Investment Options for the Retail Investor

Business Standard Smart Business

Patience and proper diversification of investments are the best ways to achieve better returns for the retail investors even in a tough investment environment, the experts said.
 

In a Smart Business event organised by Business Standard in association with Tamil Nadu Investors Association (TIA) in Chennai, on Investment Options for Retail Investors, the key advises include to look at long-term investments and do a proper check on the corporate governance of the company before investing in it.

"The biggest challenge for us is not the market, not the fundamental or technical analysis, the biggest challenge is to have the patience, wait with the money, lose a lot of opportunities right in front of your eyes, but then, grab it when it really comes," said V Nagappan, Stock Broker and Proprietor, Oriental Stocks. He added that another option is to go for a systematic planned way of investment. Most important is proper asset allocation.

"Having patience is very essential for an equity investor. Short term trading will lead to losing money in the market. Analyse the companies and have a 10-12 stocks portfolio rather than a very diversified portfolio. Volatility is a friend of the long-term investor, to catch up the missed opportunities," said Dr. T C Thomas, Professor, Management Studies, Rajalakshmi Engineering College.

The market is going through a liquidity risk now and investors should look into the asset classes which offers a great amount of liquidity at the helm of a crisis, said Subhas Ramasubramaniam, Founder, T.RAM Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. Have an emergency corpus and an optimal amount in EPF and PPF. (An) era of ETFs has dawned in India. Diversify the investment and don’t go behind investment themes," he said.

A. Venkatesan, President, TIA in his welcome address said that it is a very tough and an interesting stage at present, depending upon the way one looks at it.