F&O margin calculator - Zerodha Margin Calculator

I already posted this on indiainvestments but I'm going to post it here too because I'm not sure if my post is going to get approved by the mods there.
Every once in a while a discussion pops up on this sub about which is better, zerodha or upstox, and many of the replies are usually from investors or swing traders. As a daytrader who's used them both for almost an year, I just want to share my thoughts on this because it might be useful for someone looking this up in the future.
In my personal opinion, zerodha is, by far, the better choice. Not because zerodha is amazing, but because upstox is terrible. Here's why:

• Non-existent communication with its clients. Need to get some piece of information? Good luck with that. You can try calling the customer care and most of the time your call will go unanswered. Even if they do pick it up, their agents are very incompetent. They know only about the account-opening process and if you ask them anything else, they're clueless. They'll just give some scripted response and will be of no help. You can try asking on their live-chat. They'll literally make you wait for 20-40 minutes (not exaggerating) and then give you some copy-pasted reply which usually does not answer your question anyway even after all that waiting.
• Well if you're desperate enough you can try asking on their forum but the last time any developer or employee even bothered to respond was years ago. Now it's turned into a wasteland full of people posting random crap. Seriously, just visit that link once if you want to have a nice chuckle.
• Now coming to their web and app platforms. Their app is decent, no major issue there. Their web platform used to feel very sluggish compared to zerodha's which feels way more smooth & snappy and sometimes it would just completely freeze up and force you to close your browser from the task manager. I have a quite powerful gaming PC with 16gb ram and this was happening even when I had no programs open other than just the browser with only one tab.
• I mainly trade commodities and the commodity market is open until midnight. One day I noticed at around 5 in the evening that the charts just completely stopped moving, both on the app and web. I mean they just froze and stopped updating tick by tick. I complained to their customer care both on the phone and on twitter and I thought it was going to get fixed soon because surely they're going to take it seriously when something that big & important is broken, right? Well they didn't. I thought it would at least be fixed before the market opened the next day. Well it still wasn't. I think the devs were not even aware of the issue and the customer care just forgot about it as soon as they hung up the phone and didn't even bother to report it to anybody. I finally got fed up and messaged their co-founder about it on LinkedIn and it got fixed within one hour. May be he didn't even see my message and it was just a coincidence or may be it wasn't.
• They recently released a new version of their website which seems to be better than the old one. I used it a little and already noticed a major flaw which was making it impossible to update my orders. Honestly, it's an amateurish mistake involving form validation which makes me question the competency of their developers and if then even bothered to properly test the platform before releasing it. I reported the issue but I highly doubt they even saw my report yet.
• All of these are just front-end issues. Now coming to their back-end, one day it just stopped working for almost THREE HOURS straight. Nobody was able to login, both on the app and web of course, and those who were already logged in were not able to place orders, see their positions or do anything at all. I thought may be it was just me but I went on twitter and there was a tsunami of users complaining. Well after such a big fuck-up surely they're going to say something about it right? May be apologize or release a statement about what went wrong or something? Nope, they just remained completely silent like it never even happened. Not even a single post or reply on twitter even to this day. Also this is not a one-time issue. Their back-end stops working quite frequently but it's usually for a few minutes only and not for three hours which is still bad if you're a daytrader. Zerodha has such fuck-ups too sometimes but they usually at least address it instead of pretending like it didn't even happen.
• Next, they just do whatever the fuck they want without even informing the clients its going to severely affect. I was using their API (which I was paying a monthly subscription fee for btw) for many months and one day it just stopped working. Then I found out that they had just suddenly decided to STOP their api services INDEFINITELY for almost all of their users with ZERO prior notice. Obviously this is a huge problem especially for those who do algo trading but I guess upstox thought it wasn't such a big deal.
• I mainly trade crude oil and one day during the whole corona virus fiasco I wasn't able to place any orders as it was saying I didn't have sufficient money in my account to place an order. I was very confused because I was able to trade without any problem on the previous day and now it's saying insufficient funds even though not much has changed since yesterday? I asked their customer care (it took me almost an hour to get a response from them btw) and they were clueless. They were just sending me a copy-pasted response as usual. I kept digging and found out after a lot of searching that they had decided to suddenly double the margin requirements overnight and even their customer care wasn't aware of it.
• Are you seeing a pattern here? Lack of communication. They won't inform you about anything and won't respond to you even if you try to reach out to them. This was the most frustrating part of my experience with them.

This post ended up becoming quite longer than I expected but hopefully it will warn new users to stay away upstox unless they get their shit together but I highly doubt it's ever going to happen. Zerodha has it's flaws too but it's quite decent in my opinion and definitely the best discount broker in India. At least their customer care isn't stupid and can answer some technical questions instead of knowing literally nothing except the account-opening process.

Hello autists.
I thought I shall share some tips on why I trade futures instead of options. If it is not your cup of tea, feel free to ignore this. After all, everybody's risk appetite is different. Tailor it to your Personal Risk Tolerance.
Note: I am not a financial advisor. These are my ideas alone and anyone looking to go through with this must consult their advisor.
Before i get started, I should warn newbies that it is not advisable to start off with futures. I have been doing this for 2 years now, starting off with 2L and saved up my salary every month to put it in my account. I realized that Mutual Funds were managed by tards and I do not want to enjoy a yatch when i am 60. But before all this, I started off with conventional stocks and slowly dipped my feet into futures.
Pre-requisites: 1. Some understanding of your emotional levels (do you immediately square off your position if things are not looking good, or do you wait for it to play out? ) 2. Do you have a trade setup you trust? Do you keep a log of how it performs and how it does in a bull or bear market? 3. Is the money in your trading account something you can afford to lose? If not, save up more and come back.
Futures: I shall not get into the details of what futures are, and why it was started in the commodity business. Basically, for brevity, the equity futures go by lot size. For example, Reliance has a lot size of 500. If reliance is trading at 1000, the margin given by zerodha is Rs. 2,00,000 approx to hold these shares overnight. For intraday, you need a margin of ~1Lakh.
Imagine, if you wanted to buy the same amount of shares you would need an account size of Rs. 5L. Now, with great power comes great responsibility. Lets say, there is a huge oil fight and oil prices drop. The price of reliance drops 20% to 800. If you had bought the shares, your account size also drops 20% to 4L. But if you had bought futures, your account size of 2Lakhs now loses 1Lakh, which is a 50% loss. The plus side is, you can also make the same if you are right.
Now why do i trade futures instead of options:
Lets say my account size is 2.5 Lakhs, and I want to buy reliance and hold it overnight. 1. 2 lakhs is taken up for my margin, and i have a balance of 50k. If the next day, reliance goes up by Rs.20. I would have made a profit of Rs. 10000 (500x20). Now if i by the end of the night, my account size becomes 2.6Lakhs. That is i can use the full 2.6L margin now.
This is very important for me. These profits are already realized in your account. And this is called Mark to Market (MTM). Note: in options, the profits you make are unrealized. They are sitting in your account until you square it off.

1. If i were to buy the same amount in shares (for 2 lakhs). The next day, i can only trade with 50k in my account. The 2 lakhs do not show up until i square off. But when i am holding futures, and the next trading day starts, I convert my overnight positions to intraday, thus saving up 50% of the margin. When things dont go my way, I immediately square off and use the full margin for my next trade.
   
2. If you are buying options, you need to be right about the direction of price movement AND the time it would get there (also called as delta and theta). Implied volatility also comes into play, meaning, when a herd of people are betting the same, you will still lose if you are with the herd. In futures, you only have to be right about the direction.
   
3. You ever get a thrill when the VIX is sky high? with so much volatility you profits keep shooting up and your losses are devastating at the same time? Do you enjoy that feeling? Then fuck it, you have a gambling addiction. But, thats how i feel like trading future. Even in a low volatility environment my losses can wipe away 10% of my account in a single trade. Know yourself first.
   

Hope this helped a few autists.
Good luck trading.
Current positions: https://imgur.com/a/arBO6RT
Tldr: if you can't read this, stick to yoloing options

Zerodha margin calculator helps you to calculate the margin money needed to execute trades. Now you can also know Zerodha future margin for all buying or selling exchanges like futures & options, equity futures, commodity, and more within a second.

Sebi extends timing for trading in equity derivatives till 11:55 pm

Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has allowed stock exchanges to extend timing of equity derivatives trading till 11:55 pm with effect from October 1, 2018.
The move is aimed to enable integration of trading of various segments of securities market at the level of exchanges, Sebi said. Trading in equity derivatives will take place from 9:00 am to 11:55 pm, similar to the trading hours for commodity derivatives segment which are presently fixed between 10:00 am and 11:55 pm starting October.

Sebi announces additional risk management measures for derivatives segment

These measures pertain to margin collection requirement and computation of liquid net worth for the equity derivatives segment. The provisions of the circular will be effective from June 1.
With regards to client's margin collection requirement in the equity derivatives segment, SEBI said that clearing members or trading members should include initial margin, exposure margin or extreme loss margin, calendar spread margin and mark to market settlements. Client margins are required to be compulsorily collected and reported to exchange or clearing corporation.
This is likely to have a negative impact on option writers and traditional brokers. The initial margin required for the positions is computed using a software called SPAN (Standard Portfolio Analysis of Risk). SPAN margin covers almost of the risk for of the day. Exposure margin is the margin charged over and above the SPAN margin which is the discretion of the broker. Failure to have requisite SPAN margin in the account can result in penalty being levied by the exchanges.
“These changes will impact the brokers who collect minimum margins for F&O trading especially option writers” said Nitin Kamath, founder and CEO, Zerodha. “Now brokers will have to collect span margin, exposure margin and MTM loses upfront, while the penalty on margin shortages is huge”.