My Stock Market Inspirations & Source of Learning

Hey, this is my first post on this new blog. Given it’s a teachers’ day, I thought of dedicating this post to those who I learn from.

I am merely an evolving learner. I learn from various individuals, and from my own observations and experiences. Here on this blog, I will be documenting my learnings in the form of summary or highlights.

A little bit about myself, my name is Tejas. I am 29 years of age and have been working since the age of 19. This introduction was important as I wanted to let my readers know that although I started working earlier than many (at the age of 19), I have started investing only now – literally in the year of 2021. I’ve been away from my home ,India since 2014. I have lived in Dubai (UAE), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and currently I am in Sydney (Australia).I have been making and saving decent money, but never got started with Equity investing until recently in 2021, which I think is pretty late. I feel one of the reasons is that investing early on was very uncommon in India and unheard of. Also, art and science of investing is not taught in the schools, hence the inertia on getting started. Hence, a lot of earning youngsters miss out on the chance of early investing and the magic of compounding. I am one of those. And if you happen to be in your early 20s and have stumbled upon this post, then I urge you to not repeat my mistake and miss out on the investing opportunity, especially looking at the current growth story of the Indian economy and the future it holds for all of us. You can get started by understanding the basics of investing and your agenda for the same, followed  by reaching out to experts so that your money is deployed in the right manner. However small the amount, getting started early is the key to see the magic of compounding. So without any further adieu, get started NOW!

Anyways, though I am late, I feel lucky enough to have found good sources of learning which guides  me towards the right kind of investment. I would say we are lucky enough to be living in times when the internet has made sure that everything is just a click away  . We are the very first generation which has access to a wide range of content and accessibility to experts at our fingertips. We must make the most out of this privilege and follow and learn from experts.

Since this is my first blog post, I thought of acknowledging those experts whom I learn from. Below I am sharing about each one of them (this is very limited information on these experts and only through my lens).

1. Varun Malhotra – my very first inspiration came from this Ted Talk of Varun Malhotra. After this, I followed more of his content and interviews and it opened my eyes to the world of investment, precisely equity market investment. Varun is an avid follower of Warren Buffett – an extremely passionate individual who never gets tired edifying about investments. I think he is the best advocate of ETFs / Index fund investment and in my opinion, if one wants to play safe then look no further, just follow Varun Malhotra and you will learn about the least time consuming and yet the safest form of equity market investment. He has trained more than thousands of investors and has recently made his course ‘Financial Literacy Awareness Program’ available for free. It’s high quality and easy to digest relevant content. I would recommend it for passive and long-run investors who want to play safe in the equity market while beating most of the actively managed mutual funds. Feel free to check out his: YouTube Channel, Website, and LinkedIn.
   
   
2. Manoj Rajgopal – The hidden gem, the multi-bagger. If you know Saurabh Mukherjee, then this guy belongs to the same league if not above him. Manoj is a real deal. He is a CFA Level 3 and on YouTube he may not be as popular as others, but he is no less than anyone mentioned here. In-fact, I have found him to be one of the most influential and impactful.He is perhaps the most acutely engrossed into the Finance field as he is also a faculty for Investment Banking and does a whole lot of other things in his field. Mr. Rajgopal also runs an institution where he teaches CFA Level 1, 2 & 3, Financial Modelling, which also explains why he isn’t able to give much time or focus on growing his YouTube channel. If you are just starting to learn about the stock market, then look no further and go through this playlist from Manoj. His videos are shot in a classroom setup and may not have fancy animations and other colourful stuff, but the content is real gold and better than most other playlists on YouTube. His enthusiasm and passion for finance & teaching is evident in his videos. The classroom setup for me and I am sure for many other serious learners works the best. In-fact it reflects the real vibe and energy required for learning. When I was a noob in the world of investments, his videos were my ABC, and also the most impactful compared to others. If you look at some of the other videos on his channel where he did Company Analysis, I bet you can’t find any other YouTuber in India with the kind of depth which he has. He barely talks about the stock market or stock prices in his analysis videos. It takes some level of understanding for one to be able to grasp his content, simply because his stuff is deep and insightful. To get an idea of his depth I recommend watching his banking series videos. Later I was able to contact him and we spoke 1on1 over video call wherein, I found him to be very genuine and not rushing into selling anything. I paid for a one-off advisory, and he provided me with detailed reports of 18 companies, mostly large cap / sector leaders and only a few of these were mid-small cap – where I can invest for the long run. His report covered ground level realities, future prospects and insightful rationales which made my belief in him even stronger. I now have the clarity of the path forward and a thorough understanding on the importance of getting the fundamentals right in my investing journey. I have become a net-buyer in the list of companies he recommended. If you are a serious investor with 15-20 lakhs or more funds at your disposal and more to come for regular investments, then it’s worth paying for such advisory once in a year so you can rebalance your portfolio ratios. Feel free to follow his: YouTube Channel and LinkedIn.
   
   
3. Sumit Mehrotra – In the world of Internet and Media it is said, ‘Content is King’. And Sumit can be a good example of that. He is perhaps the most well-researched and insightful brain on Indian Television. Though I am against watching Business channels, as I feel they are mainly catering to traders and the only thing they do to an investor is – confuse and make them impulsive. In the series of constantly flowing suggestions & opinions for 6-7 hours, it’s extremely hard to find honest and candid segments from an insightful panel/person who is catering only to the Investors. That’s where Sumit comes in to bridge the gap. He runs this show immediately after the market hours, which precisely gives a summary of how the day went by, concise and succinct without any fluff. Followed by that is the Q&A section where he takes live queries. That’s the meat. He often is diplomatic.Given he is on channel’s floor and camera, it’s understandable that he can’t be aloud and can’t be labelling the shit as shit, dirt as dirt and gem as a gem. However, if one listens to him on a regular basis, it’s not hard to decode his top picks. For instance, TCS is undoubtedly his first choice (which happens to be in my portfolio, but my conviction grew further after listening to him). He is absolutely against the new age companies where the north star is growth and not the profit, new IPOs etc. From the outside it looks like it’s a Q&A session but if you observe carefully there’s a lot to learn. His analysis and thought process is clearly visible. If he says a company is good, he will give his rationales and those pointers are worth noting. Next time when you spend time on screener.in or tickertape, it’s worth looking for same pointers which he emphasised on, for example: cashflow, low debt, high ROCE, Promoter pledge.One of the things I learnt and has proven a big factor in good stock ramping quickly is the ‘equity size’. Savings capital, keeping free shares, importance & magic of long-term investment / compounding are other such parameters to take into consideration. There are many such minute details which play a significant role in your investing journey, and you can easily learn them by taking notes while watching the show. Over a period of  time your knowledge will increase and it will enable you to make investment decisions yourself and also assess them.  I’ll try to cover some of the best learnings from the series of Sumit’s videos in a one single blog post sometime in future. My recommendation to someone who can’t afford the fee of a finance advisor and has a small SIP budget with a long-term view, will be to just follow Sumit Mehrotra. Having an acceess to him for free on TV and YouTube is the best thing one can get at no cost whatsoever. Here is his Twitter (most active), LinkedIn and YouTube Channel.

So, this list is my source of learning and recommendation to all – Varun for ETF, boring but super safe, for the long term. Manoj for low-risk portfolio which consistently beats the index and Sumit for all those who have a long term view but a small SIP budget to start with. Besides these three, there are other good YouTube channels like ‘Asset Yogi’, and the one which is run by ‘Akshat Shrivastava’, ‘Pranjal Kamra’ and etc. These channels are also good, but I have my observations and reasons for not covering them here in detail.

Also, another piece of advice that I can give to a newbie is to avoid listening too much to your banker, fund manager or stockbroker. You must understand that they make commissions for selling a plan to you and hence it may-not necessarily be the best for your needs and future goals. Taking a stockbroker’s advice is like playing  with a double edged sword. If you book profit they make money, if you book loss then too, they make money. So, in a nutshell, their earnings are not dependent on your profit or loss. Instead their earnings are dependent on the amount of transactions / number of trades that you make. Hence, they would give all kinds of ‘tips’. You must ask them if they themselves are investing into the stocks which they are recommending to you. Same is true for bankers and fund managers. I have had several interactions with different RMs from all kinds of banks – national, international, small player, big player. Interestingly, banks will assign a person to you and package them as your Relationship manager, but essentially, they are salespeople. Their Job is to sell what the Asset management company or bank’s management has asked them to sell. It’s all corporate there too, they get commission and rewards for making a sale. So, they may not be pitching a plan or scheme which is good for you but in most cases the plan which is good for their targets / commissions. So be courageous enough to ask them if they themselves have subscribed to such schemes, ask for proof, and be smart enough to take your own finance decisions and not get brainwashed by salespeople. Listen to them but do not let them decide your finances or future monetary goals. If you are smart enough to earn money, then you should also be smart enough to invest it too. Earn, Learn, Invest and Grow. And in the end, remember that investing and money making is supposed to be a simple, long term and boring process.

Good Luck
– Tejas