Why investors lose money in equity markets
There is a lot of talk about markets fluctuating, algo trading, high speed trading..etc. as the reasons why people money. High speed trading is nothing new. At various points in time various ‘hi speed’devices have been used. For example even when the Telegraph was used in 1840 for the first time the the US markets, there was complaints about speed.
What the common man does not accept is that there is no way you can make money by high speed trading. Well not the common man. There are great traders who know how to earn money, but that is a terrific skill and has to be learnt. The retail investor has to INVEST, not trade. Investing means buying and staying with that position for long periods of time. Most of the under performance by the retail investor is because of trying to jump from one share to another, or even from one fund to another. Activity makes money for the BROKER, and it ensures that you keep watching TV or reading the pink papers.
Look at all those people who cashed out of the market at 10000 index in 2008. Are they not looking foolish now?
However, do remember if you were in a Fmcg / pharma portfolio from 2003 to 2007 you would have looked foolish too. I was in Colgate, Hul,…kind a portfolio even during that period. Yes LnT, Cholamandalam, Hdfc, Kotak, Siemens, Cummins….etc. did well and I was damn damn lucky to have sold Tata Power at a pe of 100, if I am not wrong.
As investors many a times we miss the mega trends. Go to the internet and see the amount of energy that India is generating using solar power. It is not funny. Cochin airport runs fully on solar power. Welspun energy is doing great work in MP in solar power. Gujarat has the biggest solar power farm in the country. There are at least a couple of villages in Odisha that run on solar power.
What impact will solar power have on our power, steel (each house generates its own requirement, so no cables for transmitting) also no transmission loss…so the demand for coal, oil, and steel comes down dramatically. Are we prepared for all this? Will we miss the megatrend in the power scenario?
Young people in the USA are refusing to treat the car as a status symbol. So Uber it is! Well Uber will use the car much more – and it is likely to be at the bottom of the chain while buying. What happens if Uber says “clients prefer a Maruti car made in India” or “Indica made in Thailand”. ….we could go on and on….
Ignore the mega trends and let the fund manager manage it. Or get into learning by reading the balance sheets….and damn the macro…well not exactly damn, but learn how to cope with the markets…
http://www.subramoney.com/2012/07/how-much-can-you-lose-in-equity/
Prashanth
Technology change in Solar power, power storage and electric cars promise to change the energy and transportation sector completely. The ripple effects of these technology changes will be huge.
ajayrajaram
more than huge ripple effects of solar technology changes oil export import balance and feasibility of iran pipeline to delhi will also be a big issue
considering weak rupee and strong dollar with gold coming down you should see lot of pressure on interest rates in upcoming quarters
if monsoon fails as predicted and thermal power station strike does not come to end you can expect banks and nbfcs npa shoot up
PS:
if the above thing made any sense to you, you are a certified talking head in a tv news channel or certifiable
Kamal Garg
I think there is great misnomer as far use of solar power is concerned. Please understand that solar power can be generated only during day time. You have to store the same power for use at night. Solar irradiation is only from morning around 8 AM to evening 7 PM in sun tropical countries like Asian countries and in western countries the sunshine hours would be even less. What will you do during evening (the highest commercial consumption is during evening, including residential load also), nights (when all industries would be working 24 hours) and early morning (when you require heaters and geysers in cold climate). Storing power through battery is immensely less efficient in today’s battery technology. It also requires huge investment in batter back-up systems and requires huge space also.
The second most important thing is that currently a thermal power plant achieves a PLF of say more than 90% during 24×7 or 24×30 days period because it requires moderate during daytime, high power during evening time and less power during night time. But if you take away the daytime power sale from them (by installing solar power) and in turn take away the most lucrative customer from them (remember industries always have to pay more per KWh of power than residential consumers because of regulatory and social effect in almost all parts of the world), then their PLF would come down and their average cost of power generation would go up affecting every body in the society.
The only great advantage of having solar power is no pollution/emission.
sreekanth yelicherla
Poeple have misconceptions about Solar power. Solar was there even before the existence of earth for thousands of years. So, WHY are we depending on coal for power? Because, solar/wind is expensive in all ways to generate, manange, maintain etc. It’s a matter of common sense why it didn’t become a main source of energy.
VS
Two articles on renewable energy. One is by Bill Gates and the other one criticizes Bill Gates but in the end says at least he is doing something. I think some questions raised in the above comments are answered in these articles…..
http://qz.com/470592/by-bill-gates-why-im-investing-1-billion-of-my-own-money-into-clean-energy-research/
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/30/3675684/renewable-energy-needs-policy-not-tech-innovations/
Ritesh
Chain Reaction is a good movie….It talks about free source of energy for planet Earth.