Women Investing In Equity Markets - LADIES OF THE TICKER

Despite challenges of culture and access to capital, female participation in trading and investing is increasing, though cautiously

- DIVYA J SHEKHAR

Mahek Shah, 23

Started trading/investing in: 2016

Initial Corpus: ₹20,000

Best trade/investment: Tanla Platforms— invested ₹240,000 in November 2020, which appreciated 116% in 25 days; sold

Advice to women investors: “Young women should consider financial markets as a career option. There are great resources available, you can start small, and the sky is the limit.”

Do you even know what volumes mean in the stock market?” Mahek Shah was asked this question in 2017. She had just started trading a year earlier, as a 19-year-old, and was asked this question by a man who found it difficult to take her, or women in general, seriously when it came to trading on Dalal Street. But Shah let her work speak for itself.

Intrigued by the stock market, Shah first tried her hand at intraday trading in 2016 while she was still in college, armed with savings of ₹20,000. She was fascinated by the thrill of it all: The dynamic price movements right in front of her eyes, the constant tracking and monitoring of stocks, the determination to understand technical terms, and the rush of earning good profits when she made the right decisions. Shah gradually started trading with ₹1 lakh or ₹2 lakh, and the highest profit she has made in a day’s trade went as high as ₹77,000. She started day trading full-time after graduating in 2018, her eyes glued to her laptop screen between 9 am and 4 pm, five days a week.