When most software engineers in India were lining up for a US visa or an onsite assignment, an IT engineer in Mumbai left his job to pursue a career in trading. This was a subject he knew very little about, only reading about it during his holidays while studying engineering. Six months into his first job, Nooresh Merani decided that coding was not what he was cut out for, this despite the fact that he had blown up his trading account during college and borrowed money to plug the hole.
The excitement of trading and persuasive approach to crack the puzzle helped Nooresh to cross the bridge. Yet it took him many years and many more mistakes before he could confidently build up on his portfolio. Shifting his strategy from a pure technical approach, Nooresh presently uses fundamentals as a validation tool.
Nooresh is very active on the social media and has a sizeable fan following. He is also a prolific blogger, trainer and a registered advisor. His reading interests are mainly market-related, understanding the history and psychology behind markets, but call him for a game of badminton and he will drop his book immediately.
Speaking to Shishir Asthana of Moneycontrol, proprietary trader Nooresh Merani talks about his journey, his mistakes and about his strategy very openly.
Your website says you are an IT engineer. Can you take us through your journey from engineering to trading?
I got into engineering in 2002 and between my second and third year of college, I was first introduced to markets. It so happened that when budding engineers have vacations, the other colleges start. So we have nothing much to do during our vacations. Between my second and third year, my uncle, who was dabbling in shares, shifted from Dubai and decided to get into trading on a full-time basis.
He was an investor but started off in technical analysis when he came to India. So, I learned technical analysis with his help. Like everyone else, I learned it the hard way, by making many mistakes.
Did you ever take up an engineering job?
I worked in a company but left it in six months. Since January 2007 I am full-time in the markets.
What did you do in the initial years in market?
I joined my uncle who had a sub-broking business and was already advising clients. Since I did not have any capital I started off by helping my uncle. In fact, I had blown up all my capital when I was trading in college and had taken a loan from my mother to fill the loss.
How were your initial trading days?
In the first year of trading full-time and learning technical analysis, we mainly learned what not to do. We made a lot of mistakes and that helped us in learning what not to do. For example, we started off by looking at all indicators. You name it and we have tried it, be it stochastics, RSI or many of the others indicators.
So, the first learning was indicators are indicators and not deciders. Like when you are driving, the vehicle has a right and a left indicator. The person is indicating that he will either be taking a right or a left turn. But he is not indicating on which turn will he take. Will it be the first turn, second one or any later ones? If you take every indicator on the market you will end up losing money.
Also read: Key learning from 2008 crisis was to cut down on my leverage: Nooresh Merani