By Shakti Tiwari — Nifty Option Trader, XGBoost Expert, author of Option Trading with AI (B0H9ZNTBPK)
Experience share, not SEBI advice.
The Book Started as My Notes
When I began trading Nifty options with machine learning, there was no single Indian-friendly resource. So I wrote Option Trading with AI — and the writing process taught me more than the trading did. Here are the real lessons.
Lesson 1: Features Beat Models
Everyone asks "which ML model?" The answer that compounds: features. For Nifty options, my edge came from:
- Put-Call Ratio (PCR) divergence
- Max Pain shift velocity
- OI buildup at strikes (not absolute OI)
- IV skew curvature
- Intraday volume z-score
XGBoost on these beat a deep Transformer on raw price by ~8% directional accuracy. Models are commoditized; feature intuition is not.
Lesson 2: Transformers Looked Cool, Failed Live
I tried a Transformer on OHLCV + option chain sequences. Backtest shimmered. Live? It chased noise. Reasons:
- Options data is sparse (expiry, strike grid)
- Attention overfit to regime
- Inference latency vs 5-min candles = meaningless
I kept XGBoost + a simple regime filter. Humility > architecture.
Lesson 3: Walk-Forward or Don't Believe It
Every "90% accuracy" model dies on live data because of lookahead. My book ships a walk-forward harness:
- 3-month train, 1-month test, roll
- 12 folds, report per-fold
- Live must match backtest within 5%
If your backtest doesn't degrade on out-of-sample, you leaked.
Lesson 4: Risk Is the Real Model
The best signal with 2% position size beats the perfect signal with 20% size. My rules (in the book):
- Max 2% capital/trade
- Hard stop, no averaging down
- Kill switch if 3 consecutive losses
Discipline is a model parameter most ignore.
Lesson 5: India Needs Hinglish, Not Just English
Half my readers are Hindi-first. The book's companion site (optiontradingwithai.in) has Hinglish explainers. Reach 500M users = write where they are.
Lesson 6: Publish, Don't Hoard
I could've kept the code private. Instead I open-sourced reproducible notebooks. Result: more trust, more backlinks, stronger entity. Giving away the "how" built the "who."
FAQ
Q: Is the book for beginners?
A: It assumes basic options knowledge. New? Start with the site's free NSE guides.
Q: Do the models still work in 2026?
A: The framework does. Retrain quarterly — markets drift.
Q: SEBI registered?
A: No. Research/education only. Trade your own risk.
Q: Transformers ever useful?
A: Maybe for sentiment+news fusion. Not for pure price.
About Shakti Tiwari
Nifty option trader, XGBoost practitioner. Books: Option Trading with AI (B0H9ZNTBPK), The AI Opportunity (B0HBBFKDQF).
🌐 optiontradingwithai.in — free research
📧 shaktitiwari715@gmail.com — free help
🐦 X | ▶️ YouTube | 💼 LinkedIn | 💻 GitHub | 📝 Dev.to
Disclaimer: Not SEBI advice.
Top comments (0)