices won't go. On the other hand, options buyers not only have to be right about the direction but the underlying should also move fast enough to end up being profitable.

Writing options is considered same as the casinos or insurance business where you lose big once in a while but most of the time collect consistent and steady returns from those buying options.

Finally, it all comes down to your individual preference and risk appetite. Majority of time options writers win but that does not mean options buyers don't make money. There are a lot of successful option buyers but you have to be very good to consistently make profits buying options. Selling options is safer due to higher chances of winning though returns are relatively smaller.


Do the stock tips provided on TV channels like CNBC work?

Vikram Sinha
Only short term please. In long term, we're all dead!

Never tried but now that you have mentioned, it may not be a bad idea to paper trade their tips for few months and see who is better than others. If they work even 50% of the time then that's good enough.

Only (and biggest) downside I see about following them is that you'll become dependent on them and you won't learn anything on your own. If you like tips of an expert and that expert stop showing up suddenly then you're lost.


Does it make any difference if I buy/sell stocks on BSE or NSE?

Saket Upadhyay
Midcaps rock!

NSE has more liquidity and quality of companies listed is generally better (not talking about the blue chips or good mid/small caps). It's easier to get listed on BSE compared to NSE since NSE has a more stringent criteria for getting listed.

If you're interested in a specific stock which isn't listed on NSE then you anyway don't have a choice, however as a rule of thumb, I trade on NSE. NSE/NIFTY 500 is a good universe to pick stocks from if you're into trading (intraday or short term) since volumes are good and you don't need to worry too much about operators controlled stocks. You can additionally use daily average volume as a criteria to filter liquid stocks within NIFTY 500.

Hope this helps.


Which is the best charting software that works with Indian stocks (NSE/BSE)?

Super Admin
Price Action and Candlesticks is all you need!

There are plenty. Every broker has either their own charting kit of integration with another popular charting software. Zerodha has kite (chartiq) for charting and also have an integration with TradingView. 

My favorite is TradingView. It has a free plan and NSE/BSE data is also available for free. Plus, it's web based so works everywhere. Last but not least, it has programmimg (pine) support for backtesting and custom coding your indicators and strategies. You can have your personalized setup and everything is saved in your account so you can access it and trade from anywhere. It also lets you paper trade.

Other popular charting software include Amibroker and Metastock. In terms of features, they probably have everything you would even need, including F&O, option chains, OI analysis, backtesting and so much more. Amibroker is arguably the better option but the issue is that they work only on Windows. If you're on Mac or use a linux flaour (e.g. Ubuntu) then it won't work. 


Can you insert tradingview charts in posts?

Super Admin
Lifelong student of Markets

TradingView has an option to you save screenshot of your charts which you can insert in the posts. I have inserted a screenshot of BankNifty futures hourly chart below as an example. 

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Which books have influenced you the most in your trading journey?

Sir Elliott
~~~ Elliott Waves ~~~

Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel is one book that has had a profound influence on me in regard to how we think about money. It's not exactly related to trading but I think everyone should read it as it has great insights on how we think about money, success and happiness with real life examples.

Other than Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas is another book I will highly recommend to anyone who aspire to be a trader or even if you already are a seasoned trader.


There is a capital field in settings and then capital specific to portfolios. What's the use of multiple capital options?

Super Admin
I created this thing ;-)

That's a good question and to be honest I too was confused when I was developing it. Let me try to walk you through the process I had in my mind.

As you rightly pointed out, there is a global capital field under settings. This is supposed to be your total capital across all your asset classes, e.g. stocks, forex, commodities et al. Let's say this capital is 10L INR.

Now, you can create various portfolios for asset classes (e.g. Forex, Stocks), trade types (e.g. intraday, swing, positional) or a mix of both (e.g. Intraday Forex, Stocks Swing) and assign a capital you want to use for each of these portfolios. Let's say you want to use 2L capital for intraday stock trades and 3L for intraday forex trading and the rest for positional or swing stock trades. Ideally the total of all your portfolios capital should be same as the global capital, though there is no strict check in the system for that.

Having said that, you don't need to create that many portfolios. In fact, not many traders would actively trade all of these. If you are just doing intraday trading then you can set the capital of your intraday portfolio to be same as global capital setting.

Reason for having a global capital and individual portfolio capital is to help you analyse the trades and individual portfolio performance better. This way you can filter the portfolios and track your equity separately for each portfolio and also get a global view of how your total capital deployed is performing across portfolios. 

Hope this makes sense.


What's the use of tags in trade journals?

Super Admin
I created this thing ;-)

Tags is a very interesting feature and can be very useful in identifying specific problems or good things about the trades that you execute. You can create multiple tags categorised by type, i.e. mistakes, positives or others. As an example, here are some of the tags I personally use.

  • Exited too early (Mistake)
  • Did not adhere to strategy (Mistake)
  • Perfect exit (Positive)

When you add trade analysis during completion of trade or later, you can also associate appropriate tags with the trade. These tags will help you identify which mistakes you are repeating more and similarly what positive things you do often. These can be very powerful in fine tuning your trading style and make you a better trader.

We have just added a tag analysis section to help you identify often occuring mistakes and positives.


Does Trade Central support forex and cryptocurrencies?

Super Admin
I created this thing ;-)

Yes, we do support Forex and Cryptocurrencies. There are no features or limitations specific to stock, forex, commodoties or cryptocurrencies. If you can trade them, you can use Trade Central for rcording your trades without any issues.

However we do not support options and spreads at this time.


Do Trade Central journals support Options?

Super Admin
I would happily strangle ...

As of now, we do not support options but we are working on the same. We plan to add basic support for Options (individual buy/sell orders) followed by support for spreads. 

As a workaround, you can still use Trade Central to journal your option trades by including underlying, strike and type (PE/CE) in the security field, e.g. BANKNIFTY MAR 36000 CE.


Where do I start if I want to become a full time professional trader?