Learning can never stop!
I was a latecomer to the stock market among our group of friends. I took this decision once I saw the returns I made through a SIP performance which I made 5 years ago just to claim it for tax exemption. I didn’t even know where I was investing. I saw a couple of good reviews for the fund and I went ahead with it.
One and a half years later, I revisited my accoun to check for it’s performance. It was doing better. So I started to understand how this whole SIP works. I read a lot, really mean a lot. If I couldn’t sleep—I used to read. If I went to a shop on foot — I used to read. While breaking for a coffee in my office — I used to read. Any time I got off from my family — I used to read. I rearranged my phone’s screen to the apps that guide me to read through articles about stocks, stock, and stocks. I didn’t spend a paise on any of the so called famous books for trading. I learnt from:
- Free articles in the internet
- Company press meets
- Financial apps’ articles
- Local news channles
- Independent news sites (they do the best research to get quality content and a healthy follower base)
- Open discussion with friends
- Soical media mostly Instagram and Pinterest (per my view, facebook is junk) — if you can organize your feed and followers, social media is an enormous platform which gives you access to unlimited access to the information. You may not be able to guage how much of the information is authentic, but there are some really good wise persons who more than happy to share their learnings and skills.
Back to learning the stocks, I started to analyze the companies and tried to figure out who is their sponsor/investor. There’s always a string to find such things — a name, a logo, name of an investor, and so on. There’s always a scope to back track the main heroes who run the show from behind the screen. A classic example is, Play-Doh. Do you know that Hasbro (yeah the folks who made Transformers movies) is a key investor in this?! Another example: Hamleys, the world famous toy store is now owned by an Indian conglomerate Reliance.
To find the right side of the story to make your money; you need a proper research and studies about the company you’re inveting in. Remember STUDYING IS THE KEY for anything and everything that you want to do. Learning should never stop in one’s life.
No matter in which field you are in, or what your passion is, or at what age you are; keep studying about it. Make sure your environment which you can contol around you pushes you to study. Remove the notification permissions for the social media apps on your phone, unless it pushes you to read. It might feel weird initially, but 3 day later; you’ll be greatful to yourself. You can see how much focused you can be once this is implemented. So read, read, and keep reading.
The illeterate of 21st century will not be the ones who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. — Alvin Toffler.