From 5 lakh to 1.30 crore: Trial and error, discipline and boredom — Investor shares how portfolio grew over 7 years

An investor has posted his investment journey on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), claiming that he grew his portfolio from ₹5 lakh to ₹1.30 crore over a period of seven years.

Identified only as “R”, with the handle @AlphaWizarDD on X, the investor said his investing journey began in 2018-19, with ₹5 lakh. He called himself, self-learned using books, YouTube, webinars, articles, adding, “no shortcuts”.

At time of writing the post was viral with more than 59,000 views. Livemint could not independently verify the investor's claims.

“From 5 lakh to 1.30 crore”: Investor shares how…

• According to R, he began the first year by “copying stock tips from the “20-20 stocks” recommendations and shorting them on opening. Made some money, brokerage ate most of it”.
• He then moved into futures and options (F&O) “when very few traders were in this space. Mostly I have done option buying”.

Notably, F&O are derivative contracts that let traders take positions on future price movements of assets such as stocks, indices, commodities, or currencies to hedge risk or trade market trends, according to Angel One. It is best to consult an expert before making any investments.

• He added that a finfluencer video on YouTube “changed my mindset — from buyer to seller of options”.
• He added that to fund his investment in options, he took a loan which failed, saying, “Selling options needs bigger capital. Took a ₹10 lakh loan from a friend. Failed. Repaid the loan anyway”.
• His way to success started with systematic backtesting, R said. He began on StockMock — “testing time-based short straddles, followed the rules with strict discipline. This time it worked. closed 2020 with 86% return followed by 83% return in 2021.” He also won Zerodha's 60-day challenge — 17 in a row, during this period, his post added.

According to a Binance article, backtesting means applying a trading strategy to historical market data to see how it would have performed, using technical analysis tools and clear entry and exit rules.

‘Require discipline and boredom’

The investor said that from his experience, “Successful trading requires discipline and boredom.” He added that investors need to “resist temptation to trade” and recommended reading about investing, adding that books such as Joel Greenblatt's ‘The Little Book That Beats the Market’ opened him up to systematic investing.

“That idea has been backtested across markets by multiple studies, not just India. Used it to build my own systematic investing approach to select stocks for investing. Whenever I make a profit from F&O, I filter stocks through my system and invest that profit in equities,” he added.

R said that in the past two years, returns have been muted, “because Nifty itself gave little”, but his backtested system returned ~50% CAGR. “Over 7 years, my actual CAGR is close to 48%. Two engines now — systematic trading + systematic investing. Combined target: 50% CAGR,” he added.

In another post on the site, R said that he started 2025-26 with ₹1 crore capital — of which ₹83 lakh was invested in small caps and later increased this to ₹97 lakh. “To manage risk in portfolio, I implemented a hedging strategy,” he added.

Disclaimer: This story is for educational purposes only. The views and recommendations made above are those of individual, analysts or broking companies, and not of Mint. We advise investors to check with certified experts before making any investment decisions.