An Inspiring Friday Session With Mr. Kishore on Investment

Mr Kishore, the founder of Sree Consultancy and Insignis, a Wealth Management and Investment Consultant took the floor of echoVME this Friday and gave us an insightful session on smart investment.

The session started off with him asking us where we would rate ourselves, on a scale of 0 to 10, when Finance is concerned. Most of our replies were from 0 to 3 with which he highlighted the point that ‘the ignorance level of finance is high and so is its utility’. He then asked us if any of us have invested in anything before and was shocked to see that there was only one person who had invested in stocks. What came next was how investing in stock is profitable and how it’s the cultural baggage that we carry with ourselves that binds us from investing.

Mr. Kishore took Real Estate industry as an example to explain to us what consumer behaviour is and the kind of cultural baggage they carry. Below are a few facts he stated:

• People invest in real estate because it brings with it social status and not a sense of security.
• A house is a need/ necessity for the mankind and not an investment
• Real estate has more than 90% gain and Stock has less than 3% gain and that is because of consumer behaviour towards investing in real estate and stock

He touched on the main reasons why people don’t invest in stock by asking us why we haven’t invested in it. Upon getting our answers he broke the myth about the price confusion, the fear of the unknown, and a risky gamble that comes when investing in stocks.

He told us that there is no easy way to make money. Even if a rupee doubles itself every year, after 30 years it’s worth will be 100 Crore and that is next to impossible. He told us stock is not a gamble and investing in stocks won’t mean you’re gambling. If you don’t want to take a risk, invest in an institution body that already has your money in the form of deposits/ savings. It’s our culture that says taking risk is not good and that’s because we don’t know how to invest. Had we the understanding of how stocks work; it wouldn’t be a risky investment anymore.

To make us easily understand how stock works he advised us to invest in brands that we use in our day to day lives. He asked us to do the following.

• On a paper and make a note of all the brands that you use in a day from Colgate to Colgate again.
• Don’t invest all your money in one brand. Split it across 10 different brands. (Pepsodent, Titan, Britannia, Nestle)
• If 1 brand goes down, don’t panic. Sell your shares and get your money out of it.

Though the topic was intense and the takeaways were taking it’s time to get digested, his reference of marriage with everything that he spoke about made it much easier for us to grasp the workings and hence made the session humorous. It was extremely knowledgeable and Mr. Kishore’s spirited attitude made even learning about stock relatively easy.

5 Key Takeaways On Investing

1. When it is safe to work in a place like Wipro, it’s safe to invest in it.
2. Patience is the key to investing.
3. Choose your consultant/advisor right.
4. Don’t buy one stock or the stock of one brand.
5. Know what your object towards investing is and be disciplined towards it.

At the end of the session, he was open to our questions and left us with the words, “We are great consumers but poor investors. Make your life simple and interesting, logical and rational by securing yourself and investing.”