TradingRooms Podcast, E26: Manu Bhatia - How a IIT Graduate Became a Highly Profitable System Trader

The TradingRooms Podcast, Episode 26: Manu Bhatia, Proprietary Trader
Topic: How a IIT Graduate Became a Highly Profitable System Trader
Guest: Manu Bhatia, Proprietary Trader
Host: Raghu Kumar, TradingRooms (by RAIN Platforms)
Recording Date: April 25th, 2022
TradingRooms: https://www.tradingrooms.in
Manu Bhatia Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatiamanu

This Episode is brought to you by TradingRooms (www.tradingrooms.in), India's FIRST automated social investing product, an initiative by RAIN Platforms (https://www.rainplatforms.com)

Description
In this episode of The TradingRooms Podcast, host Raghu Kumar interviews Manu Bhatia, a highly profitable systematic trader. In this episode, they discuss everything from Manu's interesting background as an IIT grad and in the corporate world, to turning to trading full-time, to proper risk management and money management techniques.

Introduction
We are lucky to have Manu Bhatia join us today. Manu is someone we have gotten to know a little bit over the past year - we invited him as a guest to a live webinar we hosted a few months ago on the topic of active trading vs active investing, and of course, Manu was from the active trading camp. Manu’s story is very interesting. He is actually a graduate of IIT Kanpur, obtaining his BTech in Chemical Engineering. But, he got inspired by trading, and stared building his own trading systems. However, post IIT, he didn’t become a full-time trader right away. He spent 5 years in the corporate world, first at TCS, then at Flipkart. Finally, he decided to take the plunge around 5 years age and switched full-time to trading.

Manu has a very active presence on Twitter where he has almost 200k followers. But, unlike many trader personalities, Manu is very straight-edged. In fact, he is so straight edged that he actually transparently posts his annual annual profitability figures - if there is one controversial aspect to Manu, this may be it, which we will also discuss today.

Since he’s a full-time systems trader, we will try to understand how he thinks and how he builds his trading systems. It’s an honor for me to interview Manu Bhatia.

0:00 Intro music
0:15 Guest introduction
3:11 Manu's background to trading and investing
5:20 How did you transition from IIT to trading, especially as a Chemical Engineer? How did you IIT schooling shape your trading career?
8:40 You mentioned that you observed your older brother trade - tell me about this experience, and how that inspired you to get into trading.
11:26 How do you think your stint at Flipkart helped you become a better trader? Would you recommend aspiring traders to full go into the normal job market before turning to trading as a full-time profession?
17:30 There is Quora reply by you to a question on intraday trading leverage, where you replied that since “Intraday trading involves high leverage so it is advisable to not risk more than 1% - 2% of your total capital in a trade”, can you elaborate on this?
21:20 How does one actually determine whether it should be 1% or 2%, and what is the tradeoff between win/loss ratio and risk per trade?
23:50 You have mentioned that one component you didn’t have early on is proper usage of risk management, and specifically, with position sizing. Can you elaborate?
28:00 You are one of the few traders I know who transparently showcases his profit loss, and you have been doing this for many years. Do you mind first walking me through the actual profit figures, and then I’d love to know why you do this - what are the pros and cons for one to share their PnL figures with the public?
37:40 Generally, what do your current strategies revolve around? How do you build your trading systems?
44:40 For someone who spends a lot of time looking at screens and charts, does it give them an edge with discretionary trading, and how is his approach with discretionary trading different from systematic trading?
49:00 How do you spend a typical day?
52:00 What are some major mistakes retail investors and traders make?
55:30 Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?


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