2018 Year End Musings and Thinking About 2019 - Notes to self, not for debate 
This is a business of speculation. At best what one can indulge in, is intelligent speculation. To that end, we must think about the picture as much as possible to come to a conclusion.
The one big sector which has held up in 2018 has been FMCG consumer. The FMCG consumer is now closely what the original Nifty Fifty in the US was nearly 50 years ago. I think that too much money has flown into the safe haven of FMCG consumer and that, finally in 2019, we will for the first time see the breakdown of this sector like we have never seen before. The FMCG consumer has become the consensus trade among fund managers led by large doses of cash from retail.
So what did we see in 2018?
We saw the breakdown of anything that lacked quality of business, we saw the breakdown of anything that lacked quality of management, we saw a breakdown of anything with even a hint of trouble brewing, in short, it has nearly become a stock market again. Some more way to go in 2019 and it will become a stock market again.
In the history of stock speculation (across the globe), the retail has never won. Ever. I do not think that the retail herd will win now. Retail only wins on paper. Mass delusion is at play in FMCG. The FMCG crash of 2019 should cause an overall further breakdown in the mid and small caps.
In the stock investing business, avoiding drawdown moments is as important, if not more, in growing capital. We should invest when we see total and complete apathy to the stock market, when we see the participants do not see the owning of stocks as desirable and when the discussions around stocks is limited to stock brokers. That is truly not the case right now. Even though small and mid have taken a drubbing, I think the current holders of those stocks are just nursing their losses and hoping to sell them at break even. Hope still exists. Hope still exists that things will get better.
I do feel that things are about to maybe get better for a few months and a few speculators will make a killing. But this turnaround will be like a large flame that attracts the moths and then scars them for life. It will be a brilliant flame and it will be an irresistible flame, it will need large doses of willpower to avoid the flame, and it will be a flame that will take blind many a speculators.
Then there will be true carnage. That is the time I will look at investing more than the interest of my FDās. Until then, I do not wish to speculate.
People have been seeing the stock market as a game of āWho wants to be a millionaireā whereas it is a game of āKhatron ke khiladiā. I want a time when people understand that stock market is a place only for āKhatron ke khiladiā, that might be an ideal time to play for āWho wants to be a millionaireā.
Hope must die before I can hope.
Happy new year to all
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