Recently while watching CNBC during their Bazaar Morning call, I came across an old colleague who had been called to give his market view on various stocks.
The segment started with the anchor conveying his and the team’s condolences to the individual for the loss of his wife and his words were.
“None of us knew that you have been carrying this pain since last 1 year”.
His wife was suffering from cancer that was detected last year.
All these months as a routine he was on TV almost every day on one or the other channel.
And not even once you would have got the impression that his wife was on death bed, and he was going through this stress.
The Mumbai Spirit
The famous Mumbai Spirit is invoked every time the city goes through a crisis- floods of 26/07/2005 or the siege of 26/11/2008 or the multiple bomb blasts in the city.
Each time the next day people of Mumbai are back to work doing what they must.
While people outside of one’s realm would dispassionately require you to be professional, is it that easy?
It is said that people don’t care for who you are, they only care for what you can do for them.
There are all kinds of worries around us all the time.
- Income/job stability
- Office politics
- Loan payments.
- Health/sickness-self or someone in the family
- Kid’s education
While these are the near to home worries, we also worry about the world in general:
- Wars
- Geopolitics
- Domestic Politics
- Religion
- Economy
- Inequalities
However, you still must put your head down and achieve every day what people expect you to achieve.
Separating what’s going on around you or what you are going through emotionally, mentally to maintain your composure and doing your job the way it needs to be done is least appreciated trait of human beings.
Always Something to be Skeptical About
There is so much negativity around and the noise from social media amplifying it that your head will spin, and you will question your very existence.
As an investor, I have realized that you can’t let the negativity cloud your investing judgement.
Humans and the world have survived all kinds of crisis including the times when people thought world’s resources will be over soon and human race will be wiped out due to malnourishment and hunger or decades of cold war when people feared that nuclear bomb shall finish the world.
And closer still the pandemic when investors quit the market fearing the worst.
However, we came out on the top each time.
Maintaining that composure and separating your investment decision from how the world around you are operating at any instance is part of the investing discipline that you build.
Each negative spiral has the potential for something positive and each positive action that sent market soaring can bring it down.
Nothing is more illustrative of this than the covid period.
Everything was shut, people were sitting at home.
The Govt.’s came gave stimulus, cash cheques and supported the economy to the extent that we saw the shortest bear market and a huge bull run.
And eventually the glut that the Govt’s created and the supply chain disruptions due to covid closures followed by Russia Ukraine war created the perfect storm for a large correction.
So getting lost in these negativities instead of choosing to stick to your investment discipline is the biggest mistake that you can make.
Hope the next time you will do things differently.
Thank you for reading
Irreverentinvestor.com 