The reason that pain hurts is because it should.

Pain is nature’s way of telling us to get out of harm’s way. Like fever tells us that something’s not right inside of us and that we must take the necessary medication to avoid doing a greater harm to our body.

This is also true when it comes to investing in stock markets. When the market moves and I’m losing money, I know it hurts.

But more often than not, unlike in life, I would continue to bear that pain (keep holding my losing stocks) instead of taking the medication (cutting the losses) to avoid a greater harm in the future.

No one is right all the time and I don’t have to be.

But this wasn’t something I believed a few years back, till the time I took my first major loss in a leading textile stock.
[Read more…] about My First Stock Market Loss…and the Lesson I Learnt

The BSE-Sensex is down almost 1,000 points over the past 3 days alone. Newspapers have started shouting out – “India, tottering and sputtering”.

Some are calling this crash a “tragedy”, while there are others who are describing it as a “disaster” for investors.

And then, of course, there are many who are predicting that the future is going to get worse and that investors must stay on the sidelines till the dark clouds disperse.

Anyways, before we move further, here is a snapshot of the 4 major falls – the tragedies and disasters – the Sensex has seen over the past 15 years.

This first major drop came after the dot com boom bust in early 2000. The Sensex dropped 56% in a matter of 19 months. [Read more…] about Sometime You Can’t Help But Make Money from Stocks. Is That Time Now?

Here’s something light for you on a bright Saturday morning – 5 jokes that I read some years back and that have taught me some serious lessons on stock market investing. Enjoy!

• An analyst is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today! (I’ve been there, done that!) 🙂
  

• Q: Why did God create stock analysts?
  A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.

• There are primarily 3 different types of investors:
  1. Those who don’t know anything: approx. 10%
  2. Those who know a little: approx. 10%
  3. Those who don’t realize they don’t know anything: approx. 80%

• The market is weird. Every time one guy sells, another one buys, and they both think they’re smart.
  

• My broker and I are working on a retirement plan. Unfortunately, it’s his!

“You talked about the importance of taking small losses before they magnify into bigger losses,” a reader of The Safal Niveshak Post asked me yesterday. “But how do I know which stocks to sell to takes such losses? Is that so simple?”

“No, it isn’t,” I must say.

Knowing when to sell a stock or which stock to sell isn’t as easy a decision as knowing when to buy a stock.

In fact, most discussions on investing revolve only around when to buy a stock.

“Which stock should I buy?” is the first question that comes to your mind when you think about your investment.

But as we discussed yesterday, an equally important question is – “Which stock should I sell?”
[Read more…] about The Most Important Decision to Make After You Buy a Stock

A reader of The Safal Niveshak Post recently asked me about my background and experience, and about the story of my life.

I thought today is a good day to share that, given that my story started exactly 33 years ago. 🙂

However, being an analyst and investor, here is a different way I will tell you the story.

Hope you’ll be interested to read it because the most important takeaway from my story is something that I’ve reserved for the end of this post.

So here I go.
[Read more…] about The Story of My Life…and Yours