Wishing you and your family a wonderful 2019.

I’ve made it a practice to write on the first day of every year.

After quitting employment in December 2006, I formally got into this profession on 1’st January 2007.

This is our 13^th year into the profession. I’ve been evolving a lot both as an investor and an advisor. You’ve been part of this journey and I am proud to note that there are very few emotionally matured investors like you. Only a small percentage of investors can manage their behaviour and emotions well. Those who do that are the one who create wealth from markets. I’m glad that you’re all part of this tiny minority.

For the last two years, we’ve stopped taking new clients except if it comes as a strong referral from anyone of you. We’re fine with where we are now. We want quality time to be made available to you as and when required and I also enjoy the free time the current bandwidth offers.

I’m financially independent and contented with our present state. I don’t want to increase the quantity, there by affecting quality. Time is finite and there is no point in spending it by chasing more and more growth.

I want to be always of assistance to you in managing your financial affairs. I want all of you to build good wealth and also preserve the same. Getting rich is difficult and remaining rich is most difficult. We’re there to guide you both in creation and preservation of wealth.

2017 was a great year in terms of return and 2018 was bad on the same. There is no way to avoid bad years. I’ve no clue how 2019 would be. All I know is there are more good years than bad and staying invested for a decade or more creates good wealth.

It would have been a great pleasure to see the portfolio in 2017 and painful to see the same in 2018. Pain, even though temporary, is the price we have to pay for long term wealth creation.

Nothing worthwhile in life can be achieved without some amount of pain. It holds good for wealth creation from markets as well.

Focus on your life going through the pleasure and pain it offers. Leave the investment part to us. Avoid looking at portfolio frequently. The emotional roller coaster you would go through by constantly looking at markets is not worth it. There are better things to do in the finite time available on earth. We would continue to do yearly review for you, which is more than enough. Investors for whom market is not the profession, yearly portfolio review is good enough.

I wish that 2019 be good to you and your family. Once again best wishes for a wonderful year ahead.

I got lot of responses to the piece I wrote last week. Thanks for your clarity and understanding.

September has been a very bad month for the markets. The indices do not adequately reflect the pain individual portfolios have gone through. Even good quality stocks have gone through brutal correction. Debt market has been no exception to this pain.

It is not possible to predict how long this fall would last and when markets would recover. But what we do know is that good years are more than bad years. Around 70% of time (in years) markets are positive and the balance 30% it is negative.

Markets, be it debt or equity, never produce linear returns. The returns are always lumpy. 80% of the returns happen in 20% of the time. There is no way to time this 20%. Staying invested all the time is best way to capture the market returns.

To avoid fear and prevent impulsive decisions, please don’t track your portfolio. Not looking at portfolio frequently is always a good habit more so at the times like these.

Going through roller coaster ride of volatility is the price we’ve to compulsorily pay for getting good long term returns. Markets have always been like this. This is very normal.

If we are sick of volatility, then we’ve opt for fixed return products like bank deposits. But the problem there is the returns hardly matches inflation and post tax returns can actually end up eroding our purchasing power.

If we want to have returns above inflation, build wealth, preserve and enhance our purchasing power; there is no way to avoid the pain resulting out of volatility.

Discipline and patience is the key. Patience has its origin in a French word meaning suffering. To be patient is to suffer.  No doubt, we find it very difficult to develop patience.

Patience is painful. But reward for the patience makes the suffering worthwhile.

10% fall once a year, 20% fall once in couple of years and 30% fall atleast once a decade is unavoidable. It is better to be prepared to face it.

Focus only on long term and stay the course.

Temporary fall in values are not losses unless we sell in panic.

Don’t panic.

This too shall definitely pass.