Techie loses parents’ hard-earned middle-class savings to trading after colleague shows him Zerodha, ends up ₹38 lakh in debt
A social media user has shared a cautionary tale about the dangers of uninformed stock trading, citing the example of a friend who lost ₹38 lakh to his trading addiction. Hemdharpan took to the social media platform X to talk about his friend who developed a trading addiction after a colleague introduced him to Zerodha.How a techie ended up ₹38 lakh in debt (Representative Image)The friend—a 35-year-old techie—kept putting money into the stock market despite suffering massive losses. In the course of a few months, he wiped out his parents’ hard-earned savings, took out personal loans under false pretext, and eventually had loan recovery agents knocking on his door.From stability to addictionHemdharpan described his friend as a 35-year-old with a stable career in IT and a salary of ₹2 lakh per month, along with ₹14 lakh in savings. He was married and had a child too.However, his world began collapsing around two years ago, when a colleague introduced him to stock trading platform Zerodha.“Today, he is down ₹38 lakhs, his salary is garnished debt recovery, and his wife is staying at her parents’ house,” Hemdharpan said about his friend.The X user said that his friend began dabbling in the stock market casually, inspired his colleague who made ₹12,000 through intraday trading.“A colleague showed him his Zerodha dashboard during lunch: ₹12,000 profit in 45 mins trading Nifty options,” Hemdharpan said on X.“Looked effortless. The colleague told him: it wasn’t required to hold stocks long-term. Just capture 10-15 points on intraday swings & he’s done.”The techie soon realised how addictive trading could be when he made ₹18,000 in two hours. “The dopamine rush was unreal. Suddenly, his daily 9-to-5 job felt like a slow waste of time,” he wrote.Losing money in stock market the second month, the “market showed its true face.” The techie lost ₹50,000 in minutes “because he refused to hit his stop-loss.”(Also read:
