Coming to the blunders I committed, the mind tends to forget the painful memories and hence difficult to recall them.
Convenient way to limit listing one’s mistakes.
The first blunder I recall was investing without any knowledge. Back in Harshad Mehta era when I didnt know about investing I recall having invested in companies like RPPL (and RPEL I thinik its twin ILU-PILU as they were then called. ) Orkay Silk Mills was another one.
Another one I recall is investing on some “wise friends” tips. I have some share certificates still with me to prove the follies. Things like MS Shoes, Mideast Steel, Soncal Cosmetics, Redex Protech.
Later on once I read some investing books first of which was One Up on Wall Street, I did invest with some semblance of half baked knowledge. Thats where two stocks came up – Lakshmi Energy and Parekh Aluminex. I had only a two stock portfolio at that time back in the carnage of 2008. Luckily I did not have enough money to lose because I had purchased a new house beyond my means in 2006 and used up all my savings to put into house. That probably saved me. Beginners’ Luck I guess. But with what little money I had, I started investing in the above two stocks and kept buying it till near bottom prices. Both turned out to be 2-3 baggers for me and I was again lucky enough to sell near tops.
Then came the equitydesk and VP phase. Post this phase the mistakes were those of a partially read investor.
The biggest mistake was about not riding winners for the full journey. Too many ideas led to these mistakes. I exited stocks like TTK Prestige, Ajanta, Kaveri, Tata elxsi etc (many more but these were the first that came to my mind) etc too early. That problem often persists still now but to a lesser extent. In ajanta I corrected the mistake to some extent by buying it back at a price 50% higher than where I sold off and with 50% higher allocation. That to some extent lessened the pain.
The other mistake was not being able to differentiate long term from short term ideas. Often I mistook short term trading bets as good long term ideas. Since past 3-4 years I have made my criteria for long and short term very stringent. The short term bets if they go wrong are thrown out very quickly and I often exit with minor losses only to see the stock rebound and go on a strong uptrend. But I have learned to live with these things.
Another mistake that often tends to happen is to keep holding long term stocks irrespective of valuation froths. But again thats something I have learned to live with.
Lack of patience with some companies is often a mistake. Nowadays I tend to give my long term companies plenty of time to perform inspite of a few lacklustre quarters. But sometimes things get too much and I often sell out only to see these stocks go up. But this usually happens when there is some better idea around.
Another mistake is of not working hard enough on new ideas. I tend to reject ideas much faster due to one or other reason these days and often there are errors of missing winners. But if the overall portfolio returns are okay then these things dont matter too much.
Most important aspects of investing are stock selection and capital allocation. And patience and temperament. The first two are now easy to do but last two are very difficult even at this stage of my investing career.
These are the first offhand things that came to my mind and have jotted them down. Would recount more things when I have more meaningful stuff to write and more time to write.