fools rush in where...

Mumbai past life therapy. Free from a vedic psychic let her read you past and offer you the truth.
This was the mouse-over ad when I was browsing on Economic Times online edition. The word on which this ad popped up – take a wild guess… equities. I have been looking at the finance market for 9 years as a professional and more as a self respecting gujju. There is no logic to the stuff followed by the mass of people investing and the ad is a testimony to this fact. When the market is going up people are deluded into believing that their analysis is right. Sure it will be right… in a raging bull run all stocks go up! ALL. You can see people’s mood swing to these markets and move accordingly. In bear markets conviction in the best of stocks gets shaken. Every cycle it the same retail investor coming in and getting conned. He always buys high sells low. But you know I don’t pity him. He came in by greed. He thought there is free money here. He thought you could just buy off any stock and make money. He wanted to offload his shares when they are overpriced to some other guy and he got stuck in the process. Why should I have any pity for him. The government should go after the frauds but most of it is purely gambling. Should cry for those who grow broke at Vegas? Only as much as we must believe that a jack pot hits a supremely intelligent person. You gambled not invested, you lost. Sad. Get up and learn. Huge amount of government time and press space gets invested in combating and covering this rubbish.
In similar vein I can’t understand the number of people who see the market channels like CNBC etc. they are uninformative, sensationalize the present and encourage all sorts of rubbish.in fact even financial press is put off. A large part of the data is either from press releases or from wires etc. How much is actual, original analysis with insight and content. Same for magazines. No real reporting. Slowly I have stopped reading them altogether. I don’t think I am much too worse off. And I see people reading more of this. Those steeped in the markets will order and read all these papers, all the magazines and consume enormous amounts of air time. More of shit is just that – more of shit. It’s not going to make you any smarter. Stop it.
The research problem you see elsewhere works here too. Most of the research is done to ratify what you believe in. it becomes something akin to a self fulfilling prophesy. Everything points towards what you yourself are thinking. Very few really listen to the consumer. Understand what he is really saying, observe what is really happening. Compare one from another. Truth is really simple to see.
People will read some trait of someone successful investor and emulate what they want to and conveniently ignore the rest that is uncomfortable. It doesn’t work that way. I am reminded of that English phrase of missing the wood for the trees or something to that effect.
As for me…I am too bored or lazy or incompetent to really invest. I do the simple systematic investment planning and let it rest. Making money was never a high point emotionally or practically. but you know... I have seen a lot of people make money, tons of it. And I always thought I was smarter than them. Then I convince myself that the metrics is wrong... so there, even I have my excuses