This topic of social stigma, once you land up in Markets, with a serious intention & knowledge to me, seems to be quite obvious.
From Day 1 in our lives, we are brought up with these insights, that our actions have got repercussions on the family, society & even some people would not shy, even link that small act of ours, to Nation as well.
This kind of grooming over couple of decades, instills in ourselves a notional feeling, as we are committing any sin, to try to become a full time Investor eventually, after putting a lot of hard work.
Coming now to specifics, moving from the generics, my father has been associated with Public Sector, as far his Employment tenure goes. He has always been too conservative & worried about deploying his own hard earned money of several decades, when it comes to Stock Markets.
He has seen so many of our family friends & relatives, losing a huge chunk of their money in Markets, that I was given a Mantra, when I was joining my 1st Job, a decade ago, that do not invest a single rupee of your salary in the Stock Market. FD’s , MIS, KVP;s & PPF/EPF’s of the world, are the only measure to safeguard our social commitments & obligations, towards our families.
As in my 1st couple of lines at opening of this point of view of mine, I have been tuned to this mindset for over 2 decades, that even I could not realize the cause-effect analysis, of this situation, for over half a decade of my Job, when I got lured to read more on Personal Finance, as I have always been fond of Number Crunching.
I was working for IT Industry, as most of us here do & never ever felt till 2010 even that I became an Engineer too, because my Father wanted to make me so. Its after 2010 that I developed a keen interest towards market, that I feel was too late as an incumbent, to experiment on my own with basics & commit my own mistakes of losing money, without which my Learning Journey, could have never been fruitful.
My gut instinct, over these times, has always been over my head to quit job, & become a Full Time Trader & mint money on a daily basis & earn your monthly expenses…
Yes you heard it right—Full Time Trader & not Investor.
I burnt my hands severely, as a learning exercise & of course my family as usual, was against all this & did not support me on a single instance.
But I kept on reading more & more, understanding the basics right & this foundation stone helped me to identify good businesses (& not stock). I learnt basic fact of Markets, that always get yourself associated with good businesses & Stocks & their relative prices would follow.
Promoter integrity is the key to drive your aspirations of making it big in Markets & demonstrate an edge of Equities as an Asset Class, over a Long Period of time, with Compounding to play its own game & also stick to these quality businesses, which you picked & load more of them in downturns & keep an hawkish eye to evaluate them, as they are not deviating from their Core Values, which was the sole reason for you to enter.
I am moving ahead on this journey of Markets, smoothly now & I have got my Mindset now that Quitting a Job is a not a solution in itself, until it is backed up by intensive knowledge & also a decent corpus. Always be assured of your Active Income, to meet your day in day out expenses, without any compromises & at the same time try more & more of the surplus left to put in to Equities & let it grow, along with your Birthdays to come.
Hope this makes some sense.