Archives for September 2025

Two Books. One Purpose. A Better Life.

🎁 Now Available At Special Prices!

“This is a masterpiece.”

—Morgan Housel, Author, Psychology of Money

“Discover the extraordinary within.”

—Manish Chokhani, Director, Enam Holdings

• Click here to buy Boundless (₹1799 ₹1299)
• Click here to buy Sketchbook (₹1799 ₹1499)
• Click here to buy the combo (Boundless + Sketchbook) (₹2799 ₹2599)

The Internet is brimming with resources that proclaim, “nearly everything you believed about investing is incorrect.” However, there are far fewer that aim to help you become a better investor by revealing that “much of what you think you know about yourself is inaccurate.” In this series of posts on the psychology of investing, I will take you through the journey of the biggest psychological flaws we suffer from that causes us to make dumb mistakes in investing. This series is part of a joint investor education initiative between Safal Niveshak and DSP Mutual Fund.

A group of tourists was visiting a dinosaur museum. A guide was entertaining them with interesting trivia about various dinosaur species. Just when they were passing by a huge skeleton of an ancient carnivore, an inquisitive member of the tourist group asked the guide, “How old is this skeleton?”

“Oh, that big T-rex skeleton? It’s about 100 million and 5 years old.” quipped the guide.

“That’s quite an odd figure. I understand the 100 million part but how are you so sure about the last 5 years?”

You may not have heard of Jonathan Clements. He wasn’t a fund manager or a market guru. He was a journalist who tried to make sense of money in a way that felt real, not intimidating.

Between 1994 and 2008, Clements wrote more than a thousand columns for The Wall Street Journal. Later, he started his own site, HumbleDollar. A few days ago, he died at 62, after fighting a rare form of lung cancer for nearly 18 months.

Jason Zweig, his colleague and friend, wrote a remembrance of him. He spoke about Clements’ “obsession” with index funds and his stubborn courage in calling out the financial industry when it misled people.

Two Books. One Purpose. A Better Life.

🎁 Now Available At Special Prices!

“This is a masterpiece.”

—Morgan Housel, Author, Psychology of Money

“Discover the extraordinary within.”

—Manish Chokhani, Director, Enam Holdings

• Click here to buy Boundless (₹1799 ₹1299)
• Click here to buy Sketchbook (₹1799 ₹1499)
• Click here to buy the combo (Boundless + Sketchbook) (₹2799 ₹2599)

I am writing this series of letters on the art of investing, addressed to a young investor, with the aim to provide timeless wisdom and practical advice that helped me when I was starting out. My goal is to help young investors navigate the complexities of the financial world, avoid misinformation, and harness the power of compounding by starting early with the right principles and actions. This series is part of a joint investor education initiative between Safal Niveshak and DSP Mutual Fund.

Dear Young Investor,

I hope this letter finds you well.

Let me quickly take you back to when I began my journey in investing almost 22 years back. I thought the most important questions were the obvious ones, like: Which stock should I buy? How much return can I expect? What mutual fund is better than the other? How much should I invest in bonds and how much in stocks?

On the morning of April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage. She was the largest ship afloat, built with the latest technology, and marketed as “unsinkable.”

Her captain, Edward Smith, was a veteran of the seas. The ship’s design was considered so safe that she carried lifeboats for only about half the passengers on board. Even the safety drills were minimal.

🔔 A Note on My Books and Courses

Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless

• Click here to buy Boundless (My book on timeless lessons for a meaningful, boundless life)
• Click here to buy Sketchbook (A hand-illustrated treasury of life’s greatest ideas)
• Click here to buy the combo (Boundless + Sketchbook (Get both books together and save — wisdom you’ll keep for a lifetime)

Mastermind Value Investing membership: Learn, connect, and grow with a private community of serious value investors. Click here to join now.

Value Investing Almanack newsletter: Deep, timeless investing insights delivered to your inbox every month. Click here to join now.

The first mobile phone I bought was in 2003. It was with my second salary, and it was a Nokia 3315. In fact, when I looked around, almost everyone had one, and for good reason. You could drop it or even throw it at a wall, and it would still work fine.

Back then, Nokia wasn’t just a company, but the company. If you’d asked me names of businesses that would last forever, I’d have said “Nokia” as one of them without a second thought.

🔔 A Note on My Books and Courses

Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless

• Click here to buy Boundless (My book on timeless lessons for a meaningful, boundless life)
• Click here to buy Sketchbook (A hand-illustrated treasury of life’s greatest ideas)
• Click here to buy the combo (Boundless + Sketchbook (Get both books together and save — wisdom you’ll keep for a lifetime)

Mastermind Value Investing membership: Learn, connect, and grow with a private community of serious value investors. Click here to join now.

Value Investing Almanack newsletter: Deep, timeless investing insights delivered to your inbox every month. Click here to join now.

Disclaimer: What follows is based on my personal views and experiences, and may not apply to everyone’s circumstances. Your financial situation, risk appetite, and life stage may be very different from mine. Please don’t take offence if something here doesn’t match your approach. Use it only as a perspective, not a prescription.

I received a letter from a reader a few days ago. He was someone around my age and wrote:

I’m in my mid-40s, my kids are growing up, my parents are ageing, and I’m suddenly feeling this urgency about my finances. I’ve been investing, but I don’t know if I’m doing enough or if I’m doing it right. There’s no social security here, and if I mess up, there’s no safety net. What should I do?

I read it twice because it could have easily been me writing that letter. I am middle-aged myself, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about these same questions about money, security, and the strange cocktail of restlessness and responsibility that creeps up on you in this phase of life.