Shock Market

I opened my DeMat account long time back but it took some time to put my first penny into the Stock market. Guess, I shall attribute my reluctance to my gene pool as coming from a middle class family and that too from a Marathi middle class family where "Thy shall not put your money into the stock market" is the 11th commandment which has to be followed very religiously. For a long time, I watched the stock prices like a spectator watching a game from the sidelines, applauding, shouting, hooting, expressing a lot of emotions but all as an outsider, someone who has nothing to lose or win for that matter, no matter what the result is. All the emotions were essentially second hand experience(theres a GRE word for this but damn cant remember it[:D]). Then one day it all changed and I put my money in some stocks. Life has never been the same.
I remember participating in some mock stock competition in college some years back(finished 3rd out there btw earning around Rs 350 for an investment of Rs 50:D --- yeah apne muh miyaa mithu) where people traded mock stocks and the principle which most followed was ......If a company has some good news, people would throng to buy it, and if some bad news is put up against it, everyone would start selling. I used to wonder that although this principle was correct, it was amateurish and I was convinced that real stock market buy/ sell would not be based on such near sightedness. But having seen the stock market and some stock prices in the past 8 months, I have realized that the principle still holds true. In the recent black mondays,tuesdays.....fridays, it seems that people sell or buy on just pure good or bad sentiment. The recent mega crash in which the market crashed from 20k-21k to about 13k-14k saw lakhs and crores being wiped off in a single day. I guess people want instant money and when they see the prices of their stocks reduced to a rubble, in such a short span of time, the first reaction to the selling pressure is to run away with as much as you can take.
I sure have learnt something. People looking for large short term profits need to have big hearts and deep pockets. People do get themselves screwed in their quest for quick money. Greed is one human quality and many including me have fallen prey. Long term profits can be gained on most big companies, again theres some risk involved but then stock market means some risk. You try to wonder if you can have a scientific explanation for the stock market prices and you realise that if at all theres one, it would be something beyond my comprehension. The only explanation is good news == more buyers == increase in stock price and vice versa.
The quintessential sermons that are given in a maharashtrian family that "Stock Market हां एक जुगार आहे " now doesn't sound that wrong i suppose. In the short term, it sure is no better than BlackJack.......But then again, even blackjack can be cracked open.........

Happy .....er not so Happy Birthday

Birthdays come and birthdays go, but this birthday was my weirdest. It was different as it wasn't preceded by any excitement but on the contrary filled up with a feeling of trying to hold on to my previous age. When you are a child, you always want more and more birthdays, you want them to come fast as you look forward to get rid of the 'child' tag and become an adult. I have concluded that this eagerness lasts until the age 24, after which you want just the opposite. Birthdays should come as late as possible, try to delay the inevitable, well in this case you cant even try. So birthdays will no longer remain birthdays. As Ronan Keating sings, life is surely a roller coaster and you gotta ride it. Just that roller coasters end with a steep drop where all the fun is, life begins with a steep drop and then at some point of time, the fun ceases and the ride turns into more of a slow, gradual upward movement against the gravity, with no more steep drops where one can scream, shout, laugh, wave......[:(] I came across this interesting and real funny perspective on how life should be.
Anyways, this birthday was weird and memorable, made even more memorable by employees of ATN. Thanks to them, I remembered my bday for the next 4 days.......ouch it still hurts.....
Some thoughts:
1) Age could be made expressed always as keeping 24 yrs as base value. So 25 yrs would be 24 yrs 12 months..........
2) Use of different numeric base. So 25 yrs would be 19 in hex......(Thanks to phdcomics for this suggestion)
3) Tax people who ask your age but do not accept it in the above two formats.

Bryan bhaiyya says 18 till I die. Worth a try.......