Investing Behaviour

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Eleanor Roosevelt (US diplomat & reformer)

Some bumps and bruises in stock market investing can be avoided if you heed the lessons others have picked up along the way.

Mistakes sometimes happen when you try something new, when you take a risk, when you attempt to do things differently from others.

Nearly every investor can point to mistakes he made – and the lessons he learned from them.

It’s cheaper to learn from someone else’s mistakes. Your job as an investor is not to reinvent the wheel. You don’t know every answer, but you can usually find the people who do.

Safal Niveshak understands this. And this is the reason I have created this platform of ‘Your Story’ where you can share your investing story – the investing mistakes you’ve made in the past, as also the stories about how your chose your winning stocks.
[Read more…] about Share Your Investing Story, Inspire Others

The question is – Who doesn’t want to become one?

You save and invest your hard-earned money, all with the aim of living a comfortable life when the salary cheque stops coming.

With your financial goals in mind, you make resolutions and sometimes also show your willpower to achieve them.

But then, is this enough to become wealthy over the long term?

The answer is – No!
[Read more…] about So, You Want to Become a Wealthy Investor?

“You know how bad I feel seeing my stocks these days?” asked my friend Ravi in a moment of anxiety.

“How bad?” I asked.

“It feels lousy! Every time I log in to my online trading account and see those red numbers, and then compare them with where they were a few months back, I feel really-really horrible.

“And you know what,” Ravi continued, “Wherever I look these days, whether it’s a newspaper or a business channel, or even within my office, I find a lot of voices screaming loudly in my direction and telling me to sell everything.”

“Wow!”

“What wow? You’re happy to see me suffer?”
[Read more…] about Survive a Stock Market Panic…And Make It Work for You

“Half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck.” – Carl Zuckmayer

Warren Buffett once said that the most important quality for an investor is temperament – how he behaves under different situations – not intellect.

In simple words, if you are an investor, your attitude will play a major role in your investing success than your aptitude.

It has been proven time and again that the worst enemy an investor can have is his emotions.

So, during bull markets, your worst enemies are greed and envy.

During bear markets, they are fear and panic.
[Read more…] about Investing and the Art of Discipline

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

These words from the famous American writer, poet, and cartoonist Dr. Seuss rings a bell in my mind every time I hear someone complaining about how the stock market is like a casino that has robbed him of his wealth.

“Stock market is a weird place to be in. I’m better betting on race horses,” said my neighbour as I asked the reason for his sadness during our early morning walk.

“Seemingly he has lost some money as Indian markets have crashed this week,” I thought to myself.

What I thought was right, as he said, “You know what? The Sensex was down 700 points on Thursday and another 200 on Friday! Isn’t this madness?”

I am a good neighbour, so I wanted him to pour out his heart before I could have spoken anything in defense of the market.
[Read more…] about We Are All Weird

The Sensex was down 700 points yesterday. It’s down 250 points as I write this today.

Whenever we get days like this — like when the Sensex is down 500 points or more — my phone begins ringing with inquiries from friends and relatives.

They always ask the same question: “What should I be doing now?”

Even my wife has this question every time she sees the markets fall like this.

“What are you doing now?” she asks me.

You see, this is ‘not’ the right question to ask in such times.
[Read more…] about Stocks Crash! What Should Investors Do NOW?

My eyes were caught by a headline in a business paper yesterday. It said, “Steady rise in shady deals, price rigging”.

At first I thought this was an article on the real estate sector in India. But then as I read it further, things really started to look ‘shady’.

The article talked about how data from the stock market regulator SEBI suggests that the cases of market manipulation and price rigging in stock markets have steadily increased over the past few years.

In fact, such cases now account for almost 50% of the cases taken up for investigation by the SEBI.

What this data simply means is that a growing number of people in the Indian stock markets are following the mantra ‘Greed is Good’ as was said by the character of Gordon Gekko in the Hollywood classic Wall Street.
[Read more…] about Is Stock Market a Casino?

First, a quick question. Take the last three digits of your telephone number, and add 400 to it.

So if your telephone number ends in 146, adding 400 to it will give you the answer 546.

Now answer this question – In which year did Alexander invade India?

Think…think!

Even though your telephone number has nothing to do with ancient India’s battles, you will note that your answer to the above question would most likely revolve around the first number i.e., 546 in the above example.

Whatever number you come up with for the sum of the last three digits of your telephone number and 400, your guess for the year of Alexander’s invasion will be close to your sum.
[Read more…] about In Investing, Catch the Right Anchor to Avoid Sinking

Markets are up, again. The BSE-Sensex is up almost 1,100 points over the past three weeks. Even other global markets have staged a comeback.

For now, the co-ordinated plan of international policymakers to lend cheap dollars to European banks to tame the credit crisis seems to be doing the trick.

In short, the bad news seems to be past us, at least for the time being.
[Read more…] about The Greatest Market Timer in This World is…