Newcomers have been flocking to the markets, learning the tricks of the trade and investing not just for the future but also as a way to keep income coming in to tide over the pandemic slump. But experts advise caution and warn against getting carried away by short-term gains
Twenty-year-old Nairit Gala has been doing long-term investing for two years, decided to dive into short-term trading this January; and Digital content creator & investor Raj Shamani has been investing since he was 18. He was into value investing before the pandemic hit and after the lockdown Shamani started exploring different avenues like Cryptocurrencies and NFT markets.
Fifty-eight-year-old Priya Thakur’s life came to a standstill in March last year as the nationwide lockdown was announced due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Delhi-based Thakur had been running a playschool and daycare center for over 20 years and not even in her wildest dreams did she imagine that her playschool, which was her source of fixed income, would be completely shut.
As a first-time investor, Thakur, who started with day trading and has now gradually got into long-term investing, is also planning to join an online course so that she is familiar with the jargon and concepts. “I learn new things every day about how the market functions. It has become some sort of an addiction where I start missing it on weekends when the markets are closed. After a couple of months when my day school will reopen, I won’t be able to follow the market on a daily basis and so I’ve started building a portfolio for the long term,” she says.
The travel and tourism industry has been one of the worst affected sectors due to the pandemic. In fact, the tourism industry was hit even before the lockdown as international flights started halting early last year. Mukesh Jagga’s 32-year-old tours and travels company saw a 50 percent dip in business in February 2020 itself. Jagga, who is the founder of Delhi-based Viva Holidays Tours & Travels, was in a dilemma considering he still had to pay his employees. “When the first lockdown was announced everything just came to a halt. Customers had cancelled bookings, some had postponed them. The biggest problem for me as an owner was how to retain my employees, for how long would this situation last, and for how long we would have to sustain by paying out of the pocket. Giving a salary to 22 people every month is no joke if you do not have any revenues. We tried to retain as many as possible, but still some people voluntarily left and we had to let go some people. By August, only six of them were remaining.”
Twenty-year-old Nairit Gala too has arrived at his strategy through trial and error. Gala, who has been doing long-term investing for two years, decided to dive into short-term trading this January. “I started with a base of Rs 50,000 and eroded it completely. I was doing very volatile options without learning at all. However, I regrouped and lowered my risk profile. I infused another Rs 2 lakh and have grown that almost 50 percent in five months.”