Tag Archives: #Timeframe

Lumpsum vs Piecemeal

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What’s a…

…better…

…market entry?

Lumpsum, or piecemeal?

Since I function in a growth market, …

…which can be seen as a microcap vis à vis the world, …

(you guessed it, India, currently exhibiting value, …

…but for our discussion please treat it as a growth market,) …

…and, because this discussion makes the most sense for a growth market exactly, …

…please, therefore, treat this comparison as a tool to help you decide…

…your growth market entry strategy.

You come into a lumpsum, let’s say.

What are your options? For the investible portion that is.

Pump in – one shot?

Average down, bit by bit, as and when opportunities arise?

Two ends of the spectrum. Where do you stand? Let’s break it down.

What’s your capacity for drawdowns?

Can you take a 50% notional drawdown, and not have a sleepless night?

Yes? Sure? Ok, pump it into the long-term growth market in one shot, provided you know your stocks well enough. In ten years time you’ll look like a star. In three months, a fool. One year, bigger fool. Perhaps. Slowly, growth will show, …

…and compound.

In two decades, you’ll rule.

Not able to take the big drawdown? Don’t like looking like a short-term fool?

That’s ok.

Very few people can handle big drawdowns.

Even lesser individuals like looking like fools, even if for a short time.

Then you can go in bit by bit.

Two strategies.

If you know your stocks well, you can average down.

If you want the market to throw you winners, you can average up.

Disadvantages?

Sure. You aren’t subjected to big drawdown pangs, and aren’t chastised by the masses for investing on interim highs. In lieu of that, not all of your money is in, and thus, not all of it is exposed to growth, or for that matter compounding. Also, your money hangs around to be…

…spent.

Don’t like the downsides of either extreme?

There’s a way out for you. You can take the middle path. You can also decide for yourself how ‘middle’ it is.

Decide for yourself a time-period that you want to be in by. 3 months? 6 months, 9 months, 12 months? Longer will take you towards full-on piecemeal.

Decide also, for yourself, about averaging down, up, or down till a level, and from that point onwards, only up. You can say that you are for example going in to a stock with margin of safety, up to a level, but then you would like the stock to prove itself, and from that point onwards, you now start averaging up as the growth story unfolds. You can then couple your averaging down and up combo to your total time-frame selected for going in.

Bottom-line : in X months your funds start getting full growth and compounding effects, as per the cost-averaging mix Y you have chosen.

Both X & Y should be a function of your risk profile.

Isn’t that the reason why you chose the middle path, because you didn’t want to be exposed to lumpsum drawdowns?

So, three choices, break it down, follow what suits.

On a personal front, if money needs to go into a growth market, for me its better sooner than later.

Took a long time to realize this though.

My pursuit for financial independence was impeding this understanding.

The moment financial independence was achieved, along with it came the realization…

…that we don’t wait on a long-term growth market.

When the Groove Yields Infinity

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What’s an ideal groove?

It’s a frame-set…

…that makes you outperform.

When you find your ideal groove, you keep levelling up, as if it were the daily norm.

Why?

You feel like working.

The groove is such.

It’s a coupling of the right environment, the right time-sets, the right people, the right systems…and you.

And, it’s not just any odd coupling.

It’s the ideal coupling.

Saying that you feel like working is actually an understatement.

You feel like outperforming. That’s a more accurate statement.

Even more accurate would be, that outperformance becomes a habit with you.

Such is the groove.

Wow!

How does one find this groove?

HA!

Now you’re asking the million dollar question.

Many perish without finding it.

Many have never heard of it. They just don’t know any better.

Some have heard of it, but their circumstances are such, that they don’t have the time, resources or energy to look for it.

A few are able to search for it.

Even fewer make it past strategy.

Some of these are able to couple their many strategies into a full-fledged system.

Now comes fitting.

One needs to now fit-fit-fit.

A handful will keep fitting their systems…

…and fitting and fitting…

till the system fits…

…themselves.

When you hear that fitting sound come through, like a broken bone being set and making a loud popping or snapping sound, you know that you have a fit.

Once a successful system fits you, it is then capable of yielding infinity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding your Groove

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Form matters.

Form as in – shape.

What’s the implementable shape of your strategy?

You might have identified your market strategy after a lot of effort.

However, you are still not succeeding with it.

You know it’s the right strategy for you.

What’s off?

Why is your strategy not making you money?

It’s probably not being implemeted in sync with your character-, time- and risk-profile(s).

Your strategy is not in sync with YOU.

Bring it in sync, and then implement it.

You will see the difference.

Tone it down. Tone it up. You know yourself. By now, you’ve also recognized your risk-profile. Play with time. Which time-frame are you most comfortable with?

Make your strategy an extension of yourself.

Sleepless nights means you are doing it wrong.

Keep fitting-fitting-fitting till there’s total synchronization.

If you are not able to totally fit the strategy even after solid tweaking, look for a new strategy.

When a strategy has an edge, and is successfully fitted to oneself, it can be implemented with success.

Find your groove.

What does that mean?

It means the creation of circumstances for yourself where you are able to implement the succesful strategy again and again and again.

The strategy should make you feel like going for it repeatedly.

Nothing in your environment should distract you enough to make you fail to implement the successful strategy. Try and bring it on auto-pilot as much as you can. If something manual remains, try and create a life for yourself where that manual step can be repeated with ease.

There will be many disturbances.

You’ll need to attenuate these enough to put the manual steps in motion.

That is the toughest part.

Constraints keep cropping up, and we are not able to implement because of them.

Yes, the most difficult part is for your groove to keep churning despite constraints.

Finding your groove is the precursor to maintaining your groove.