Options Trading Course in Mumbai

Why options and non-public information are a bad combination

Suppose you hear, informally, that a company's results next week will disappoint. What would somebody do with that?

Selling the shares requires owning them. Shorting them properly is cumbersome. But a put option is cheap, requires no ownership, and can return many times its cost if the price falls sharply after an announcement. Options are the most efficient instrument available for acting on a piece of information before the market has it — which is precisely why they are the first place surveillance looks.

Exchanges and the regulator routinely examine unusual derivative activity in the days before price-sensitive announcements: a sudden build-up in out-of-the-money contracts, positions far larger than an account's normal size, trades that were closed immediately after the news. Those patterns are visible in data, the trades are linked to identities through the account, and the connections between people can be reconstructed afterwards.

The legal position is not complicated. Dealing in securities while in possession of unpublished price-sensitive information is prohibited, and derivatives on those securities are covered too. It applies to the person who heard the information second-hand as well as the person who had it originally, and “somebody just mentioned it” is not a defence the rules recognise.

There is a practical point underneath the legal one. Even setting aside the rules entirely, a tip is not an edge. The person passing it on usually has the direction wrong more often than people admit, and has no idea how much of it is already in the price.

A working test for what you can act on

In a city where market conversation is constant, you need a quick way to tell ordinary information from the kind that gets people into serious trouble. Three questions do most of the work.

Is it public? Published results, exchange filings, press releases, news reports, analyst notes available to anyone — all of that is information you are entitled to use, however clever your interpretation of it. Your analysis of public information is exactly what the market expects you to trade on.

Would it move the price if it were announced? If the honest answer is yes, and it has not been announced, stop. That combination is the definition of the thing you must not act on.

How did it reach you? Anything that originated inside a company, its auditors, its bankers, its lawyers, or anybody working on a transaction involving it deserves the assumption that it is non-public until you can point to where it was published.

Two habits make this simple in practice. When something like that reaches you, do nothing in that company or its derivatives until it is public — the cost of waiting is almost always nothing. And if your own job gives you access to such information, read your employer's dealing policy and treat its restricted list as broader than it looks.

None of this is advice about any particular situation, and we are not lawyers. If you are genuinely unsure whether something you know is price-sensitive, the answer is to not trade and to ask your compliance team.

Ten modules, and the reasoning behind their order

Futures, Options & Derivatives Mastery is built so that no position is introduced until you understand what could go wrong with it.

It opens with the contract. What a strike and an expiry commit you to, how a lot size determines the exposure you actually carry, and why index contracts settle in cash while single-stock contracts settle by delivery.

Then collateral. How the blocked amount is set, why it rises on a position you have not touched, what a shortfall costs, and why the figure blocked is not the most you can lose.

Then pricing. The Greeks as the explanation for why a position behaves the way it does, including why an option can lose money on a correct view — and the relationship that ties a put and a call at the same strike together, which explains more of the option chain than people expect.

Then reading the chain as a live market: depth, spread, and what open interest does and does not tell you.

Then positions, each introduced by its worst case: long options, vertical spreads, straddles and strangles, and defined-risk combinations. Then selling, with its risk described plainly. Then expiry, weekly on the index. Then sizing and limits.

Recorded, WhatsApp support, Hindi-English mix, and nothing scheduled against a working week in this city.

Fees, and who this is not for

Futures, Options & Derivatives Mastery costs Rs 10,000 against an MRP of Rs 23,000. Paid once, access that does not lapse, every later addition included. Enrolment at study.thefinbaba.com, and there is no classroom anywhere in the city.

It is not for anybody who has never owned shares directly. An option is a claim on an underlying, and judging that underlying is assumed here rather than taught — the beginners programme at Rs 2,500 covers it.

It is not for anybody whose plan depends on hearing things first. The course teaches you to analyse what is public, size what you can afford to lose, and know what each position can cost. Nothing in it is a substitute for information, and nothing on this site supplies any: there is no tips group, no signal service and no morning message.

And it is not for anybody whose employer prohibits derivatives. In this city that is a large number of people — read the policy in writing before paying for any course.

No assured or guaranteed return is promised anywhere on this site. Options can lose more than the amount blocked against them, and a sold option can lose far more than the premium collected.

The free WhatsApp demo comes first. The instructor is Atul Shrivastava — 16+ years trading, 8+ years mentoring, and a registered Zerodha Authorised Person (AP2516003481).

Disclosure: the account-opening link on this page is under Atul Shrivastava's Zerodha Authorised Person registration (NSE AP Reg: AP2516003481; Zerodha Broking Ltd. SEBI Reg: INZ000031633) and earns a revenue share. TheFinBaba is not a SEBI-registered Investment Adviser — this content is educational, not investment advice.