Greed, Fear & Funds

Behavioral biases while taking investment decision makes an investor take irrational decision, who otherwise make rational decision. DSIJ explains how two of the most dominant emotion impacts your overall investment returns.

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Every attempt by the bulls to take control of the market is being butchered by the bears. The equity market that was bi-polar for some time has become unipolar in the last few trading sessions. Few stocks that were taking the market up till recently are also witnessing selling pressure now. Although the bellwether equity indices have gained 12% since January 2018, and till recently, these indices were soaring to new highs. But it was only a handful of stocks that were driving the indices higher. Hence, this masked the turbulence in the broader market. The fact remains that the Indian stock market is going through one of the worst phases in recent years reflected in the graph below.

Now, even the sacred names have started falling and are showing signs of fatigue after their recent results or management commentary. Therefore, in the last few trading sessions, we saw that the market was falling continuously.

The graph clearly shows the movement of the Indian equity market since the start of FY17. After the initial soaring of the key indices, there has been a free fall of the Nifty Midcap and Smallcap indices after they reached their highs at the start of January 2018. The frontline index Nifty managed to stay afloat, thanks to those few names. The broader indices Nifty Smallcap and Midcap are already in the grip of the bears and have fallen by more than 20% from the peak attained at the start of the year 2018.

The impact on MF investor