Category: Early

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Early Selling Skills Stories Story Selling Timeless

Review

Understanding the difference between REVIEW and RELIVE

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Anchoring bias paralyses decision making on account of some unpleasant past experience.

Let’s say somebody experienced a loss during a past market meltdown and walked out of equity investing never to step in again.

This is anchoring bias or we can say anchored to the past.

The way out of this bias is to REVIEW the bias rather than RELIVE the bias.

When you REVIEW you analyse dispassionately with you mind keeping the heart out of the process. There is no place for emotion in REVIEW.

When you REVIEW you figure out

1) Market correction is the nature of the beast. Correction is part and parcel of equity investing and one has to take it in one’s stride in order to benefit over the long term. What happened was what was meant to be.

2) Market correction ain’t permanent loss. It is a temporary notional loss and the loss would recover over time.

3) Market correction is not driven by investment but by environment (macro factors) which eventually markets recover

4) Having patience and conviction is more important than having knowledge

5) Market crashes are opportunities to invest and a time to reclaim lost opportunities of the past

Any person who REVIEWS an event will land up gaining from it.

However, instead of REVIEWING if you start RELIVING the past you allow your emotions to overpower your ability of cognitive thinking; the power to dissect and analyse a situation dispassionately.

You experience the same feelings that you had felt in the past and it seems it will recur all over again. The past experience becomes the present feeling and the mind freezes and logic becomes elusive. The memory of loss overwhelms everything else and the heart just takes over decision making. All emotion and no cognition.

Therefore learn to REVIEW, learn from it and move on in life.

And stop RELIVING.

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Early Stories Timeless

Money Lessons

Some Very Important Financial Tips that Everyone Should Know ….

  1. Avoid buying property on loans as it eats most of your earnings unless you have a clear plan for its repayment. It’s important to monitor cash flow. Though, the house will be your asset, your liability will be much more. A better idea is to stay on rent as rental yields are low. Secondly your liquidity will increase. Thirdly your investment corpus will increase. All this will result in more wealth creation.
  2. Start a SIP at a very young age. Try to save atleast 15–25 % of your earnings.
  3. Avoid buying a car unless you use it everyday.
  4. Do not let this sentence scare you. “Mutual fund investment are subject to market risk. Please read the offer documents carefully before investing”. Most people avoid investing in mutual funds just because of this one warning. Yes, there is a market risk, but look at the history and growth of mutual funds.
  5. Try having a simple wedding.
  6. Most of your wealth should be liquid so you can utilize it when necessary.
  7. Considering inflation, you are actually losing money if it is in savings bank account. Do not keep huge money in savings bank account.
  8. If you invest in stocks, pay due attention.
  9. Else a mutual fund portfolio is a better and sustainable option where an expert fund manager looks after your portfolio.
  10. Do not have a belief that property and car make you rich. Its what you save and invest, that creates wealth.
  11. Never invest in insurance for returns. Insurance is not an investment option. It is a risk management tool.
  12. 12. Never use credit cards for lavish spending. Use credit cards intelligently and for needs not for wants.
  13. 13. Cancel all credit cards before you die. Or inform family about all your accounts, credit cards, loans and saving now itself. Even a small residue will cost your family much.
  14. Invest on yourself and then on other investments.
  15. Always try to balance your earnings with your savings first, then on spending and loans. Never take unnecessary loans. Always have reserve and utilise them and unless no other go never take loan.
  16. Always have a plan for future events on your career, life, spending and finance.
  17. Always have a reserve on your savings for contingency and urgent situations.
  18. Your personal life and health are the most important investment. Do have a regular health check and do healthy workout every day. Stay healthy and live happily.
  19. Always remember death can come anytime…..so please do buy adequate term Insurance if you have dependents.
  20. Prepare a Will. It may avoid unnecessary fights after you die.

Dharmendra Satapathy

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Early Timeless

Don’t be a Turkey (?)

Imagine you were a turkey on a brisk October day, happily clucking away.

If you were to predict the future from looking at the recent past, you would have little reason to worry.

Every day your owner has fed you well and made sure you are healthy; you may, therefore, confidently predict that your owner loves turkeys and that the future for you looks rosy.

On Thanksgiving Day you would be in for a shock when the owner pulls out a knife to slit your throat and have you for dinner.

People who believe past information is all that they need to become astute investors are like such turkeys who may remain lucky for some time believing they are smart investors ( even though they have never taken time out to learn and get educated about investing )

They start believing after experiencing a lucky phase that investing is easy and past performance data is all that’s needed to be on the fast track to wealth creation.

Ironically even washing clothes and dishes is seen by these same people as specialised jobs.

Like the turkey, one day this kind of rear view mirror thinking will shock them leaving them high and dry not knowing what hit them.

Before being over confident about investing remember “past performance need not have a bearing on future performance” and “investing” is as specialised a field as any other profession.

If it’s not possible for an ordinary person to become a doctor by searching for health solutions on Google same way it’s not possible to be an investment professional because of access to past performance.

Dharmendra Satapathy

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Early Stories Story Selling

How to be a super IFA – Series 1

As a financial advisor, it is essential to learn the art of communication.

And who else to emulate than the great communicator, Warren Buffett.

Some of his timeless lessons are:-

  1. Talk with simplicity. Keep it plain. Keep it simple. Don’t complicate. Don’t make it complex. Keep jargon at bay.
  2. Be interesting and if possible be entertaining. These attributes engender emotions that enhance engagement and attention and make people happy. If you can make them smile, you will win them by a mile.
  3. Try to project descriptive imagery that is understood by people. Remember that people can understand images better than listless and dry words that are incapable of throwing up a picture. Some words have image projection capabilities.Select the right words.
  4. Be humble and unpretentious. Pride is the nemesis of every profession and every business.
  5. Never ever speak over people’s heads. People hate looking and feeling stupid. Their typical refrain would be, “what he says just goes over my head. I cannot trust him with my money because I cannot understand what he would do with it.”

Dharmendra Satapathy

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Early News Story Selling

Misunderstood

Misunderstood Profession
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At a student Q&A, Buffett was asked what surprises him the most.

He replied pointing to Bill Gates who was standing next to him:

“People look at Bill Gates and think they can’t do what he did. They look at me and think they can do what I did”

For some reason, everyone believes they can manage their money proficiently even though history has a completely different story which says that while “investment” returns have been spectacular, “investors” have returned empty handed or abysmally little to talk about.

Perhaps the art of money management is misunderstood as a science.

1) Money management is to do a lot with undefined patterns that is harnessed by years of experience.

2) Money management is about taking action but also largely also about inaction. Money management is a lot about doing nothing and letting “boredom” win the battle for “patience” to win the war

3) Money management is more a science of human psychology and behaviour managment than a science of statistics that people believe algorithms/robots can conquer.

It is an irony that one assumes that “reading the offer document” is all that is needed to become an investor.

If a document and a TV channel could make investors proficient then all one would need would be a similar document and TV channel to manufacture successful doctors.

The truth is that even a doctor becomes proficient, not by earning his or her degree but because of years of experience of seeing countless patients.

As regards “malpractices”, the perpetrators of the same should to be booked but then one also needs to understand that “exceptions” cannot be turned into the pen that writes the rules for the rest.

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Early News

Growth of Financial Assets in India

If one looks at the growth of financial assets in India between the Financial year 2016 and 2017, the impact of demonetisation stands out starkly. Cash is one of the only asset classes that has seen as massive shrinking of assets.

At 39.72% growth, Mutual Funds are leading the pack. With Mutual Fund Sahi Hai campaign and education efforts this growth rate is only posed to reach higher scales

Fixed deposits are 9.04% seems to be slipping and rightly so.

Overall growth has been very healthy for equities and unlisted equities

Current account deposits and savings deposits too have seen healthy growth but with FD growth getting curtailed  it indicates high mobilisation potential into equities and mutual funds.

The message for  IFAs is clear.

The opportunity is on the table for the take.

However one will have to put in the requisite effort to move the assets.

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Early News

Panel

During the Mutual Fund Distributor’s Summit 2017 held recently at the NISM campus near Mumbai, a panel was set up to discuss the role of investor education in business growth. The panelists were :-

  1. Shri Manish Mehta, National Head of Sales & Distribution Alliances, Kotak Mutual Fund
  2. Shri K S Rao, Vice President, Birla Sunlife Mutual Fund
  3. Shri Premal Pampaliya, Head-L&D, Reliance Mutual Fund
  4. Shri Gaurav Suri, Sr. EVP and Head-Marketing, UTI AMC
  5. Shri Akhil Chaturvedi, National Head-Sales, Motilal Oswal MF

The 5 key takeouts from the panel discussion were:-

  1. Investor Education is a very powerful tool for acquiring new customers and hence for genuine business growth and industry sustenance.
  2. Distributors need to invest in themselves by learning the skills needed to conduct investor education. Depending upon AMCs and Trainers alone would be grossly insufficient.
  3. There is huge business growth potential but unless we harness the power of education we won’t be able to realise this potential
  4. While the popular campaign “Mutual Fund Sahi Hai” will get people positively inclined towards “Mutual Funds” and is necessary but the campaign by itself isn’t sufficient. It needs the support of IFAs who have to act as the foot soldiers to reach out education to the people on the ground
  5. Investor education isn’t a sales presentation. Never expect immediate returns from investor education. Make investor education a way of life. Enjoy the process of educating people and rise in the eyes of those you educate. Over a period of time the education efforts would certainly bear fruit and a large percentage of people whom you educate would approach you for their investment needs.