Many a time while watching the market news you hear the
words like ‘Oh, the market is bullish’, ‘Sensex went up 100 points’, ‘Nifty
banks are doing great this year’ etc. Then you see your portfolio and talk to
yourself ‘Why the hell am I losing money?’
Don’t
worry. This is not just your scenario. It is a known fact that about 90% of
people lose money in the stock market. But do you know why? Why your portfolio
is in loss when the market is upward, why most of the stocks you bought are
underperforming; why aren’t you able to beat the market? If you go through all
these thoughts, then you are one of those 90% people.
So,
today I am going to give you top 6 reasons why most people lose money in the
stock market. Be with me for the next couple of minutes to uncover this
mystery.
6 Reasons why most
people lose money in stock market
1. Not doing enough
research and investing based on ‘TIPS’.
This
is the first and the biggest mistake that people do when they start trading in
the stock market. They easily trust the tips they hear from a friend, colleague
or from a financial magazine that they just read. Moreover, most people blindly
follow the recommendations from their brokerage firm which later turn out to be
a major loss on their investment.
Now,
you can argue with me that what’s wrong with taking tips and suggestion. Your
friends and the brokerage firm has more experience than you and surely can help
you in getting good returns. But if you think like that, then you are missing
the point. No one else cares about your money more than you do. You can easily
rule out the broker’s recommendations as they will only earn when you trade.
They don’t care whether you awin or lose. They are getting their brokerage fee
as long as you are buying or selling. Hence, they will always try to give you
suggestions so that you can trade more and frequent. And the more you trade,
the more brokerage fee they will gets.
Now,
let’s come to the suggestions from the friends and colleagues. There are few
things that a beginner should understand that no one is going to tell them.
First, All your friends will always boast about their profits & returns.
Second, none of your investor friends will tell you about their losses and bad
investments. It’s sometimes a matter of pride. Overall, you will think that
your friends or colleagues are doing always doing great, but they are not. You
might take their suggestion thinking that they have researched a lot about that
company and they are always right in investing. However in the end, you will
end up losing your money.
Hence,
the only way to invest intelligently is by doing enough research before
investing. Moreover, it’s not tough to research the company on your own.
Finding an undervalued stock is an art which you can develop with practice and
patience.
2. Trying to make
money quickly
This
is the second biggest mistake that people make while investing in stock market.
People are always in a hurry to make money. They always want to become rich
quickly. Always want to be like ‘Warren Buffett’ – Rich and Powerful. However,
what they don’t understand is that Mr Warren Buffett has made majority of his
fortune after his 50’s. It’s a fact that he got more than 90 percent of his
wealth after the age of 50 and has accumulated a large sum through his long
term investments for a period of over 5 decades. Success in stock market needs
time and patience.
But
this is now how the people invest. They enter the market. Then select a stock
which they heard from a news channel that ‘It has a huge growth potential’ and
they invest heavily in it. Then they pray that their money becomes 5-10 times.
However, it turns out that they lost 30-40% of their investment. So, out of
frustration, they quit investing in stocks and start searching for another way
that can make them rich quickly. This is how the non-achiever in stock market
thinks and loses money in the market.
3. Sudden over
exposure to market and non-diversification
This
happens a lot of time in the stock market. A common person has accumulated a
lot of savings over the period. Then he hears how his neighbor has doubled his
money by investing in stock market. Suddenly he also gets interested in share
market. He started thinking that if his neighbour who is a Salesman, can get so
much returns from the stock market, then why can’t he? Hence, he decides to
enter the stock market with a huge amount of money that he has saved during all
those years of hard working.
And
this is where he fails. The point is, you can enter stock market whenever you
want; however, to enter the market without prepared it totally stupid. Think of
this like going to forest without knowing how to hunt. You need to develop the
art first. You need to understand the market and enter once you are at least
little prepared.
In
addition, non-diversification is also one of the biggest mistake that most
people do. People are so confident about their stocks that they think it’s
illogical to invest in multiple stock which may average out the profits. True,
it might average out the profits; but it also reduces the risk. Remember, it’s
always about minimizing risk and maximizing the profits. Like
over-diversification minimizes the profits, in the same way non-diversification
maximizes the risk.
4. Holding onto
losses while booking profits early
Let
us imagine a scenario. You have bought 5 shares. Three of them are doing great
while two of them are under-performing. What will you do? Will you sell first?
The shares that are doing great or the one who are defeating?
‘Sell
the winners and hond on to the loser stocks’. The majority of the amateur
investors follow this rule. They think that it’s safe to sell the stocks first
which are giving them good profits and hold the loser stocks. In this way, the
loser stocks will get time to recover and they might get their initial
investment back. Moreover, in the meantime, they can get some profits by
selling their good stocks.
However,
this is the wrong approach. By this way, you are limiting your upper level and
increasing your lower level. That it, you are limiting how much you can get
profits as you have already sold your good stocks. But, you can suffer even
great loss as the loser stocks are still in your portfolio.
If
you want not to lose money in the stock market, then you should use the
opposite approach. You should limit your lower level and maximize your upper
lever. This can be achieved by holding to your winners and cutting your loser
stocks.
5. Lack of patience
Patience
is the key to success in stock market. The only thing that you need to do in
stock market is to buy good stocks and give it time. This is the only way to
make money here.
However,
most people who lose money in the stock market do not have patience. Although
many of these people are able to find a good stock but they aren’t able to get
good profits from them. Why? Because they don’t have patience. They can’t even
2-3 year times to their stocks to grow. They want a quick result.
However,
this is not the only problem with such investors. In some situations when their
stocks loses 20-30% of its worth, they become highly impatient and sell their
stock quickly. If just they have hold their stocks for a couple of months, they
could have got good returns of around 40-50% on their investments. Here, the
lack of patience misfires on their intelligence of choosing a decent stock.
6. Blindly following
the crowd.
This
is the last reason that I want to mention that why people lose money in stock
market. BLINDLY FOLLOWING THE CROWD.
Imagine
a scenario. Your neighbour bought a stock which increased its value by 50% in
few days. Then you colleague bought the same stock and the stock has now rose
to around 80% appreciation from its initial value. Everyone is talking about
that stock and it’s making a lot of noise in the news. What will you do now?
All your known people are getting great returns by investing in that stock.
Will you invest in that stock too?
If
you blindly follow everyone and buy that stock, then you are most likely to
lose money. Everyone has some plans and strategies about their investment. You
just can’t read the exit strategy of your neighbor. Maybe when you thought to
buy, he was planning to sell the stock in few days thinking it as overpriced.
But you just can’t know this.
What
you can do is to read about the company’s fundamentals, its financial reports
and figuring out why is it in news so much. And after studying the company
completely, if you are satisfied, then only invest in that stock. NEVER INVEST
BLINDLY FOLLOWING THE CROWD.




