12 June 2015
A speculative loss is a loss that arises from a speculative transaction. A speculative transaction is one which is settled otherwise than by actual delivery. For example, a person buys 100 shares of X Ltd. in the morning & sells them on the same day in the afternoon then he does not have to take delivery of the shares he purchased and give delivery of the shares he sold because both transaction happen on the same day and will be settled against each other. He will get the profit or suffer loss arising from the difference between the buying and selling price. Such profit/loss is called speculative profit/loss. Any other profit/loss is non-speculative. However, it has been specifically provided in the Income Tax Act that derivative transactions will be treated as non-speculative even though they are settled without actual delivery.
17 June 2015
in addition to what Sunil said, you also need to include obligation trades in speculative transactions. In short any transaction which doesn't reflect in your DP statement will be considered as speculative trading in stock markets