Mechanism library
How the market machinery works
Permanent articles, reviewed like code. No recommendations, no predictions — each one answers a single question, and each one carries an interactive figure so the numbers sit in the text, not in a sidebar from another decade.
Today's computed notes
Session notes generated from filings, candles and exchange events.
Lead
The SEBI algo framework, in plain words
What counts as algorithmic trading, who the principal and the agent are, and why registration exists at all.
This article carries an interactive figure — a table, meter, or slider — in the text itself.
- What an Algo-ID is, and why your order carries oneThe exchange-issued identifier every algorithmic order carries — where it comes from, what it records, and what happens to an order without one.
- What you actually pay on every tradeThe full list: STT, exchange charges, SEBI fees, GST, stamp duty, brokerage, and the slippage nobody invoices.
- What "net of cost" means, and what it excludesWhy every figure on this platform subtracts STT, brokerage and slippage — and the two things even a net number cannot show.
- Order types, and what each one commits you toMarket, limit, stop-loss, stop-limit, and the bracket and cover variants — what each one means at the exchange, and what each one cannot protect you from.
- Why orders get rejectedPrice bands, margins, lot sizes, quantity freezes, trade-to-trade segments — the mechanical reasons an order never reaches the market.
- What a paper-trading period is forWhat paper trading can honestly show, what it cannot, and why the period before any live order exists at all.
- Margin, and what leverage actually doesHow margin works, what peak-margin penalties are, and the one arithmetic fact about leverage that matters more than any opinion about it.
- How an order actually reaches the exchangeThe path from the moment you send an order to the moment it is filled: validation, tagging, routing, matching, and the confirmation that comes back.
- How settlement worksWhat happens between a filled trade and the money and shares actually changing hands — the clearing mechanism behind every trade.
- Price bands and circuit filtersWhy a stock stops trading for the day, what the band actually limits, and what happens when the band itself changes.
- What splits, bonuses and dividends do to a priceThe mechanical effect of each corporate action on the share price — and why charts get adjusted for them.