Your Finances
The tragicomedy of your investing journey
It’s the 1st day of the month. You get your favorite notification- one that’s even better than finally receiving a reply from the lady you’ve been texting thrice a day for the last three weeks. It’s the salary SMS. You feel good. So good that you forget for a second how much of a lowlife you actually are.
You rejoice for a moment and let the feeling sink in. Finally, you’ll be able to buy a 700 Rs toaster with an interest-free EMI. That’s the moment you’ve been waiting for, ever since you ate at Raju sandwich and got a gastric orgasm…even though the bout of diarrhea it induced lasted for a good 2 weeks and totally wrecked your leave balance. Doesn’t matter. It’s time to shop and finish that money even before you can pay rent so you’d have to call Dear Daddy with a begging bowl soon.
But wait, you don’t want to do that shit anymore. Who calls their fathers for a loan 12 times a year? I mean you’re already 29 and are balding faster than what those MensXP articles suggested. So how can you stoop so low at this stage? Heck, even your flatmate has started paying his rent on time and is defaulting only on the electricity bill, phone bill, maids’ salary, grocery loans, razor blade EMI, and credit card bills. That’s progress. You envy him and wish you’d also been able to take such giant strides towards becoming a financial mastermind.
Something’s got to be done about it. You’re confident that with a positive approach, you can nail this. A wide smile emerges on your face for no reason and you look really stupid, but thankfully no one’s around to witness the absurdity. Waves of positive confidence erupt and vibrate through every part of your being, including the love handles. From today, you’re going to revamp your financial life. From today, you’re going to start investing.
Seizing that moment of inspiration with the utmost rapidity, you dive right onto your third-hand sofa and switch on the laptop. It’s time for education and you prefer to learn only from the best in the business. You log into Sony Liv with a friends’ account (you couldn’t register and pay because your third credit card recently got blocked) and immediately start watching that show on Harshad Mehta. A perfect dose of inspiration+education, you feel. To turn your dreams of owning a penthouse in South Bombay into reality (after you’ve cleared your Cholamandalam Finance two-wheeler loan), you need to start using the tools of the titans.
With all these baseless ideas you binge-watch the shit out of the show, hardly knowing that there’s absolutely zero knowledge to be gained from watching the saga of an A-grade huckster. That doesn’t matter though, because everybody knows that it's an excellent ploy of your subconscious- to distract you from your real goal and make you justify spending time on these worthless pursuits. That’s something you’ve gotten really good at in the last 29 years of existence.
7 hours and 3 cheese burst pizzas later, your education is complete. Your key takeaways are…practically nothing. Except that you’ll never trade on leverage, even though you don’t understand what that means. That’s okay. At least the show gave you the inspiration to get started. You were practically drooling and wetting the sofa thinking about how stocks can quickly go up and make you the youngest thousandaire in town (in Rupee terms). That’s it. Stocks are the way to go, and you dive right in.
You download an app, add some money and get all excited. Now, only if you can find the best companies to invest in. The genius that you are, you quickly turn to Instagram investors for advice and spend a few more eons binge-watching their ‘These 3 stocks will change your life’ videos till your Jio pack is in dire need of a recharge.
Imagining yourself to be the Buffett of Bhiwandi, you quickly pump all your money into a few penny stocks. After all, if that dude on Instagram said in his story that they were going to give 5x returns, why wouldn't they? I mean why would he lie, right? Right. And there goes your money, courting dud stocks that aren’t able to get up even after a lot of action- just like a 98-year-old on Viagra.
“But this time it's different” you say. You can feel the price action around the corner and even end up telling your friends that you’re gonna pay back their dues tomorrow- like Paresh Rawal in Hera Pheri. You’re so intoxicated by your imaginary success that even the last weekend’s drunken fistfight with the security guard seems like a sober affair now. Your delusions reach a new high as you stare at your portfolio all day long, waiting for some action to happen before you can announce the victory to your 37 followers on Instagram.
Unfortunately, none of your wild dreams materialize. Weeks pass, and then months, but those penny stocks continue to hug the floor. It’s a disaster. Your ego and portfolio both hit all-time lows. Your Zerodha account goes to zero, and you need to do something to protect your savings ASAP. In a bid to control costs, you uninstall all food-ordering apps. That’s the equivalent of a 10,000 people layoff in an IT company. Confident that you’ll be flush with hundreds of rupees at the end of the month, you decide to move out of stocks with a bloody nose and turn to greener pastures: crypto.
What attracts you is the fact that the crypto markets are always-on. No 9–3 bullshit, you can trade your way to the Fortune list in practically no time. Having honed your Buy High-Sell Low strategy, you are confident that this is the asset that will make your dreams come true and set you free. You get to work immediately but this time, you have a massive change in the approach: you turn to TikTok and Reddit for high-quality advice.
For a change, your investment suddenly goes up by 20% and you feel like the king of the world. You finally realize the kind of high one must be getting by becoming the deputy secretary of the society council. But it only takes 15 minutes before there is a once-in-a-decade crash of incendiary magnitude. Your investment is reduced to dust and you throw your phone away, thinking that it was probably the non-veg on Tuesday that ended up cursing you. What else could have been wrong about your approach, apart from a complete lack of knowledge and the absolutely horrendous choice of tokens?
Decimated by the various attempts at catapulting yourself to overnight-Zillionaire status, you uninstall all investing apps, call up your Dad, and even start cooking your own food. In your darkest hour, you go back to what you know best: a 5.25% FD with Thane Janata Sahakari Bank. It is as reliable as Rishabh Pant in a Test series against Zimbabwe. You relax, thinking that at such rates, your money will certainly ascend to seven-digit levels by the turn of the next century.
“Despite all the ups and downs, I have learned a lot” you tell yourself, even though it's hard to find any ‘ups’ in the journey. It was a disgusting bloodbath that even some Mughal tyrants could take inspiration from. But you gloss over the harsh realities of life, which is yet another unique skill-set you possess but can’t write on your mostly empty resume. Things are clear though. You know what you’re going to do next. “Let me put my hard-earned knowledge to good use so I can liberate the masses” you say, and attempt to procure a tripod and a camera from Chor Bazaar’s e-commerce app.
And that is how you go on to become a finance influencer- sharing stock tips and advice that will make people’s dreams come true and set them free.