A practice ground for intraday NSE traders
A marker on a chart is not an options position.
Direction is the only thing a chart has an opinion about, and it is the smallest of the forces on your position. Time takes premium out of it while the index does nothing. Volatility takes more. Margin decides whether you could hold it at all, and charges come off both ends. Your P&L is the sum of all five — and four of them leave no mark on the candle.
thepapertrade prices every one of them, against live NSE ticks, with ₹1,00,000 of practice capital and none of it real. NSE cash and index options, intraday, flat by 15:20 — the day traded exactly the way you trade it.
And it keeps score. A win streak that one bad trade ends, a record that accumulates under your own handle, a card worth posting after a good week, and credits you earn by bringing someone in. Practice with nothing riding on it is just clicking.
Practice only — no real money Live NSE prices Everything squares off at 15:20 IST
Expiry day · one session · nothing held overnight
What the chart says
NIFTY 50 · 5m+0.01%
24,500.00 → 24,502.00
A flat day. On a chart this is the definition of nothing happening, and there is no marker you could draw that would say otherwise.
What you were holding
NIFTY 24500 CE · 1 lot−25.72%
₹128.40 → ₹96.20 · −₹2,476.70 net
Gross −₹2,415.00, and ₹61.70 of charges on top. A quarter of the position, gone to a day the index spent standing still.
Illustrative prices, real arithmetic — the charges are computed by the same code that would charge you. Watch an index and one of its contracts together and the two change percentages sit side by side in your watchlist, which is the whole lesson in one glance.
Charges are the product
Every P&L screenshot on the internet is gross.
Ours are not. Brokerage, STT, exchange transaction charges, SEBI turnover fees, stamp duty and GST are computed per leg, on that leg's own turnover, and taken out before any statistic is calculated.
Net, not gross
A ₹15 gross win that cost ₹40 in charges was a ₹25 loss, and it is counted as one. Win rate, profit factor, expectancy, drawdown, the equity curve — all of it is computed after charges. A win rate that counts that trade as a win is not a statistic.
Brokerage is per order, not per trade
An order cannot exceed the exchange's freeze quantity for its underlying. 990 BANKNIFTY units against a freeze of 600 reach the market as two orders, and the contract note carries two ₹20 lines — ₹40 a leg, ₹80 the round trip. GST moves with it, because brokerage is in its base. The percentage charges do not multiply; only brokerage does.
Short-option margin is not the premium
It is a percentage of the underlying's notional. Selling one NIFTY lot collects ₹9,630 of premium and blocks ₹2,20,500 of margin — so on a ₹1,00,000 account you cannot sell it at all, which is exactly the thing a simulator that sizes off premium never tells you. With no live underlying price it refuses to size the order rather than guess.
The loop
It grades the process, not the luck.
Outcome is partly luck, and rewarding luck teaches luck. What the desk keeps is the record of how you traded — the reason you gave before the fill, the limits you set for yourself, and whether you stayed inside them.
Write the reason down before the fill
Every position carries an entry reason and an exit note. A trade you cannot explain in a sentence beforehand is the finding, not the form field.
Set the limit while you are calm
A daily budget and a daily loss limit, enforced by the desk rather than by your own restraint at 14:45. Both are yours to set, and both gate opening a position — a risk limit never stands between you and an exit.
Statistics that describe a method
Expectancy per trade, profit factor, average holding time, max drawdown, and the equity curve — all on net P&L. A win rate on its own tells you almost nothing; expectancy tells you whether the method pays.
Every day ends flat, so every day is a clean read
The 15:20 square-off means there is no carried position to argue about. The day's number is the day's number — no mark-to-market, no "it will come back tomorrow".
Something riding on it
A simulator you cannot lose anything in is one you cannot learn anything in.
The money is fake. That is the point, and it is also the problem: a balance with no consequence attached gets treated like one. So the account is not the only thing you are playing for — the record is, and unlike the balance the record does not reset.
A streak that one bad trade ends
Current streak and best streak, on net P&L, sitting next to your equity curve. Nothing nags you to protect it — the number is simply there, and the day you break it you will know exactly which trade did it.
A handle, and a card worth posting
Claim /u/yourhandle and it becomes a page you can point at — win rate, profit factor, expectancy, the curve. One tap renders a share card as an image, drawn from the same numbers, ready for the group everyone posts their screenshots into.
Bring someone in, both of you get a credit
Your handle is your referral link. When someone who signed up through it has closed ten trades, a refill credit worth up to ₹10,000 vests for each of you. Ten trades, not ten signups — twenty fake accounts would cost you twenty real trading sessions.
A credit only tops a fallen balance back up to ₹1,00,000 — never past it, never while a position is open, and at most four in a month. Winning does not earn you a bigger gun; it earns you a better number next to your name.
What it will not do
There is nothing here that money moves you past.
- No "you're behind — trade now". No push notifications during market hours.
- No prompt that appears after a loss. No badge for trading more rather than better.
- No topping up a winning account. A refill raises a fallen balance back to ₹1,00,000 and never past it, requires you to have no open positions, and is capped per month.
- No pay-to-win, structurally. A refill counts as capital, so it lowers your percentage return rather than inflating it.
Seasons
In build — not live yetA leaderboard you cannot win with one lucky trade.
Ranking on raw percentage return is the obvious thing to build and the wrong thing to build. Raw return is won every single week by whoever bet the whole account on one out-of-the-money weekly and got lucky — so the top of the board becomes a public advertisement for the worst habit in Indian retail options, shown to exactly the people most likely to copy it.
So a season will score a risk-adjusted composite. Return, weighted by how consistent it was, divided by the drawdown it cost you:
season_score = net_return_pct
× consistency green days ÷ days traded
÷ (1 + max_drawdown_pct)
qualify: at least 10 closed trades in the season
tiebreak: profit factor- A single all-in bet scores badly even when it wins — the drawdown it took sits in the denominator, and one trade cannot clear the qualifying count.
- Return divides by capital, not by balance. Balance is capital plus result, which flatters a loser and penalises a winner. A purchased top-up counts as capital, so it lowers your score instead of raising it.
- Seasons reset, weekly. A permanent all-time board is dead to anyone who joins in month three, and a weekly cadence matches the expiry rhythm the whole app is built around.
- Prizes are non-cash. Merch, badges, profile flair, refill credits. Never cash or a cash equivalent — that is what removes most of the incentive to farm it.
None of this is live yet, and it is deliberately last. A scoreboard built before the measurement underneath it is trustworthy just teaches gambling with extra steps, so the order is measurement, then progression, then competition. Everything else described on this page is built and running today.
Your record is yours
Private until you say so. Twice.
Every profile is created private. Publishing it is one decision. Showing the rupee amounts is a second, separate one — a win rate is a claim about skill and a rupee figure is a claim about wealth, and one checkbox for both is not consent to the second.
Your email address never appears on a public page, and the strikes you trade are never published — performance rolls up by underlying, not by contract.
Steady Ed
@steady_ed
+18.4%
- Trades
- 142
- Win rate
- 58%
- Best streak
- 9
net, after charges · thepapertrade.com
Questions
Before you sign up.
Is any real money involved?
No, at any point. Prices are live, fills are simulated, and the money is not. You cannot deposit, you cannot withdraw, and nothing you do here reaches a real market. It is a practice desk — the point is to find out what a strategy costs before it costs you anything.
Does it cover NIFTY and BANKNIFTY options?
Yes. Index options on NIFTY, BANKNIFTY and FINNIFTY — weekly and monthly expiries — alongside NSE cash equities. One click adds the nearest weekly at-the-money call or put to your watchlist.
Are brokerage and taxes included in the P&L?
Yes, per leg: brokerage, STT, exchange transaction charges, SEBI turnover fees, stamp duty and 18% GST. The round-trip estimate is shown before you place. Every statistic — win rate, profit factor, expectancy, drawdown — is computed on net P&L, so a ₹15 gross win that cost ₹40 in charges is counted as the ₹25 loss it was.
The index went nowhere and my option still lost money. Why?
Because direction is only one of the things moving your premium. Time is another: there is less session left for the trade to be right in, and that comes out of the price whether or not the index moves. Expected volatility is a third — when the market stops expecting movement, premium falls with the index perfectly still. Neither leaves a mark on the index's candle, which is why practising on a chart teaches the wrong number.
Do you show greeks or implied volatility?
No, and not by omission. There is no options pricing model in this app at all. Your position is marked against the contract's own last traded price on the exchange, so time decay and volatility reach you inside that price exactly as they reach everyone else trading it. A greeks screen is a model of the thing; this is the thing.
Why is the margin so large when I sell an option?
Because short-option margin is a percentage of the underlying's notional, not of the premium. A ₹40 premium against a ₹24,500 index are three orders of magnitude apart, and sizing off the premium is how a simulator lets you sell a position you could never have carried. With no live underlying price it refuses to size the order rather than guess.
Why did one trade get charged brokerage twice?
Because an order cannot exceed the exchange's freeze quantity for its underlying — 600 for BANKNIFTY, 1800 for NIFTY. 990 BANKNIFTY units reach the market as two orders, and the contract note carries two ₹20 lines: ₹40 a leg, ₹80 a round trip. Brokerage is per order. The percentage charges are not.
Can I hold a position overnight?
No. Everything squares off at 15:20 IST. That is why there is no overnight margin and no mark-to-market carry to reason about.
How much capital do I start with?
₹1,00,000, credited to your ledger at registration. You are never asked how much money you have.
Can I buy my way to more capital?
No. A refill tops a fallen balance back up to ₹1,00,000 and never past it, requires you to have no open positions, and is capped per month. It also counts as capital, so it lowers your percentage return rather than inflating it. There is nothing here that money moves you up.
Is there a leaderboard?
Yes — monthly and all-time — and neither ranks on raw percentage return. Raw return is won every single week by whoever bet the whole account on one out-of-the-money weekly and got lucky, which makes the top of a board an advertisement for the worst habit in Indian retail options. The score starts from your return on the capital put in, then reduces it — never raises it — for inconsistency, drawdown, a poor payoff ratio, overtrading, charges, and micro-wins that cleared less than twice their own costs. Ten closed trades over five separate days qualify you. Win rate is not scored at all, because scoring it is what makes it worth farming. Prizes are non-cash.
I joined months after everyone else. Can I still get to the top?
Yes. The monthly board resets on the 1st, so your first month competes on identical terms with someone who has been here a year. The all-time board is slower by design — it drops your best month so no single month can carry a record, and reaches full weight after six qualifying months counted from your own first one, not from launch. Nobody accumulates an unreachable lead just by having been early.
If the money is fake, what am I actually playing for?
Your record. The balance resets; the record does not. Win rate, profit factor, expectancy, max drawdown, current and best streak and your equity curve all accumulate, and you can publish them under your own handle and share a card drawn from the same numbers. Seasons are coming on top of that. A simulator with nothing riding on it gets traded like one, which is the fastest way to learn habits that cost money later.
How does the referral work?
Your handle is your link — anyone arriving with ?ref=yourhandle is attributed to you. Once they have closed ten trades, a refill credit worth up to ₹10,000 vests for each of you. Ten trades and not ten signups, on purpose: twenty fake accounts would cost twenty real trading sessions. A credit only tops a fallen balance back up to ₹1,00,000 and never past it.
Is my performance public?
Only if you say so, twice. Every profile is private when created. Publishing it is one decision; showing the rupee amounts is a second, separate one — a win rate is a claim about skill and a rupee figure is a claim about wealth. Your email address never appears on a public page.