I am prehistoric. Then why I am here as a late starter? Well…
I started my investment journey by investing in IPOs. Those days, the shares in IPOs were priced uniformaly at ₹10. So, you either did not get allotment, or if you got, you sold at three, four times and that was it.
The shares were a piece of paper. To get them transferred in your name, you had to fill up a form and send it to the company’s registrar, who often did not return it.
Then, salaries being what they were, you hardly ever had money to invest. When you bought, you bought a share which could be bought at the most for ₹25!
I had rather humiliating experience when I visited the office of a famous broker/sub-broker to place an order or take the delivery. The guy, a small salaried guy, but perhaps dealing with bigger investors, would not even look at me when I stood there.
I had no money (story of an honest govt servant, who was, may be not very wise with money) so could not hold stocks. I remember buying iCICI Bank when its face value was ₹10, for ₹42 each. Sold them for ₹45 each. Imagine if I had kept those 1000 shares.
I have started investing regularly in small sums in 2015, and regularly after my retirement in 2017.
Initially my investments were restricted to famous names-you know HDFC, L&T, Colgate etc, most of them based on recommendations of ICICI Direct.
But never wanted to trade, never trusted the forecasters. So, my intentions are to be a long term, in the Buffett mould , but I often end up selling after losing confidence in my own research.
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