What was your first investment?

For most of us, particularly youngsters, spending money rather than saving comes more easily. Take, for instance, Mumbai-based Disha and her husband. They splurge a big part of their earnings on holidaying in India and abroad. Living expenses apart, there’s not much money left in the kitty except for what goes into the Public Provident Fund, they rue.

But there have been others who started saving from day one. They managed to resist the urge to spend and instead got into investing even before they started full-time work. What’s more, they did not put their money into safe assets such as fixed deposits but instead dived straight away into the stock market. What made these people catch the investing bug early on and what was their debut investment? Here’s their story.

Nandkishor Baheti, a 30-year old chartered accountant who currently works in the finance division of an engineering and construction firm in Mumbai, made his investment debut while pursuing his articleship. His first investment was in equity shares. “My rendezvous with the stock market started in the early 2000s, when I subscribed to the initial public offerings of blue-chip companies such as Maruti, ONGC and TCS,” says Nandkishor. Though he doesn’t recall the amount invested, he asserts that he made tidy gains in these stocks.

With his chartered accountant friends too dabbling in the stock market, investing money in stocks of companies was a natural choice for him.

Nandkishor does not trade in stocks and believes in holding on to them for a long period of time. “I discuss different stocks with my friends, listen to news and commentators on TV but do not follow them blindly. I analyse the financial statements of the companies I invest in,” says Nandkishor.

He has been investing ₹10,000-15,000 every month in bluechip stocks ever since he started working. This has helped him make 15-20 per cent annual return on equities during the years when the market has done well. But, he has learnt his lessons too.

He invested quite a sum of money in infrastructure stocks around 2008 on rumours that the sector was set for better days. But, it did not turn out to be so. Thanks to the recent rally, he finally managed to make a measly 10 per cent gain, after a six-year long wait! “So don’t get carried away by rumours,” cautions Nandkishor.

He now manages the risk-return trade-off by diversifying his portfolio. He has made roughly equal investments across asset classes such as stocks, fixed deposits, mutual funds, insurance policies and gold and silver ETFs.

Sabaretnam Nagappan, who is pursuing chartered accountancy and doing his articleship with KPMG, started investing his pocket money in equities while he was still in school. “Being a student you do not really have much capital to invest in. I figured that the stock market would give better returns compared to bank deposits and hence started investing in the stock market from a very young age,” he says.

With a stock broker-cum-investment consultant for a father, Sabaretnam taking to the market like a duck taking to water is hardly surprising.

Karnataka Bank, UCO Bank, Tata Teleservices, Saint-Gobain Glass and Sona Koyo Steering Systems were some of the stocks he first invested in. Did they turn out to be worthwhile investments? “I do not remember exactly the profit and loss made trade-wise, but I made good gains initially. The ₹3,000 invested when Sabaretnam was in his eighth grade grew six-fold by the time he passed out of the eleventh grade.

“Then I suffered a major loss after which I decided to invest only half the money that I used to,” he says.

How does he decide on the stocks to invest in? Like Nandkishor, Sabaretnam also reads up on companies and, more importantly, keeps himself updated on the developments in various sectors. He minimises his risk by buying stocks of companies across five to six different sectors and juggles between trading and long-term investing.

“I learnt never to hurry while trading and treat investments as investments so that they yield better returns,” he explains. Over the years, he has learnt not to let go of an opportunity to book profits in these scrips.

“But at the same time I do not have a set mind to hold my investments for a fixed period or to trade them on a daily basis,” he adds.

“As I have limited capital to invest, it has been a medium risk-return mindset for me,” says Sabaretnam.

Ankita, who works with a market research firm and picked up the habit of investing when she started working in 2009, bats for safety. Unlike Nandkishor and Sabaretnam who dared to try their luck with equities early on, Ankita prefers to stick to low-risk investment options such as fixed deposits and the Public Provident Fund.

“Tracking the market requires too much of time and effort and it is far too risky.”

The only time she veered off course was when, egged on by her brother in 2010, she invested ₹40,000 in select mutual fund schemes.

She continues to hold units of these schemes, which have barely returned any gains in the last four years.

Parveen Sikkandar, 40, who runs an ethnic jewellery store ‘Damini The Artisans of India’ was always told by her brothers to invest in property or gold. However, on a friend’s advice, she invested ₹30,000 in equity shares in 2004 and burnt her fingers. A single parent with a teenaged son, she still regrets losing ₹30,000 in the stock market and a couple of lakhs in mutual funds.

She has learnt her lesson and says, “When someone talks about investment to me now I always ask the question — what does this person stand to gain from this deal?” She now puts most of her savings into her business and also in fixed deposits.

She makes her own investment decisions and does not depend on financial advisors.

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