When housewife Rupali Shah packed off her 10-year-old daughter for her morning tennis lessons in south Mumbai, little did she expect a hard volley on television.
Rabin Ghosh & Nandini Lakshman
Mumbai: When housewife Rupali Shah packed off her 10-year-old daughter for her morning tennis lessons in south Mumbai, little did she expect a hard volley on television.
An avid stockmarket player, Shah lost nearly Rs 12 lakh on eight stocks when the markets fell 826 and 453 points last Thursday and Friday. Monday’s 1,110-point tumble, which she watched on TV, shaved off another Rs 3.5 lakh from her Rs 45 lakh invested portfolio.
Though the markets revived after the 30-minute break in trading, she was still down 10% when the day’s trading ended.
“I haven’t given up hope, as the fundamentals are strong. What has to happen will happen,” says Shah, who proposes to “plonk” herself before the TV tomorrow once again” to see where her wealth is headed.
Shah is a high-net worth individual (HNI) who knows that bad times have to be weathered even as others panic and pull out of the market to lick their wounds. That is the case with Pujit Agarwal, too.
“The fundamentals are good and they don’t change overnight. So the volatility isn’t anything to worry about,” says the 35-year-old, Harvard-educated real estate developer. Monday’s bloodbath eroded 25% of his invested portfolio.
Was he worried? Forget it. A minute after the market opened after the cooling period, he pumped in almost Rs 3 crore in four stocks —including Siemens, Bharat Heavy Electricals and Century Textiles. “This stemmed the erosion,” he says.
Today, 90% of Agarwal’s surplus funds are invested in equity with the rest in mutual funds.
His direct equity holdings are spread over at least 25 companies at any given time. For somebody who began investing only three years ago, he sure is no novice. “I expected this when the market was at 10,000, so why worry?” he says.
With 75% of his portfolio in mid-caps stocks, he plans to increase it by a minimum of 20% annually.
Agarwal is cool, but the manager of a leading private bank is stressed out. He has been juggling calls on his two cellphones and a landline.
Harried investors have been pleading for redeeming their investments from some of the bank’s mutual fund schemes. “Finally, to fend off people, I kept saying that we were just discussing their case,” says a senior manager.
He refers to one particular investor who has been harassing him day and night since last week.
The net asset value (NAV) of his Rs 1.25 crore mutual fund portfolio had showed annual returns of 51% some time ago. It had came down to 10% at last count.
“If I take Monday’s fall, then it is negative. Customers are baffled by the speed of the fall,” says the manager. This, despite informing all investors on Friday that the market would fall 1,000 points in the next 2-3 days.
Clearly, for many rich individuals, the name of the game is to stay invested and wait for the sentiment to improve.
(Most names have been changed to protect the identities of the investors involved)
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