My Investing Journey

“Papa, what is stock market?”

When I was 13 years old, I asked that question to my dad who used to watch the ticker tape on TV every morning and got my introduction to the market. My understanding was vague and so I got tired after a while of following some stocks go up and down.

In Class 11, I took commerce stream and now I started understanding what the stock market actually was. My friend Rohan told me about Warren Buffet and I was hooked!

My first portfolio

After leaving in 2016, I started investing small amounts in stock markets. The money came from my father and I was investing under his guidance, buying and selling only after his approval.

My timing was extremely lucky as I started investing when the market was beginning a bull run and over the next 18 months I beat the market, sending me to cloud 9 and making me think investing was a piece of cake. But I was not 100% sure of what I was doing and didn’t have true confidence in my investment decisions.

Value Investing

In Dec’17, I read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham and learnt value investing basics and in Jan’18 I sold my entire portfolio as all of them seemed overvalued. And that seemed to be a great call because the market corrected by approx. 10% with a few of my former stocks like Vakrangee Ltd and Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd going bust.

Trouble begins

Then began my struggle with investing. The market stayed at a decade-high P/E ratio till Mar’20. I tried again and again to re-enter the market but it would correct every time and I would exit every time. Quality companies were too expensive in valuation and cheaper companies seemed to be stagnant.

Growth Investing

In Nov’20, I decided to read Common Stock and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher and I finally understood so many more concepts which I thought I knew but I didn’t fully understand till that time. Also, some of the silly mistakes I was making till now became clear to me. I decided to rebuild my portfolio and new innings commenced.

Value vs Growth

Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala are some of the most successful investors of all time and one thing I found to be common between them is that they all mastered both value and growth investing.

I’ve made profits in my new portfolio but the journey hasn’t been so smooth sailing. I still struggle to keep my emotions in check while investing and the trade-off between value and growth investing is very difficult to master.

Journey ahead

I will be writing more about my journey and knowledge gained on this website in future and I hope that the readers can also gain something from it.