Well, I’ll share an example; two people are walking on the road. They by mistake bump into each other. They, immediately do not start hitting each other. What really happens is, at the bump, the person who wasn’t looking might say “oh, I’m so sorry” and the second one might respond “no worries mate” and both move on, but if the first one says “are, kya re?” the second one might say “Sorry mate, my apologies” and it will still cool things off.

However, if the second also gets enraged by the first person’s language, it will. proceed to so use of verbal language, it many finish there or it may lead to a physical fight… or worse.

Similarly, in the markets, it was small incremental steps that took me there, and I guess take most people there.

Covid lockdowns started around 18th March. I was locked up at home and after a couple of weeks I was quite frustrated. One of my friends called me and while chatting he said, dude, I’m thinking of getting some alcohol to pass time in the evening, and I was like yeah, that’s a great idea.

So both he and me (both of us had stopped drinking everyday a few years ago) were back on the bottle by next day.

Next, I get drunk and every evening look at US stocks, got active on twitter, started listening to some hedge fund subscriber service () who had called the crash, and felt oh this guy knows something. Paid a fee and became a paid subscriber of his service.

He would send out 4-5 day trade alerts everyday. I would trade them, then I activated my futures and options account.

I was losing money on his subscription service, and in the meanwhile I had connected with some day traders on twitter. So, I stopped taking his signals, and then I started day trading using futures on my own.

Then I used to play cautiously and got back what I lost. From there I was glued to the screen from morning 8 am to night 12 pm (yes, drinking from 6 pm onwards) and trading drunk. We still could not leave home, and being a type of personality that cannot sit around doing nothing I had found something to do, which kept me engaged through the day.

Then I started making 4-5% a month minimum and some good months, I clocked I think nearly 12% a month.

This is where I was running calculations of 5-7% CAGR PER MONTH for 20 years and I was one of the richest men in the world

Then I started breaking my rules, I started taking directional bets via options, became a macro trader as well.

Well, I need not explain further on what happens. This is exactly how retail traders lose money. Day trading stocks, commodities, futures and directional opinions expressed via 2-3-4 daily trades via options.

So the inevitable happened. It was bound to happen.

Luckily, the lockdowns were over, I sat down with a cup coffee one morning, thought about everything, for a few hours, (played everything in flashback, saw my mistakes) and closed these accounts.

About 3 months ago, I opened investing only accounts, and have been slowly deploying capital to good long term investments.

I also bought a house in Pune this year and may move back to India soon.

Point is, I have lost and made money on multiple investments (private businesses and public financial markets). If one did not blow up everything then it may be a hard lesson, but if god has been kind that we were not finished, we will earn again, things will again be fine. It hurt me mentally initially, but we get over it. No point crying over spilt milk. Look forward.

You are right. If the tax rate is more than rate of return then your gain is even lower.
And maybe the other charge is very low but it still counts if you do the transaction multiple times. As in the above example you pay other charges for 700 shares for buying and selling instead selling 100 shares.
So, 7 times of any seemingly insignificant number could be significant enough… basically dont need to do calculation on this front

• Whenever markets give returns too fast to digest i feel jittery about future prospects.
• i didn’t find many value buying opportunities… almost everything felt expansive
• i was very concerned of upcoming Fed rate hike cycle… and basically my view was to avoid first 3 rate hikes and then assess again…

i had a call with my friends and we all decided that from here onwards… safer bet is real estate so we starting attending HUDA online auctions… and bought plots at ~25% discount to market rate… and then i pressed exit button on all stocks together as payment was to be done… rational was at least i will make 20% on this bet… as a thumb rule we buy only when there is minimum 20% discount to market rate… plus Gurgaon is very liquid market…

i did partial market exits in jan 2018 as well… but at that time i did rollover from small-mid caps to large caps… thinking it would be safe… but it was painful experience of 2 years… and later i saw vedio of stan druckenmiller where he mentioned his secret to 30% compounding is side stepping financial crisis and betting on other underperforming assets which made perfect sense to me… staying in market(bubbly phase) lets say 60% long and 40% short wont help you reaching 30% compounding target… at max it would be take you around ~20% range… so timing is sort of essential if one want to reach ~30% compounding.

my top holding at the time of exit were: AIRTEL, IEX, HDFC, IT Basket(Mastek, KPIT, L&T Tech) + Cyclical bets smallcase run by Jiten parmar

What i meant was once we have done a complete reading on annual report and have understood the important things like management who are running the shows etc, then after putting it in core portfolio, then for subsequent quarterly and annually tracking it, does it make sense to just do screener or it has to be from Annual Report?

Hi Bhavya,

Aster DM is making strange moves I heard, selling off majority biz in middle-east to focus on India. Not sure about the management quality. Narayana Hrudalaya is a decent biz, prefer this since it seems to be less commoditized and higher end treatments. HCG seems oncology focused, have been hearing about break through cancer treatments, so maybe its biz model will face threat soon!

Varun bev seems to be edge above the rest with higher growth possible for medium term at least. HUL has good management also, but they may run out of playbook with growing private labels from most retailers for staples etc. ITC is on cheaper side but too complex to give a view