This week I have completed seven years in the markets. Back in 2017, I first bought some shares of SunPharma, HUL and Asian Paints as my first investments. That was also my 25th year and I was still two years away from declaring to self that investing will be my final destination.
The journey from zero in 2017, from making first 20-30k ₹ investments to now having quite a few multi-baggers in the bag has been phenomenally good. God has been kind and the journey has made me a better investor and thrown me on a lifelong pursuit of knowledge.
I titled this blog as Zero to Million for reminding myself two things- one, I started at zero which keeps me grounded and thankful for everything I have and two, a million dollars is the absolute million a normal investor must strive for. It also is a way of telling myself that what I have currently is not even a fraction of what I am supposed to make in this market and that keeps me off from losing focus and wanting to do more.
One of the most important points I have learnt is that a professional fund manager can never equal a person like me who is investing for the sheer joy of it. If you’re doing it for a salary and I’m doing it for fun and passion, I’m going to be better than you hands down. I am not often into self-praise but when you realise that some people with fancy degrees suck at basic investing is not because they’re not smart but because they lack the zeal of learning whatever there is!
For example, if a person with a lot of finance degrees can’t understand that a balance sheet is fudged and its implications are horrendous, he or she will never appreciate what bad governance can do to a company because unfortunately, governance cannot be taught and can only be learnt. Here’s an example:
Over the years, I have made some great investments and some terrible ones. Reliance Home Finance went from ₹105 to ₹0.95 in three years and yours truly lost 99%. So was the case with Yes Bank when I lost my shirt. This was all due to bad governance and nothing else. The balance sheet will never scream a fraud; you need to decipher through the arcane world of nuances in the notes to accounts.
I got off the PSU basket in 2021 for I realised that even if they will go up, like they have these days, I am not the kind of investor who will like to sleep well with a NALCO or an IOC with the fear of a news announcement from the ministry bringing an end to the party . It’s essentially a case of luck that the sector is doing well and people are going gaga but I have learnt a lesson- essentially it’s about what not to do in the markets is all there is to do!
So my investing style now encompasses to worry early, and worry a lot about the bear markets. You can’t survive for a decade if you can’t survive two bear markets. And thus the maxim, a company with no debt can’t go bankrupt. So this is one of the reason I love the stock ITC-Colgate-HUL type for they are there through the rainy days.
Investing is about longevity- longevity requires patience, grinding it out alone for years together for one multi-bagger to emerge through multiple suzlon types!
PS- Oracle has been my fastest doubler, almost on the verge of a tripler in a year. The story is beautiful, one of P/E rerating of the entire sector along with earnings expansion after a decade! Can it be a 15000₹ stock? Who knows but I do pray.🙏
Life is all about Compounding! 