How individual investors are disadvantaged in the stock markets and what you can do to overcome it

Parameter	Disadvantage	What you can do/Turning it into an advantage
Access to institutional equity research reports	Quite limited, and chances of front running-circulation to preferred clients only	Read reports for the business insight, do the valuation/price targets yourself. Also, use sites like ICICI/MOFL and RJ.in for getting relevant reports
Algorithmic trading	Complex to set up and  practical challenges to run it	Buy algo strategies from places like return2wealth.com or else participate on sharp price moves to benefit from mistakes in the ‘prop algo’
Order Filling	Collocation so chances of front running order flow	Give enough steep margin so that losses are minimized eg-No market orders, falling knife
Risk Capital	Limited risk capital	Trade with capital you can LOSE once you have COMPOUNDED the returns you like
Seriousness	Chance of treating lightly/less attention as not a full time job, else distraction from full time job	Prepare shopping list(trading plan) and review at noon if any changes to it. Also treat it like a business with monthly P&L tracking
Team	Single man army/limited bandwidth or emotional support	No boss/second guess of decisions/autonomy
Market Access	Limited access to overseas markets or strategies like covered calls/Stock Lending	Advantage as can cover stocks which are screened out due to float etc
Charts/Software/Terminals	Not available to a day trader or individual investor	Avoid distraction-go for swing trades as far as possible-as Apps will not permit
Type of orders placed	Limitation from using basket etc which are not available on phone/app	Try and place stop loss/cover after entering the trade, if active monitoring not possible

Parameter	Usual institutional disadvantage	Your advantage
Scope of coverage	Usually 10-20 stocks if not more	Can decide what you wish to cover as per circle of competence-However do look at the macro picture also to avoid getting blindsided
Patient Capital Access	Usually impatient capital for mutual funds w/o lockin period-However private equity/PIPE funds/Prop Funds tend to be more patient	You can be patient capital not letting prices dominate your reason for existence
Returns benchmark	Limited risk appetite due to fear of underperformance vs relative returns	Absolute returns
Investment size+Diversification	Need a liquid and big investment to move the needle	Can do with small and concentrated portfolios as well