Day trading was a traumatic experience, stopped investing for a while: Cult.fit's Mukesh Bansal

Pay attention to this or risk losing money. Mukesh Bansal, founder of e-commerce platform Myntra and the co-founder and CEO of fitness service provider Cult.fit, said that he had stopped investing in the stock market for a significant amount of time after he lost massively in day trading during his younger days, which left him with a ‘traumatic’ experience.

Bansal was speaking to Lalit Keshre, the founder and CEO of online stock broking platform Groww, during a podcast SparX, which is hosted by the former. Bansal said that he was “heavily into day trading in his younger days” and was forced to stop eventually.

He emphasised on the need to start the investment journey as early as possible. However, he also said that having patience is a crucial quality that every investor should have. “One thing you don't have in your younger years is patience. I also got to investing in my early 20s but day trading,” he said.

“I was day trading like mad. You feel like historically stock market is giving you 10% annual return over a very long period, but when you are day trading stock price obviously fluctuates and you may see 10% happen over one week. And you know you brag, but it can also correct 10%,” he added.

Bansal further said that day trading was so ‘traumatic’ that he eventually just stopped investing for a long period of time before turning to a more conservative investment approach.

In response, Groww’s Keshre said that the problem is that people get into day trading without understanding what it is and what are the risks. There is nothing bad in day trading but it is a serious business and is not meant for 90% of the people, Keshre said.

He further said that the market gives a lot of opportunities to learn and it is important to strategise. “Market gives you a lot of options to learn. You start with small amounts and then you can figure where are you inclined towards, how deep you want to go," Keshre explained.