The Year was 1999 end. A bunch of us had a NSE equity membership. Lucky not to have a WDM, but had a equity membership and we were making decent money.

However, we realized that we were running a boutique, and now was the time of the mass players.

We knew we could not match the Icici, Enam, Kotaks of the world and give good service at such ridiculous rates. We also knew that we would not do institutional business.

Personally when one Fund House told me “good performance is of course good, but Subra your South cos. do not do enough PR’ . LOL. I GAVE up Income tax practice because I did not want to ‘PR’ after office hours. Why will I change it now? So institutional business was out, and we were not willing to ‘invest’ in insti business.

When we said short term we meant 3 years and we meant 10 years when we said ‘equity’ portfolio construction. We were in a different world so to say.

When a client lost money for 2/3 weeks in a row we asked him to take his business elsewhere – we did not want to deal with a bad trader or a guy who will not / cannot pay.

We had a demonic control on potential bad debts – we did not lose money in bad debts. We may have lost business opportunities, but happy to live with that.

We tripled our investments – from 1993 to 1999. We sold all our hardware, furniture, etc. at cost price. Did not adjust for depreciation – and we got a premium for the business, relationships, etc.

One big Foreign fund told us “we will open 8000 offices in India”. We decided we will have to make place…or get eaten.

One big Foreign bank showed us how technology will allow clients to buy small number of shares – we were used to ‘market lots’.

We said ‘NO” to new business far more often than we said YES.

Some of us had relationships in the 3rd generation ALREADY.

…just some thoughts…