Over the last many years after interacting with people I still cannot understand human behaviour. I can only say that I tried doing something!

Over the past 3 days we did an event called the “India investment show”. Fund managers, analysts, company managements, come and make presentations – and the common man can walk in free and learn from these presentations. I inivited a few people (who would have all benefitted by coming). Many of them did not respond to the mail. Some of them confirmed that they will come, then did not come. Then there were some who called in to say they were not well. If you were to see the list of people who called in sick, I should be running a hospital – just for friends and students who are unwell! 2-3000 students of mine who have kept their emails current had got invitations – of course there is no way to know how many attended, my guess is none did. 1000 Relationship managers who have trained under me had received the invitations, and my guess is none of them attended. I have the pleasure of dealing with 3-4 mutual funds and 2-3 life insurance companies – None of the managers working there were present.

What is amazing is that most of them sell equity based products. Equities, Debt products and commodities are so deep and wide that you keep learning. However, all these ‘salesmen’ are clearly ‘passionate’ about equity when it translates to a nice salary and incentive or commissions in case of non-employees. Deep at heart there is no conviction about equity. Most of them are happy when equity markets are down and if they meet me then there is a “Hi, how come you are still not in the Somalia ration queue kind of look in their face” but with a “I hope you are fine” kind of words in their mouth! Some top ‘teachers’ of equities, many regulators, are all people who can make a 40 page power point presentations, but keep their money in bank fixed deposits.

However they think they owe me an explanation for not attending. Sorry ladies and gentlemen you do not owe me an explanation. If you think you need to learn you should attend sessions by Nilesh Shah, Naren Sankaran, Prasun Gajri, Parag Parikh, Nagnath, Anup Maheshwari, Vikram Kotak, Rajiv Anand, Vivek Patil, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, C B Bhave, Rani Nair (Ex Dir PFRDA), ….etc. Attending these sessions surely increases my knowledge.

One feedback that we have received is that – it is the same people saying the same things – It sure is. But if your fund has been doing well you continue in the same fund, do you not? It is for the advisor to take the simple lessons from EA Sundaram or a Naren Sankaran and convince the client that action and hyper action are not really necessary for you if you are a client!