As I have said sometime back - it feels awesome to get more return on your money than a fixed deposit could give you. Better still if you could average 20%+ YoY.
I am going to share with you my current thoughts on stock investing. Its just my story as I see it. I know I have a long way to go. I am just starting off and I feel happy to have struck to investing. I have no reason to share this, but for my own personal gratification.
Stocks have always been fascinating. Dad's old shares - mastergain / mastershare and the small talks in house made me want to invest and learn.
As soon as I finished engineering - I bought a few shares from my first salary. I have not stopped doing so till today. Analyzing companies, reading balance sheets and just reading about different sectors and trying to create a vision for future gives me a kick.
Here is a timeline of my investment story.
2004 - started investing from my account.
2006 - doubled my money (what little I had put in).
2007 - was a bad year. made investments at wrong level. Let me blame this on my MBA degree I just got. Broke even though.
2008 - worst year till date. Lost nearly 40% of my money. However - stayed put.
2009 - through 2010 - recovery. Modest gains - something which I really took on was habit of reading balance sheets and analyzing cash flows.
2011, 2012 - picked some good ones. Started diversifying. Something which hit me hard last year was the dividend aspect. I feel that a way of making easy tax free money is dividends.. money that comes back to you every year. never ending. usually increasing.
2013 - currently analyze and hold positions in 80 - 90 different stocks. The wild swings and high rupee-eur/usd rates have been my friends. Lots of stocks trading at low valuations during past couple of months. I am not much into buying and selling on short term basis. Like to hold onto them. Except that I like to keep most of my money in few of my favorites!
So.. that's my hobby. Let me give you my thoughts on my favorite picks next time I write my blog (hopefully soon)...!
Ciao till next time...Harsha
