Sh(t)ock brouhahahaha!

My friends can vouch for this, and will agree wholeheartedly. Well, I was never a person with a great amount of intelligence. Translate that to the financial world, and you can put a big cipher in front of my name. I find brilliant ways to land myself into all sorts of mess, and somehow, gasping for breath, would claw my way back, before realizing the futility of the whole exercise. At the end of the day, there should be lessons learned. If not, the mind keeps taunting you with, I told you! Why did you have to get into all this? It has happened in the past, it happens now, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms, I am just waiting for the future!

As soon as entered the corporate world, I was lured into the world of stock market. This certainly has to be the way to make money. What can a software engineer fresh from college earn anyway? There has to be other alternate ways of making money. So, trusting my financial "intelligence" that was embedded in me right from birth, I put my feet in the stock market. My father, who was well versed with the fluctuations of the stock market, warned me "Dei, vendaam da! Don't get involved in all these things. I have experienced all this; at first, it will be very exciting, only when you lose money will you realize that it is too late." As is often with me, this served as an extra motivation to prove him wrong. I laughed silently, "Well, time will tell who has made the right decision." Of course, I didn't tell him that. If it were today's times, I would have cried out "Why don't you support me like Yograj Singh (Yuvraj's father)? See, even though he does not perform well in cricket, you can never get his father to agree that Yuvraj needs to be out of the team." It is a different matter that Yograj, and not Yuvraj, needs counselling. But, those were the days, when I had to silently plan my course of action.

I studied the market for quite some time, and thought I could do no wrong. After all, how much do I have with me to invest, I thought. So, I started with an initial amount, and invested in some well to do companies. Like any buyer, I thought, this is the perfect time to buy. It took me time to realize that there are thousands of sellers, who at that moment are with the opposite notion This is the perfect time to sell. I could see a variety of emotions creep in me for the next few days, and I would eagerly monitor the value of the stock, hoping that the company really does well. Even the CEO of the company wouldn't care about how well his company stock is doing. See the time line of the change of thoughts:

This is certainly the good time to buy.

As soon as the value of the stock goes up by 0.00001% in the next few days,
Thank God, I have made the right decision in buying the stock at the right time. Maybe I should have bought more!

Well, after a few days,
Oh, why is it going down? Maybe it has something to do with the FDI, inflation and other things (I would have no idea what either of them means. Everybody is talking; and so should I). I am sure it is going to bounce back.

Finally,
I think I better sell this now before I lose all my money.

The net transaction would have resulted in a steaming loss, and thanks to the transaction charges, the damage would be compounded further. But, in spite of all this, I would not breathe a word about my loss. Attitude!!! More than anything, I had to put on some face saving act.

So, last week, as I contemplated investing some money in the NASDAQ, the past came haunting me. As I read the news about the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers, immediately, I could hear the phone ring. Maga, hoduskondodhe maga, bejaan duddu hoyitho...Bonds ella purchase maadidhdhe maga.....
(Man...I lost it...Had purchased a lot of bonds...)

I went back in time!