From Coins to 25%, 1.10k+ in equity at 18

Posted on May 31, 2025 by oxm6k

Below is my life story from a financial perspective. Specifically how I
started from collecting coins at age of 5 and then reached 100,000+ in
equity at 18.

This is my personal story. None of it is financial advice, if it wasn’t
obvious by now. Many people have asked me to include what stocks did I
buy, what strategy did I use. Giving financial advice without proper
certifications, which I neither have nor want, is a crime according to
the government. Also I don’t want to reveal my cards. Additionally the
document itself is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which also includes a “No
Warranty” clause.

Childhood Interest in Coin Collection, 5 – 6

This is probably the hobby that paved the way for my interest in
finance. While I mostly collected exotic Indian coins, I also did have
some paper notes, and foreign currencies too.

Most of my coins came from buying it from beggars at a price higher than
their face value.

This hobby was kinda expensive and required traveling to some
potentially unsafe places. It was impossible for 5 year old me to
sustain it, so I soon at age 6, I left it.

Below is the picture of notes from my collection. 4 Indian Rupee notes.
3x One Rupee and 1x of two rupees

Collecting, Trading Stationery(9 – 11)

I started collecting stationery at age of 9. By the age of 10, I had
started taking my stationery collection seriously. I also introduced
this hobby to my classmates, and it spread like fire. I also started
trading stationery with them. I named this act “Soada”, which is Punjabi
word for “deal”. I mostly traded stationery for non stationery items
including food, money and others. I kept a written, signed bill of each
item traded for just in case. I also introduced written form of
communication in form of paper balls letters with some obscure words.

Some of my most notable trades were soft drink, chips nuts, and which in
return, I got two pocket sized Oxford dictionaries. Cash, listening to
stories of a classmate’s father stationery shop from which I got an
obscure sharpener from her. Pack 50 pens, 2 Rupee, each from a village
student for cash. Mathematics table, formula notebook, which I wrote
myself, for which I got 5 sharpeners in return. An imported chocolate,
for which Y testified, post trade, in boasting manner that it’s indeed
imported, in return for 7 sharpeners. A small carton of juice(10 rupees)
for mechanical pencil(worth 15 new) from Z. She believed in mobile app
ghosts, played video games, ate meat(which was considered taboo), and by
her own admission, was “Not like rest of girls”. She later even started
doing experiments, playing pen fighting with me, and other minor trades.

I was specially fond of pencil sharpeners and pens. I had 97 pencil
sharpeners, 70+ pens, 30+ erasers. Thefts were pretty common too, so I
had “secret pockets” in my bags, coats which were carved out using
sharpener blade. I also managed to convince some thieves to not steal my
items, else I will complain them to our teacher, A, who considered me as
her “favorite student” and gave me “Smart and Cool 😄” on official
report card, and keys to her personal locker in staffroom, exemption
from makeup(skin whitening powder, lipstick), because I am already pale,
and allowing me to wear my own jacket function and allowing me to wear
my own jacket. While I had access to A’s personal locker, I never used
that for my personal storage or even requested her for that.

There were also some ideological differences. For example, one rival
turned trading partner collected pencil leads from wooden pencils by
repeatedly sharpening it, which I, and A both, found valueless and waste
but we didn’t object. Another one was with many others who were so keen
on displaying their collections publicly to almost everyone but I was
opposed to this. Due to concerns of theft and whole class already knew
this. But some show off was also necessary as form of advertising, so I
kept my bragging tendencies to limited circle. I used to say, “Why
should I bend and look down , laugh on others instead of making others
look up and they will notice automatically.”

In addition to that, we did many other things including Pen
fighting[^1], “experiments” with stationery, writing
short reference books, throwing our stationery out of window on the
porch and then rolling them down through water pressure. The one who
managed to do this could keep all of them.

I stopped this hobby at age of 11 because it was getting way too
expensive, my step mother had discovered my stash, thieves had left the
school, our school was getting strict to the point that they confiscated
my cash, expensive stationery. Though I got them back after my father
wrote a note to them.

And I also became favorite student of another teacher, C. She appointed
me as discipline manager, time tracker for her class. I also helped her
by facilating a profitable business deal with my father. And another
seperate business deal with a classmate, BD, who would later become a
bad debtor of me.

I also had started focusing on programming and later finance. Though my
stationery didn’t go waste. I personally donated many to poor students,
including poor non-school friends(Group A), who passed an oral test, and
still use some of the items.

Making Beer Money, 12.5 – 13.5

At the age of 12.5, I created a Paytm account with Mini KYC, from my
father’s documents, with his consent obviously. And started earning
through referrals, micro tasks, quizzes and some real money gaming.

I didn’t really do real money gaming much as I knew that I often lost,
except in one game in which I managed to earn around hundred rupees. I
didn’t do sports betting, rummy, poker as I didn’t have enough
knowledge, neither desire to gain it.

I must have earned a total 600-700 rupees overall, without any
investment, but I then just stopped as the work to reward ratio was too
low. But for me, the biggest feeling was earning something. I still
remember that I playfully bantered with my classmates that I have
already started earning, have more cash in my wallet than them, who had
none.

I didn’t share much about these platforms in my group, other than the
Crypto currency platform, and Google Opinion Rewards, as many of these
platforms were specific to India, and few required investments. And I
used to say that, “I will make sure that my group members don’t have to
pay a single cent from their pocket” as a comparison to of other group
admins or YouTubers.

Making My First Profit From Cryptocurrencies (14 – 15)

After learning programming for 1.5 years, at the age of 13.5, I created
my own
group
for computer, cybersecurity related discussions, that gained over 100
members, and I started learning about finance, stocks, cryptocurrency.

At the age of 14, after I gained working knowledge of block chain,
cryptocurrencies and related fields, I started searching for ways to
implement my knowledge. I came across a platform named
Stormgain which had a feature that would let
you mine Bitcoin on their cloud platform for free. So I signed up there
and started mining.

I was able to refer around 5 people in Sethi Free Hacking School, which
increased my mining rate. Soon, I reached \$10, the minimum withdraw
limit, and withdrew my earnings to my trading account, there was no
option to withdraw to bank account, crypto wallet. From that, I bought
Matic USDT and made \$13.

But sadly, I wasn’t able to withdraw the profit because I didn’t have
legal documents, as I was a minor. After that, I just abandoned
Stormgain, cryptocurrencies and started focusing more on programming,
equities instead. Though still I did manage to make \$105 profit in demo
account with BTCUSDT and COMPUSDT

Earning Money By Doing In-game Micro transactions for others (14 – 15.5)

As I shared in my previous
article
that why I am not a game developer and why I don’t play video games, I
was safe from this “disease”. But many of my friends did, and they
didn’t have much means to do in-game micro transactions as they were
minors too.

I had already opened a mini KYC Paytm account at age 12.5 using my
father’s documents, as I mentioned above, and had knowledge of these
things so I did micro transactions on their behalf.

Most of micro transactions I did were in video game named Free
Fire. I would buy
a Google Play Gift card using my Paytm balance and then share code with
them. Sometimes, I also did direct top ups using
Codashop.

I had started this at age of 14, but later stopped doing micro
transactions altogether, due to bad debt with BD, and instead parked my
money in Paytm Payments bank FD. I also stopped going to his home as I
was spending more in fuel. I had already earned lot of profit by
arranging business deal between BD and my father at age of 11, so I gave
up.

Since Paytm is not a traditional bank, I couldn’t go to a bank to get
money deposited. So, I would have to go to some mobile recharge shops,
and later a friend, who would take cash, commission from me and send to
my Paytm account. For this reason, I would charge some “commission” too.
Due to it not being a traditional bank, once a credit worth 4,500 was
freezed. I did not have UPI and my friend did an UPI payment. It stuck
there for 5 months until suddenly, at age 15, it was credited after
hours of verifications and talks with customer care.

My opening balance at age 14 was around 1,500 rupees, but my closing
balance, at the end of age 15, was around 16,000 rupees. While I did
loose around 500 as bad debts to two of my friends, including EC from
C-1 who is described in Fanclub section of Leadership Autobiography. I
then stopped doing transactions for them. Overall, it was fun and
profitable!

A boy(SM) who was 2 year older than me, 16, but shorter, had discovered
that I often carried cash to get deposited from my friend. He once tried
to mug me near that place by blocking my way and an unsucessfull arm
bar. He was accompanied with another 16 year old boy who did not
interfere much. After 5 minutes of resistance, I managed to push him
down and run away. SM tried to grab my backpack to stop me from running,
but he ended up stumbling again after the strap tore away. I did not
give him any money, and he afterwards never dared to mess with me.

Below is a chat screenshot from one of my friend. Translation He: Hello,
Harshit. Me: Yeah. He: Russian one. Me: Lol, yes. He: Do you have money
in Paytm? 700? Me: Yes He: Okay I will send you a number, send it there.
Me: Okay, send.

Later in 2024, “The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ordered the payments
bank subsidiary of Paytm, to stop accepting fresh deposits in its
accounts or popular wallets from March.” Source:
Reuters.
But I had long ago withdrawn it, so it did not affect me.

Trading Equities Using Investopedia Simulator (15.5 – 16)

Even though it was a demo account, I played safe and only bought
securities which I would feel confident buying from my real money. I
also bought some cryptocurrencies including Dogecoin, Ethererum,
Bitcoin, but my main focus was on equities.

As of 2024-11-10, My abandoned account have 174 % profit, but it’s just
a demo account, so I can’t really withdraw it.

Starting Equity Trading Using My Father’s Account (16 – 18)

At the age of 16, I finally managed to convince my father to open a
demat account for me. Earlier he was using multiple excuses including
how he lost so much money, “what if step mother discovered this”, “focus
on studies”, “invest in gold”, and more. But when I showed him my demo
account and demonstrated my knowledge, he agreed. After extensive
research, I choose Zerodha as
my broker, because it was a discount broker, that charges less fees than
full-service ones. My father had initially opened an account on a
full-service broker, but after I explained him charges associated with
such brokers, he let me open account at Zerodha, using his documents.

Within six months, I managed to earn 10% profit by investing my
savings into low expense ratio ETfs and few individual stocks. For
reference, not all ETFs are Index Funds, which track an entire index as
whole. The ETFs that I invested in had cherry-picked holdings from a
specific index.

During this age, I also started learning about XMR(Monero).
Specifically, it’s algorithm and implementation. I experiminted with
it’s testnet network, mining etc. As screenshot below shows, I managed
to get collect 10 XMR(Testnet).

At age of 17, I started learning about various equity related strategies
through paper trading, backtracking, using a stock screener, refined
mine one, moved from ETFs to individual stocks, because I enjoyed
researching different sectors, companies, and also for higher returns.
Also reached around 16% profit.

Preaching Finance to Classmates, 17

At the age of 17, after lot of explanations, fearmongering by me, one of
obsessed classmate, from C-2C, created a demat account using his parents
documents, just 3 months before final exams. He took accountancy
homework very seriously, where I did not even care and was even
basically exempt from it by teacher, allowed to only do examples. He
wanted to pursue B. Com from Delhi University, one of most prestigious
for business courses. Despite having reservations, he wasn’t able to.
Which makes what you will read further to be even more absurd.

He initially choose Groww and created account with his father’s
document, but I suggested him to switch to Zerodha, due to low expenses,
and create account from someone with lower income tax slab rate, and he
did. I had also gave him a rough idea of good blue chip stocks to invest
in. He also took my advice, but ended up making a loss.

His first trade resulted in a loss. When he came to class the next day,
he told me that he had accidentally sold it and will again buy it today.
He then again did the same mistake.

The next day he came to class and offered to drop me back home, I
refused but he then said he wants to talk about stock market, so I kinda
agreed. In the mid way, he started sharing what had happened to him,
accusing Zerodha to be a scam company etc. But he couldn’t even tell how
much loss he made on each trade. He simply told me the difference
between his initial capital and current one, which he did using
calculator after in my presence.

Then I went through his accounts myself, in his phone, and quickly found
the error in the tradebook. While the tradebook is deep buried in
console, and UI isn’t that friendly, an investor ought to have knowledge
of platform before starting. As I suspected, he was doing intraday
trades using MSI instead of Cash and Carry(CNC). Due to which, he not
only paid higher charges, but also suffered from market volatility. The
first trade caused him a loss of around -500, the second he got slightly
lucky and ended with ony -192 loss. I calculated these by myself by
subtracting selling price from buying price, which may seem simple, but
there was no UI which showed outcome of each trade, and he himself was
confused by words like “LTP”, “average price”.

I then suggested him just to close his account. He said he will keep
account just to check stock prices, but wouldn’t trade. When I told him
about AMC, he got shocked that expense also exists and then thanked me,
asked me for account closure process. I directed him to Zerodha customer
care, which he had around 20 minutes talk with. I didn’t want to reveal
my home location to him, so I told him to drop me at a common
destination, and then I walked back home. Ultimately, even his offer to
drop me didn’t prove to be beneficial to me, as I had to walk
significant distance.

So in the end, he suffered a total loss around -1,000 including 200
account opening charges, which was all preventable.

His fault was that he ignored the perquisites, and didn’t do any
research himself. The signs were clear: beta value was high, RSI was
showing overbought and PE ratio was above 50. His first ever trade was
done using real money, which you should never. Always start with paper
trading. Despite being familar with financial ratios, balance sheet
anysis from education, and doing thoussnds of questions on them, he did
not even apply those concepts. He also didn’t ask for my phone number,
from me or anyone. All of our communication were in class. I could
potentially help him earlier if he had messaged me. Though members of
C-2A, biggest faction within class, congratulated me for “causing” his
loss.

Same classmate who is shown in screenshot above, requesting me to do 700
rupees micro transaction, asked my advice after investing in an IPO.
After I told him that the industry he invested in has almost total
monopoly, he sold those shares at a minor loss. My advice was provetd to
be true as the stock fell after just few months of IPO. I had gained
this knowledge by actually spending my time in a shop concerning such
industry. I was familiar with what customers demanded and what fear
mongering shopkeepers used.

Starting Equity With My Own Account (18 – Present)

From just a day next to my eighteenth’s birthday, I started preparing
for creating my demat account, because I knew that it would be a lengthy
process. I started by applying for pan card, which is necessary to
create a bank and equity account.

As soon as my Permanent Account Number(PAN) card got delivered to my
home, I went to bank with my father to get my account converted from a
joint minor account to personal savings account. It took around 2 weeks
for everything to get ready. After that, I created my own demat account
at Zerodha. Surprisingly, my account got activated within 48 hours but
now I had to transfer equities from my father’s account to my account.
It was again very lengthy process that involved creating accounts on
CDSL website, setting up beneficiary, verifying documents, but I again
managed to do it on my own. Sadly, this wasn’t the end.

After the securities got transferred to my account, I faced yet another
issue. The issue was that only number of shares were visible, but their
book value wasn’t visible.

After researching on internet, I found that it’s a common
thing.
Now I had to manually enter the book value, date of purchase, amount of
each share. I initially became a bit worried on how would I get that
this data, as the shares were transferred from my father’s account. I
went through bank statements, chat logs, screenshots and created a CSV
file of all the transactions I could recover. To ease up the process, I
wrote a simple Python script to automatically calculate average price of
stocks and append it to CSV. But this wasn’t enough. Not only the
dataset was incomplete, but it also had some small differences than book
value of shares which were caused by various charges including
brokerage, tax.

Fortunately, when browsing through my father’s demat account, I found a
way to export old transaction history as CSV. I ran a modified version
of my script and created a clean CSV file.

But still, around 65 shares still had discrepancies. The UI and docs
were extremely unhelpful too. I ended up sharing my CSV to customer
support and they fixed my issue within 4 days. Interestingly, they also
admitted that there were indeed issues in backend.

It took around 2 months in all this but after that I could enjoy the
fruit of freedom, my efforts. Soon, I also reached 25% in equity

Edit:1 Some “readers” from a technical analysis community have been
arguing me that I should have sold and rebought the shares, instead of
transfering them, as transfering is a long process. Well, If I had did
what that then I would have to pay additional tax, and also I would
loose that 20%. If I had sold them, then I would not be sitting on 25%
profit and would not be writing this article. Also they were telling me
that I would not have to pay tax, as my income is low, but I was trading
from my father account. If I had sold using his account, that would have
caused tax liability. I thought it would be obvious hence, I did not
clarify it. < /p>

Edit2: Within a month of writing this article, I was able to double my
capital. I did this with combination of taking advantage of “Largest Con
of Corporate history” by Adani, as reported by
Reuters
even though I heard this news after closing of market, different
strategies and willpower. I am not going to hold Adani stock for a long
time due to: extremely high PE; high equity to debt ratio; coal,
cronyism etc. They, the readers mentioned in first edit, used to say “A
dip*** kid came here to flex his 25% profit on 35K capital and how he
saved on taxes …” but I never cared much. If I had been arguing with
them, I would have never reached here. Below is my P/L as of 2024-12-18.
The small red is due to a stock is due to a single stock, but overall
it’s all green. I will just book profit and sell it ASAP, in fact I have
placed a sell order already.

Becoming Self Made Equity Lakhpati In Bear Market, 18

Lakhpati means someone who has more than 100k rupees. I used this word
instead of millionarie because the later implies USD. I have now changed
the title of this article to simply “1.10k+” to be more clear.

Despite the market conditions being bearish, Sensex down by 3,000
points, according to Times Of
India.
My profit % being down than earlier, 25, due to aggressive trading, I
managed to reach my goal. It is an extremely difficult thing to reach
this goal in bull run, but I did so that in Worst bear run since 29
years , as Reuters article linked below reports, and at age of 18,
just 4 days before my first semester exams.

Edit3: 2025-02-15. I am extremely happy to announce that I have become a
Self made, Equity Lakhpati in the bear market, by the age of 18, by
having investments worth 1,00,000 Rupees at market value.

But unfortunately, since today is Saturday, I can’t do the trade today,
but I have placed a limit order worth 9,000 which will get executed on
Monday. I already have 92,000 so even if it doesn’t become green that
time, I would still be Lakhpati. So basically nothing can stop me. I
will upload the screenshot on Tuesday, because I just can’t control my
laughter today and also after delivery so that people don’t say I did an
intraday trade.

Also it looks like my decision to not hold Adani was yet another right
one. Currently Adani is down again, and it’s due to coal as Times of
India
Reports.
If I kept holding it, I would have not become a Lakhpati this soon.

Edit 4: 2025-02-17, turns out my another decision was correct, my
premature celebration was not wrong. In the end, I had the last
laughter, but it was not my last laughter. Not only my limit order got
executed below the market price, but I am now sitting at 1% up in
positions. I can technically sell it and be profitable, but I am going
to wait for delivery. I have uploaded screenshot of positions on
Linkedin.

Edit 5: 2025-02-18. For those who like to keep a count, my yet another
decision was correct. The market value of my portfolio is above 1L, even
before opening of market, and below is a screenshot of my P/L as
promised.

Edit 6: 2025-02-20, Adani stock is down again by 4.5% due to bribery
charges by USA, as Times Of
India
reports. A bit of old news as I don’t consume news and I don’t have high
expectations, unlike what high, artificially infalted, PE ratio of
company says.

Edit 7: 2025-03-03 Despite not studying at all, focusing on stock
market, poor conditions, I was the first one in folllowing cases:to
complete all of my first semester exams; announce the results are
declared; discrepancies in them; help students in it. I completed all 5
exams, which were of 150 minutes, with M: 24.2, SD: 2.4 and SGPA of
7.6. See descriptive statistics, evidences in this
gist.
Also it looks like stock market is falling more with
Reuters
describing it as “Worst run in 29 years”, but I still achieved my goals
despite that.

Edit 8: (2025-03-08) Despite the continued bear trend, I was able to
take the trash out of my portfolio, free up capital. A limit sell order
I had earlier placed has been executed. I did lot of mental
calculations, even including transaction charges, managed my greed and
set a value that will leave me with a net profit. I used the money from
it, and some additional to invest in a good stock. Now even my
investment value is more than1 Lakh. I didn’t invest too much as I also
have to pay college fee too. If I had set GTT high, it wouldn’t be
executed and I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of current bear
market. Now I also have one less company to worry about, and now my
portfolio is above 1.10K.

Pen fighting is a turn based game played on a table. The goal is to
knock opponent’s pen without directly touching it. Only by using
strikes to own pen. We also modified it further like making it
multiplayer, introducing obstacles, custom pens, whether cap of pen
be considered part of pen or not.

Share your thoughts on Github
issue or
email me.

Written on: 2024-11-10. Last Updated on: 2025-06-01.

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