Skip to main content

GREED AND FEAR IN EQUITY MARKETS

As equity markets across the globe are melting down as fast as glaciers due to global warming, both the fundamental analysts and the high profile technical analysts have disappeared from the market. Thank God! we are not hearing any expert advice in CNBC on the investments and SENSEX reaching 25 K or 30K. Valuation experts are clueless and the people who were recommending buying at 20000 levels are not seen anymore.
In these type of situation, people should realise that it is only GREED and FEAR among human beings that is running the market sentiment. Fearfull people sell on fears of prices going down and Greedy people buy on greed of making money on the same stock. The seasoned investors like Buffet is the firm believer in the behavioral aspect of the markets. Yesterday, in a column published in the New York Times, he said that "...I've been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I'm talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds," said Chief Executive of Berkshire Hathaway Buffett. "A simple rule dictates my buying: be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors," he pointed out.

SHOULD WE ALSO LOOK FOR INVESTMENT AT THESE LEVELS AS NOW FEAR SEEMS TO BE STRETCHING TOO FAR?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SERIOUS LESSON LEARNT FROM THE CRISIS

Last 6 months in the market is so turbulent that I had to unlearn whatever i have learnt from ny experince as an investment management professional as well as a student in the B-School. All the theories about risk free securities, equity risk premium, efficient market hypothesis, risk management systems have not worked in these turbulent times. Even the regulators are totally confused. Only in the second quarter of 2008-09, inflation was considered to be serious threat to the economy and crude oil pricees were soaring high and expert analysts were talking about crude going to USD 200. In a bid to save the Indian economy, RBI decided to solve the problem through monetary tigtening as the textbooks on economy suggests. Banks were worried about their profit margin due to treasury losses. I as a trader in bond market was also making losses on my trading positions. But came September 2008, that will be remembered by all the people who are not even directly interested in Financial markets.In...

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS:

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS: As the US lawmakers and the FED are busy in making strategy for the bail out from the severe financial mess and the worst crisis since the great depression of 1930’s, let us try to diagnose the genesis of the crisis that has triggered worldwide financial instability: There may be many economic and fundamental reasons behind the current crisis. But the seeds of the problem were sown in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, when Greenspan lowered the interest rates in order to fight the slowing growth. But, low interest rates coupled with government populist policies that generated demand for housing and other consumer loans. When demand rose, the housing prices soared to a record high and at a speed that was totally absurd. At the same time, default spreads in the bond market also diminished to the historical lows. In the second stage, these housing mortgages, were bundled into mortgage backed securities and were traded thereby shifting more and more risk on the last hold...

HAVE WE LEARNT ANYTHING?

Beware. Once again experts are prowling for their prey. People are being given tips to make easy money. FII flows are coming to the equity market and market is zooming targetting new highs as if there was no problem last year. Sensex crossed 17000 and new targets were set on business news channels luring people to again invest in the stocks. Mutual fund sales pitch increased and new schemes are being launched. But does the situation is so goody- goody? In my personal opinion, again this is exuberance and experts are betting on greater fool theory.The greater fool theory (sometimes the bigger fool theory, also called survivor investing) is the belief held by one who makes a questionable investment, with the assumption that they will be able to sell it later to "a bigger fool"; in other words, buying something not because you believe that it is worth the price, but rather because you believe that you will be able to sell it to someone else for an even better price. Today most o...