"During mahurat trading you should always buy your favourite scrip, and that too in multiples of nine" these are the famous words from Bhanabhai, the seniormost member in our equity trading group at Marico. I am in a midst of fun and learning but one thing that I miss is the equity market discussions we used to have at Marico.
It was 6 months since I joined Marico as management trainee, the NDA govt fell, May 17, 2004 and the sensex fell from 5069 to 4505, a fall of 564 points. I was novice to equity markets and had never previously traded on my own. Harish was in the same boat and both of us were curious to take the plunge. The next step was quiet obvious, we opened a online trading account with ICICI. The first stock i purchased was Arvind Mills, bought 100 shares at 56 and sold at 64 in a month. What a sense of satisfaction, Rs.800 a month. The stock has touched a high of 115 since then and is now trading at 14!!! I started investing in blue chip companies and started making notional profits, on the contrary Harish had a different approach. He liked to make losses in stocks like Nocil. His mantra was buy high and sell low. My first error in stock market was spicejet, i bought at 4 and sold at 6, what next it went on to touch 100.
A year later we had new member in our team, Vinod Gurnani. He was a third type of trader, interested in cyclical stocks. He had huge appetite and his favourite was arvind remedies. The matra was buy at 2.5 and sell at 3.5, it was a penny stock. The share currently trades at 1.3 (not bad as compared to market). It was fun playing the equity markets. The fourth member to join was Sateesh Penetela. He took some time, to get accustom to the market but once in he was at his best. His favourite was Ranbaxy, the day he invested in Ranbaxy it has never touched his cost price till date. We used to have fun looking at the prices of all our favourite stocks. While we were having this fun investing there were people like Vivek Karve who used to do a detail financial analysis and take decisions to buy the stocks. He was a true investor. I should also include the name of Nikhil as he was also a silent investor and maybe a long term investor, who was in and out of markets but never played it like a casino the way we did. As time passed by, we graduated ourselves to technical analysis. After attending a session by Vivek Patil, i though i knew all about stochastics and oscillator. Well the technical analysis syndrome caught us, and we all started doing stochastic and taking daily buy / sell decisions. The sensex was around 12,000
I moved on to corporate accounts and we had a big tolly of interested people. It was inevitable for the corporate accounts team comprising Satish Kadam, Swapnil, and Vishal working with me to get themselves into this casino. There were many others like Naresh, who came up with interesting scrips never heard of. I still recollect his recommendation freshtrop fruits @ 150, now trading at 15!!! Then there was Ankit Jain who believed in only buy, Amit Kedia and Aashu were also drowned in the casino by now. The best was my boss Subhash Bhat, he was as restless as anyone can be and we had real fun as well as great learning from him. The last one to be mentioned is Shri Saurabh Bhansali who is now being grilled at IIM B just like i am here. For sometime now we all had 'teledata' in our life. We started buying at 10 and it went upto 100, currently trading at 6. Many of us made and many lost, but that was a scrip that was the most talked about. Bhanabhai was our important advisor and a source of information. He has seen many bull and bear markets so it was fun listening his views. All of us were at one end and there was Srikrishna at the other, determined that he would not be getting in equity markets. He was the only one who was not convinced at this casino. Pawan joined in after Subhash's exit, he was again a person who started his journey with derivatives, not many people would dare this stint. But then he made some losses and reduced his exposure. We were also able to convince Mahesh Murkute to open an online trading account (not sure if he remembers the password now!!!)
Well by that time, i graduated myself to derivative. The fever passed on within the group, and many people started trying out F&O. The markets were hot at 20,000. More people were willing to take the plunge, until Jan 23rd, when all of us were in deep shit. People with open positions were struggling with margin calls and people with delivery saw their portfolio turn red in books. The activity subsided in sometime and it was time for me to say good bye. I am not sure about the position of the group members but it was a exhilarating ride for me. When i saw market kissing 8K today, well its approx 12% p.a. return since we started investing, i was surprised. We could have invested our money in bank FD and earned equivalent return, but am i justified when i say this? No, what about the learning that i had in last four years. It made me much more sensible and mature towards money and i m sure this learning would certainly help me in future.
Also in the journey of last 4 years the group had diversed set of people with different approach to equity markets. Was any of them the best? I don't think so, its just that a particular strategy is good for a particular market and hence one size fits all does not work. That's my guess... Hope u felt as nostalgic reading this as i felt while writing... feel free to put in your comments...
It was 6 months since I joined Marico as management trainee, the NDA govt fell, May 17, 2004 and the sensex fell from 5069 to 4505, a fall of 564 points. I was novice to equity markets and had never previously traded on my own. Harish was in the same boat and both of us were curious to take the plunge. The next step was quiet obvious, we opened a online trading account with ICICI. The first stock i purchased was Arvind Mills, bought 100 shares at 56 and sold at 64 in a month. What a sense of satisfaction, Rs.800 a month. The stock has touched a high of 115 since then and is now trading at 14!!! I started investing in blue chip companies and started making notional profits, on the contrary Harish had a different approach. He liked to make losses in stocks like Nocil. His mantra was buy high and sell low. My first error in stock market was spicejet, i bought at 4 and sold at 6, what next it went on to touch 100.
A year later we had new member in our team, Vinod Gurnani. He was a third type of trader, interested in cyclical stocks. He had huge appetite and his favourite was arvind remedies. The matra was buy at 2.5 and sell at 3.5, it was a penny stock. The share currently trades at 1.3 (not bad as compared to market). It was fun playing the equity markets. The fourth member to join was Sateesh Penetela. He took some time, to get accustom to the market but once in he was at his best. His favourite was Ranbaxy, the day he invested in Ranbaxy it has never touched his cost price till date. We used to have fun looking at the prices of all our favourite stocks. While we were having this fun investing there were people like Vivek Karve who used to do a detail financial analysis and take decisions to buy the stocks. He was a true investor. I should also include the name of Nikhil as he was also a silent investor and maybe a long term investor, who was in and out of markets but never played it like a casino the way we did. As time passed by, we graduated ourselves to technical analysis. After attending a session by Vivek Patil, i though i knew all about stochastics and oscillator. Well the technical analysis syndrome caught us, and we all started doing stochastic and taking daily buy / sell decisions. The sensex was around 12,000
I moved on to corporate accounts and we had a big tolly of interested people. It was inevitable for the corporate accounts team comprising Satish Kadam, Swapnil, and Vishal working with me to get themselves into this casino. There were many others like Naresh, who came up with interesting scrips never heard of. I still recollect his recommendation freshtrop fruits @ 150, now trading at 15!!! Then there was Ankit Jain who believed in only buy, Amit Kedia and Aashu were also drowned in the casino by now. The best was my boss Subhash Bhat, he was as restless as anyone can be and we had real fun as well as great learning from him. The last one to be mentioned is Shri Saurabh Bhansali who is now being grilled at IIM B just like i am here. For sometime now we all had 'teledata' in our life. We started buying at 10 and it went upto 100, currently trading at 6. Many of us made and many lost, but that was a scrip that was the most talked about. Bhanabhai was our important advisor and a source of information. He has seen many bull and bear markets so it was fun listening his views. All of us were at one end and there was Srikrishna at the other, determined that he would not be getting in equity markets. He was the only one who was not convinced at this casino. Pawan joined in after Subhash's exit, he was again a person who started his journey with derivatives, not many people would dare this stint. But then he made some losses and reduced his exposure. We were also able to convince Mahesh Murkute to open an online trading account (not sure if he remembers the password now!!!)
Well by that time, i graduated myself to derivative. The fever passed on within the group, and many people started trying out F&O. The markets were hot at 20,000. More people were willing to take the plunge, until Jan 23rd, when all of us were in deep shit. People with open positions were struggling with margin calls and people with delivery saw their portfolio turn red in books. The activity subsided in sometime and it was time for me to say good bye. I am not sure about the position of the group members but it was a exhilarating ride for me. When i saw market kissing 8K today, well its approx 12% p.a. return since we started investing, i was surprised. We could have invested our money in bank FD and earned equivalent return, but am i justified when i say this? No, what about the learning that i had in last four years. It made me much more sensible and mature towards money and i m sure this learning would certainly help me in future.
Also in the journey of last 4 years the group had diversed set of people with different approach to equity markets. Was any of them the best? I don't think so, its just that a particular strategy is good for a particular market and hence one size fits all does not work. That's my guess... Hope u felt as nostalgic reading this as i felt while writing... feel free to put in your comments...
4 comments:
Very true...
It reminds and refreshes all the step by step learnings...though no monetary gains/losses :)
There are people.. who still feel that they "understand" the markets... who still feel that markets can be "timed"...
Sometimes i really wonder if 4 years is not a long term?
Having exited at 20K.. am very tempted to invest now.. someof my favorites are NTPC, IDFC (am a chauvinist engineer u see!)
Would end with a quote don't know who it was... "Put only that money in stocks which you can afford to lose"
I agree with you when you say that learning in last 4 years has been priceless. This learning, has come at a cost, which for us luckily has been one which we can afford to pay. On some level, this learning would not have come py getting into a course and paying the fees.Believe me, the clarity on derivatives we have now, is absolutely priceless. Add to this our respect for simplicity.
I firmly believe that one takes risks in all spheres of life. If you ask me, i would rather buy stocks than spend the money on a car. Both are cash outflows. While the world compliments us for doing the later, we get brickbats for getting into so called potential stocks.
So in whatever sphere of life my belief has been take calculated risks to the extend you can aford to loose the money, as nikhil says.
Finally what is "risk" is very personal. For me buying a car has been more riskier than investing. Remember definition of assets and liabilities in Rich dad poor dad?
Wish you all a Very Happy New year.
Another thing that i have learned over the years is that whatever you do , do it consistently. Some years you will loose money but you end up making for it in some other years. Key is follow your gut / instinct whatever you may call consistently.
An example: When i started investing in equities as soon as i saw loss in a particluar scrip i used to do a stop loss and exit, booking the small loss. Thats the reason Chirag has given me a padvi of PHD in making losses.
Later i realised that i was only booking loss and now i should learn to hold on, thats what equity is all about. Nothing wrong, but timing of change was bad. I ended up holding on to investments when the crash started in Jan 2008. Had i consistently followed the approach of preserving the capital wouldnt I have been much better?
Another learning is it is very difficult to sit tight with money. Had i sold off investments after first crash in jan 2008, what is the likelyhood that i would have kept the money in bank FDs and exited the market completely??
socho !!
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