Fool?

I don’t mind.

What?

Being called that.

Why?

For me, it’s an indicator.

How?

When someone in my environment expresses that he / she considers me foolish, this acts for me like a guage.

Where?

In order formulation.

Which?

Good till traded orders.

Explain.

Ok. Let’s say someone considered my 787 GTT HDFC Bank entry foolish. With price having fallen to 745, and still not showing signs of stability, someone might consider me foolish for having entered ‘early’ at 787. I want this to happen. I want to sense this attitude in another person’s behaviour.

Then?

Simple. Formulate and enter next GTT for HDFC Bank at 690.

What’s the logic?

That’s just the way I use this indicator.

Position-sized small quantum?

Absolutely.

Considered bulk-entry at bottom?

What’s the bottom? Who claims to know the bottom?

499?

No idea. How do you know you’ll catch the bottom? What if you miss entry altogether?

What if I get full entry in lumpsum, at 499?

What if price stays below 400 for a month after that? Your lumpsum entry will hardwire you to your terminal, and it’s one month of sleepless nights, I can promise you that. Neurosis. Psychosis. Freeze. God knows how long it will be before you can take another rational decision.

And your staggered full entry with a higher buying average will not cause all these things?

That’s the whole point. It will not.

It will not? How?

Market psychology is counter-intuitive. When are you going to understand this one basic point? Going in, let’s say ten times, between 800 and 499, over three months, at every new entry, the nervous system forgets older price. It focuses on newer price, not even on buying average. It actively registers one small quantum entry at 499 as per this strategy, and forgets other entries above, at least forgets them well enough to suit the purpose. Bottomline – such a nervous system is poised to avoid neurosis, psychosis and the like.

You’re just making this up.

Try it out. This is what works for me towards full strategy implementation. I am able to successfully fool my nervous system into buying maximum units without setting it up to hurt itself, should the market fall more, and stay lower for longish periods. This is my win, and a cornerstone of my lowering the buying average strategy in high conviction stocks during crises. Tested successfully during CoViD. No more testing. Current crisis is about full implementation. Will keep this buying strategy on through the entire crisis, or till fully invested, whatever comes first.

Why put in everything?

This is money sidelined to go in. It’s not daily resources money, or college fund money, or family expenses money. It is investing money. It’s supposed to go in. What’s better for it than to go in low?

Where is the courage coming from?

High conviction is a state of mind. It’s a reflex. Over time and over many, many studies, observations, behaviour analyses etc., you develop it for a stock. Once you have high conviction in a stock, nothing should come in between you and full entry, if price allows.

Am still trying to decided whether you look foolish or intelligent?

Though I don’t care for your opinion, I don’t mind it either if you give it to me, for I will use the encounter as an indicator.

Is that what you’ve gravitated down to, using ridiculous and self-concocted indicators to navigate the markets?

Doing things which no one else has before sets me up for vindication no one else has gotten before. No more questions, do the math.

What Do You Live For?

From target to target…

…what are we striving for really?

We achieve… and move on. 

Next step, please.

Yeah, that is a recurring phrase / question on my mind. 

I climb a small step, and I ask myself – what is the next step?

Then comes identification of this next step. 

Then comes climbing of it. 

Then comes the question again. 

What is the next step?

One can go on and on like this. 

What is it that we actually want to achieve?

Goals will come and go. 

Something or the other will always be out of whack. 

You fix it. 

Something else starts to bother you. 

You fix that. 

Then something else. 

You get the picture. 

The question being asked here is … what is the driving force? What gives us satisfaction? What are we in it for?

Different people might give different answers. 

My take is that it boils down to one thing. 

The feeling of exhilaration…after a target…that endorphin burst…that sense of having gotten somewhere…that excitement about being on the right track…about being vindicated…that something…however which way you wish to describe it…is it. It is that what we strive for. I feel so. At the centre of things in life, is the desire for that state of being. My humble opinion. 

I try and stay with it. Once that feeling comes, that is. If comes off and on. There are so many targets in life, mostly small ones. So the endorphin burst happens quite often actually. For that matter it happens while exercising too. Whenever it happens, however it happens, I try to stay with it. I try to enjoy that moment. That moment gives it all a very beautiful meaning. 

Staying with the moment…didn’t someone else say that? Wasn’t it the Dalai Lama?