The Portfolio Conundrum – Honey, it’s all about Money!

It is a bizarre experience to navigate the conundrum named stock market portfolio. Emotions run high and dry, during the ups and downs of the equity markets, especially if you have personally invested in equity and consider yourself a stock market fringe player.   The day the Sensex or the Nifty shoots up, your portfolio valuation shoots up sky high, it would be literally like sailing on cloud nine; no sooner, even before the celebration ends, the portfolio valuation would dip down to an abysmal low; so, would the mood of the player, be.  If one is into the stock market game, honestly, I think the person literally needs to be like the Buddha, to remain unaffected by the stock market volatility.

The stock market experts say, that we should not get rattled by the valuations; the highs and lows are integral to the stock market.  If these were just numbers and figures, I would just be fine; unfortunately, this is all about one’s finances.  Honey, it is all about money.   Stock markets, by its very nature is volatile.  The movement of indices depends on composition of the index and behaviour of the individual shares or stocks of the companies.  Many a time, the stock market indices would have shot up, but my portfolio would have gone down.  Vice versa happening is rare; that’s a mystery to date, which has no logical explanation. All this is perfectly understandable to the analysts or advisors. They have umpteen number of explanations on why the stock value is down or up; or why we should buy or sell a particular stock; or why we should hold or remain invested in the said stock. The advisors would never allow you to exit from the stock market, even though some of the stock valuations are down to a loss of, say 90%, instead they would advise you to substitute the stock with another winner stock from their recommendations’ stable.  They have an explanation for every damn thing happening to the stocks in your portfolio.

All of us have heard of stock market wizards; who have made billions, prime examples being Warren Buffet or our own Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.  My stock market broker/advisor has narrated to me stories of how people who have invested in the equity market and stayed put, have raked in Crores of rupees; rags to riches stories abound in stock market history. With this background, my expectations had been kindled, hoping for a very good return in staying invested long, in the equity market.  I have dreamt of wealth being created through the stock market game.  This, of course, has remained a pipe dream, till today.   But, “never give up, my friend”, says the advisor, (I wouldn’t call him my friend at any rate!) “the cusp of a breakout is very near; Sensex touching 40000 points may not be far off; you will get to be a crorepathi, one day soon”, says the advisor confidently. The fool in me, still believes in the pipe dream; however, I dare not take a peek at my portfolio, which has taken a huge dive in today’s market!