The fun begins!

As I write, most of us would have been so tired of asking ourselves- is the market falling too much, is it the bottom or the beginning. The real answer is- nobody knows. The better question to ask is- what should you do about it?

One confession at the beginning- I’m delighted to see what’s happening to Paytm and its siblings. I’ve always maintained that their business models are dumb, working on borrowed cash by venture capitalists at lofty valuations and are never going to work beyond a point as they can never make a dime in profits. Also, they don’t have any differentiation to say what they’re doing can’t be done. I mean, Zomato, Swiggy, dunzo, etc etc are all the same. Basically half of them want to deliver grocery in shortest time possible and the other half wants to make you buy now and pay later. No value addition, no difference, no profits.

So now that we have seen atleast a five percent drop in our portfolio today, what should be done? I’m a true believer, a frenzied believer in the idea that India will be richer, better, more competitive in ten years time than it is today. I don’t see any reason to be less bullish on India Today than I was yesterday, or when Nifty was at 18700. If that is still true, all you have to do is to thank god for this flash sale and buy more of what you’ve already been buying/ wanting to buy for some time but the price wasn’t right.

Remember this- only on days like today when there’s blood on the street, twitter is predicting apocalypse and everybody wants to sell and run, on days when you puke looking at your portfolio are the days when biggest deals are available. On days like these, you get a Tata Motors for 60rs and a BSE for 300. On days when people are selling everything for whatever little they can and truly believe that the world is coming to an end, are the days when you go out and say- The World doesn’t end so easily. India is not going to end and it’s just a price correction when I am going to buy more. Unless you can buy today, you’re in a wrong place.

So what am I doing personally? I added to what I already own even when my closest friends laughed at it. I truly believe some of the prices we’re getting today are going to look like dreams ten years from now. I mean how many of you remember there was a time when Bajaj Finance traded at 150 or Reliance at 300 or an Asian paints at 200. Unless you can buy them at those prices, you’re never going to make it big and keep jumping in and out of the markets, buying and selling on whims and losing more often than not and forever cursing the market.

Today is as great an opportunity to buy than it ever was. India is on cusp of a multi year economic growth and the next decade is going to make all of us richer than we were in the last. Believe in India, believe in the power of compounding and believe in the idea that you’re going to be very very rich in a decade if you can buy and hold and add to the companies on right side of this story. Whatever happens in the next one month, or budget or Federal Reserve or Covid or border tension or whatever else which can happen will not matter in three years.

The fun begins now!