Safal Niveshak

Wit. Wisdom. Value Investing.

Investing in Stock Markets? Take Care of Your Most Precious Resource

One of the three resources – apart from your brain and willingness – you need to become a successful investor yourself is – Time.

Time is precious…even more precious than money, simply because you cannot save it.

You cannot set aside time for future use as you can money, food, fuel, or a number of other things.

Any attempt to save time by not using it is futile. What happens if you sleep eight hours and try to save the rest of the day by doing nothing? At the end of the day, the unused hours are gone forever.
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Look Mama, Who Caused Our Financial Crisis!


The equation is simple.

Single Education (MBA/Engineering) = Ego (I can do nothing wrong).

Double education (MBA + Engineering) = Super Ego (I’m doing everything right).

Greed = I, me, myself!

Double education + Greed = I’m doing everything right…for myself!

If you haven’t already, sign up for our daily e-letter, The Safal Niveshak Post, and claim a Free copy of our Special Report – “10 Big Lies You’ve Been Told About Investing” – to be released on 20th August 2011. The Safal Niveshak Post covers deep insights on investing to help you navigate the stock markets with confidence. It’s free, and I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of it. Click here to sign up.

Are You an Investor or a Speculator?

What separates an investor from a speculator?

Of course they look different. While an investor is generally calm and composed, a speculator is mostly agitated!

Anyways, the serious answer is – It’s not what they choose to buy but how they choose it.

At one price, any stock could be a speculation; at another (lower) price, it can become an investment.

And in the hands of different people, the same stock – even at the same price – could be either a speculation or an investment. It all depends on how they understood it and how honestly they assessed their own limitations.
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Wednesday Morning Reads

A few interesting items for your reading pleasure:

  • Oh-ho! ‘India least favoured equity market in emerging economies’ (The Economic Times)
  • Just do it! Cohan Says Close Wall Street Casino Cut Pay In Half (The Big Picture)
  • Nice read. Authenticity (The Big Picture )
  • Wow! Gold’s climb is perfectly rational (CNN Money)
  • Hmm. The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the Bottom (The Telegraph)
  • ’Fine’ art of corruption. DLF fined Rs 630 cr for unfair practices, realty reels under shocks (The Economic Times)
  • Nice read. Breaking and entering (Mint)
  • Ouch! Jim Rogers: Higher food prices will spark riots soon (Moneynews)

What are you reading?

How to Invest In Stocks When Fear Runs High

Stock markets have received heavy pounding over the past few weeks as escalating fears over the global economic outlook is pushing investors into safer assets like gold.

The stampede out of equities has spared few sectors or individual stocks and has wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars of market value across the world, including India.

This isn’t any banking or stock market crisis that we are facing. Neither it is anymore a government crisis.

Instead, what we are facing now is a ‘crisis of confidence’.
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Tuesday Morning Reads

Here’s what I’m reading this Tuesday morning that might interest you:

  • Is this ‘news’? Sebi probe shows rise in dirty money in stock market (The Economic Times)
  • Old tricks! The Mutual Fund Industry Is A Huge Scam That Costs Investors Billions Of Dollars A Year (Business Insider)
  • Contrarian call. The case against gold (Moneynews)
  • Stocks on sale? Buffett Made Biggest Bets on Stocks This Year (Bloomberg)
  • Hmm. Wall Street’s new lie to Main Street – Asset Allocation (Blog Maverick)
  • Nice read. Ending the Moral Rot on Wall Street, Part 2 (Bloomberg)
  • Wise man speaks. Stop Coddling the Super-Rich: Warren Buffett (The New York Times)
  • Hmm. The cost of West’s mistakes (Mint)

What are you reading?

Monday Morning Reads

A very Happy Independence Day to the Indian readers of Safal Niveshak!

Here are a few interesting items for your reading pleasure:

What are you reading?

Sign up for our daily e-letter, The Safal Niveshak Post, and claim a Free copy of our Special Report – “10 Big Lies You’ve Been Told About Investing” – to be released on 20th August 2011. The Safal Niveshak Post covers deep insights on investing to help you navigate the stock markets with confidence. It’s free, and I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of it. Click here to sign up.

Is This Market Going Up or Down?

After last week’s crash landing, this week wasn’t any better for stock markets around the world.

The Indian markets, represented by the BSE-Sensex, closed the week down by 466 points, or 2.7%. This took the Sensex to sub-17,000 levels for the first time since June 2010.


Source: Yahoo Finance
As we stand now, nobody knows anything.

Is this market going up or down? [Read more…] about Is This Market Going Up or Down?

The Problem With a Rat Race is That Even If You Win…

When in doubt, follow. This is an apt quote on the behaviour of us humans.

We generally draw comfort in going with the majority, or the consensus.

The problem is that we have very less control on such behaviour, as evolution has equipped us with this tendency of running a rat race.

Yes, you read that right. We are all running several rat races, whether in our work lives or when it comes to investing our money.
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Friday Morning Reads

A few interesting items for your reading pleasure:

  • The master speaks! Buffett: The lower stocks go, the more I buy (CNN Money)
  • Nice chart. Economic Expansions and Recessions (The Big Picture)
  • Good read. ‘Too big to fail’ is too dumb an idea to keep (John Kay)
  • Reality bites. Realty to suffer if lending rate doesn’t fall: DLF (The Economic Times)
  • Oops! Double Depression (The Daily Reckoning)
  • Hmm. US may avoid double-dip recession if Fed intervenes; it’s buying opportunity in India: Mark Mobius (The Economic Times)

What are you reading?