The Hindu Business Line : He lost Rs 20 lakh in one day

Jasbir Sachdev has been a jobber for 10 years. Knowing he is in a "very risky business where you have to keep both your mind and body fit", he walks for an hour to reach his office every morning and walks back in the evening. "Right from 6 a.m. we have to make ourselves fit to sit before the screen and make sure we don't commit any mistakes because they cost money. It is very difficult to judge the market's movement and if I don't get the necessary physical exercise, I'll end up taking medicines for blood pressure," he says.

Very unhappy with the FM for introducing a transaction tax, he says that even the reduced rate is too steep. "There are days when I do a trade of even Rs 70 crore; but do you think I make a profit of more than Rs 70,000 because that is the amount I'll now have to pay as tax. On May 17, when the market crashed, thanks to statements from our politicians like `Bhar mei jaye market (to hell with the market)', I lost Rs 20 lakh in a single day," says Sachdev.

Many of his colleagues lost a similar amount of money and couldn't sleep for several days. The problem with the new tax, he adds, is that "the FM is not going to come and ask me if I made a profit or loss; he'll want his transaction tax. Does he realise that we jobbers are the life-line of the market? Does he think that by reducing it from 15 to 1.5 paise, he is doing us a favour? It is not as though we're rogues who don't pay taxes. We get paid through cheques after TDS, and it's not easy money that we make here. If you have one bad day, it takes four days to make up that loss."

Warning that the volume in the market will fall drastically once the Budget is passed and the new tax comes into effect, because the jobbers will have to drastically reduce the number of trades, he throws a challenge at the FM: "Let him come here for a day and make Rs 15,000 with a small turnover and I'll serve him for the rest of my life."

Sachdev says it was "part destiny, part friends" that brought him into jobbing. "But we always keep a positive attitude; even if we lose Rs 40,000, we come back the next day and try to recover the money."

He has tried to invest long term, but his experience has been "very bad. This jobber's business is safer compared to long-term investing, which does not always give good returns. Look at HLL, it's not given any returns in the last one or two years. Had I invested in it, I would have lost. I've not taken delivery of any share for four years. After losing money, I decided that this is the only way to make money in the market."

Picture by the author

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