Volatile markets: For long-term wealth creation, investors should stick to the basics

BANGALORE: Many investors believe there is a secret formula for making money from investments. They believe that usual tips like 'stay invested', 'stick to your allocation', 'tread with caution', and so on, are crumbs thrown at them by experts while sharing the secret formula only with their privileged clients.

But, experts are quick to point out that they don't offer any special tips to their clients and, in fact, most of their clients don't even expect any such tips. They also point out it is not true that they are swamped with calls from clients for special advice every time the stock market is down by a few hundred points.

"Only one client called (after the 500 point crash few weeks ago). But he was not in panic, he just wanted to know whether he should make any changes to his financial plan since the market has tanked," says Suresh Sadagopan, principal planner, Ladder7 Financial Advisories, a wealth management firm.

"I told him exactly what I say on such occasions. We can't react to such news-based events, and such socalled big falls in the market won't really make any impact to his longterm investment plans."

In fact, many financial advisors second him. Most of them believe that those who are looking for exotic tips are likely to fall prey to dubious advice from unscrupulous elements in the market.

The day after the fall

"No special tips?" asks Prema (surname withheld on request), a government employee. She asks the question almost every time the market tanks big. Her logic is very simple: the economy is in a very bad phase; the rupee is touching new lows every day; nobody seems to have any hope that the government is going to salvage the situation. She simply refuses to believe that against such a complex scenario the advice to investors can't be simple 'stay invested' or 'stick to your asset allocation'.

"I am sure these experts won't tell that to their clients," she says with conviction. Amar Pandit, founder and CEO, My Financial Advisor, says contrary to public perception, not many investors tend to panic after a fall in the market and rush to change their financial plan.

"Probably, 5% of your total clients may be a bit nervous. You just explain to them that we made the financial plan based on certain parameters and we just don't change it because the market behaved in a certain fashion on a certain day," he says.

"We also explain to them that world is much more integrated and anything negative happening to a country's economy, currency, institutions have an impact all around the globe. We can't control these events, but what we can control is our behaviour. We can stick to our goals, review our allocation, we don't succumb to the pressure of panic selling."

Stick to basics

"That's it?" Prema is likely to wonder. No reviews or altering the plan when many pundits have given up on the India story? "The trouble with market pundits is that they are talking about what will happen in the next five days, whereas we are helping people realise their long-term goals that are 10 or 15 years away," says Sadagopan. He agrees that he has serious concerns about the health of the Indian economy.