My Experiences in Financial Investing

My first experience in investing was with bank fixed deposit (FD). My first mentor in this direction, was a gentleman named Monojit Mukherjee. I used to go on tours, with him frequently (I was working with him in the same company, he served the Calcutta branch, I was in Guwahati). After dinner, we had nothing else to do and that is when he used to start discussion on finance. He used to ask me what I did with the salary. Till then I was just depositing the salary in my bank savings account. He explained the difference between savings account and FD interest rates. So, I started keeping my money in SBI FD.

I started exploring other options and came to know about Company FD. I started investing in HDFC FD, whose rate of interest was more then bank FD. Many decades later, I again invested in Shriram Transport Finance FD.

I was introduced to ULIP by a financial advisor from a well known investment farm. It was sold by most sales people at one point of time, as it had good amount of commission involved. I invested in many ULIP products and the returns were ok.

My first experience with mutual fund (MF) was in Franklin blue chip fund. One of my financial advisor insisted that I invest there, so I started with a monthly systematic investment of 1K per month. Later on I added more and more there. I also invested in many other MFs and this became my major investment area. But my investment in infrastructure MF resulted in loss.

I also invested in public providend fund (PPF) and used to deposit there, but it was mostly from income tax point of view. I still continue it with very little amount as the returns are not that high.

My experiences with Stock Market was not that great. Initially I invested very small amount, in my friend Ramesh Kayithala's account. Later I opened my own deemat and trading account and started investing. But I was making more loses than profits. If 5 stocks gave profits, another 7 lost. Also, the brokerage amount ate away the profits. To save on brokerage, I opened another accounts in Zerodha. Initially I had profits but later on it gave loses on average. I could never make money in stock market.

Apart from this I had contributed to company PF.

Out of my all investments, FD, company FD, PF, PPF, ULIP and MF gave profits. The MF profits swinged based on the stock market, but with SIP, it gave decent profit. Sector specific MF (infra) did not fare well for me. Stocks proved to be not profitable for me.