Safal Niveshak

Wit. Wisdom. Value Investing.

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Just Stay Out of Trouble

🔔 A Note on My Books and Courses

Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless

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It began innocently enough, with a conversation over tea. My friend was telling me about a new real estate project he had been “looking into.” He didn’t say much at first, just that it was in a location everyone said was going to boom in a few years. The government had announced a new airport and a highway project nearby. Also, as per my friend, the pre-launch price was “ridiculously good,” and the developer had a name people in the city recognised.

He didn’t sit on it for long. Within days, he had paid the booking amount and signed the papers. In his mind, the deal was already a success. He could picture the appreciation in value and the approving nods from his family and friends when he’d tell them he saw the opportunity early. It all looked like a straight road to a happy ending.

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The ₹1,038 Illusion

🔔 A Note on My Books and Courses

Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless

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.

This is from sometime around 2005 while I was just two years into my role as an equity research analyst. I was working on a mid-size auto ancillary company that had been on my watchlist for months.

Auto ancillary was then an unglamorous industry, and the company had been doing roughly the same thing for decades. But it had a reasonable track record of generating cash, and recently its stock price had been drifting lower. It felt like the sort of under-the-radar situation that might turn into a good investment if the numbers lined up.

I started in the usual way, pulling up a decade’s worth of financial statements. I went line by line through revenues, operating margins, capital expenditures, debt levels, and cash flows. Nothing leapt off the page. Everything looked… just fine. I decided to dig deeper and run the numbers.

[Read more…] about The ₹1,038 Illusion

Your Last Great Edge in Investing

🔔 A Note on My Books and Courses

Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless

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.

Few serious investors were excited about Amazon in the early 2000s. The company was less than 5 years old, and despite rapid revenue growth over the previous years, was still reeling under deep losses at the operating and the net levels. What’s more, the dot-com bubble had recently burst, and the stock had fallen more than 90% from its highs.

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Letter to A Young Investor #14: The Most Profitable Word in Investing

🎁 Special Anniversary Discounts (Until 15th August 2025)

🎁 Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices:

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

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.

As I sat down to write this letter, I found myself wondering, “After already sharing some of the most important ideas to think about at the start of the someone’s investing journey, what’s left to say?”

Then it struck me. There’s one lesson I haven’t spoken about yet, even though it’s among the most valuable I’ve learned about money.

[Read more…] about Letter to A Young Investor #14: The Most Profitable Word in Investing

Dear Regret

🎁 Special Anniversary Discounts (Until 15th August 2025)

🎁 Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices:

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

🎓 Offline Value Investing Workshop in Mumbai (10th August):
Join me in-person for a day of deep learning, reflection, and conversations around value investing and life. Click here for details and registration.

Before you read this letter, I want you to think about one of the most uncomfortable yet constant companions every investor lives with, which is regret. It is the persistent voice from within that reminds you of the stock you sold too early, the opportunity you missed, or the mistake you refused to correct. I’ve lived with it for years. This letter is my attempt to speak directly to that old, unwelcome friend. I have a feeling parts of it might feel familiar to you too.

Dear Regret,

You and I have known each other for quite a while. I never invited you into my life, or as an investor, but somehow, you always managed to show up like that neighbour’s cat that strolls into the house, makes itself comfortable on the couch, and looks at me as if I should be grateful for its company.

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Investing and the Paradox of Skill

🎁 Special Anniversary Discounts (Until 31st July 2025)

🎁 Hardcover Books: The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices:

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

🎓 Offline Value Investing Workshop in Mumbai (10th August):
Join me in-person for a day of deep learning, reflection, and conversations around value investing and life. Click here for details and registration.

💻 Online Masterclass – The Art of Valuation (2nd August):
A 3-hour live session on decoding intrinsic value and learning how great investors think about price vs. worth. Click here for details and registration.

If you’ve been investing for a while, you’ve probably had that odd experience where you did everything right – like studying a company carefully, buying it at a sensible price, and then holding on with patience – and yet, the outcome felt as random as a coin toss.

It’s frustrating and humbling, and yet, as the leading investment analyst and thinker Michael Mauboussin explains, this is the nature of the world we operate in.

[Read more…] about Investing and the Paradox of Skill

Investing Wisdom from the Rise and Fall of a Market Genius

A few quick updates from Safal Niveshak HQ:

🎓 Offline Value Investing Workshops in Hyderabad (27th July) and Mumbai (10th August):
Join me in-person for a day of deep learning, reflection, and conversations around value investing and life. Click here for details and registration.

💻 Online Masterclass – The Art of Valuation (2nd August):
A 3-hour live session on decoding intrinsic value and learning how great investors think about price vs. worth. Click here for details and registration.

Special Anniversary Discounts:
🎁 The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices for a limited time (till 30th July):

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

In 1929, just before the Great Depression hit, Jesse Livermore was hailed as a legend.

While the rest of Wall Street was drowning in panic, Livermore had taken a large short position and walked away with over $100 million in profit.

Newspapers called him “The Boy Plunger.” His wife, it’s said, was afraid to tell her friends how much money they had made. It felt indecent.

But here’s the twist. Less than a decade later, Livermore was broke.

And this was not his first fall. Nor would it be his last.

[Read more…] about Investing Wisdom from the Rise and Fall of a Market Genius

Do What Matters: A Framework to Invest and Live Better

A few quick updates from Safal Niveshak HQ:

Special Anniversary Discounts:
🎁 The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices for a limited time (till 30th July):

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

Offline Value Investing Workshops in Hyderabad and Mumbai:
Join me in-person for a day of deep learning, reflection, and conversations around value investing and life. Click here for details and registration.

Online Masterclass – The Art of Valuation:
A 3-hour live session on decoding intrinsic value and learning how great investors think about price vs. worth. Click here for details and registration.

I have a friend who is one of the most “on top of things” person I’ve ever met. Constantly busy, with a full calendar, phone buzzing non-stop, and always trying out something new. It may be a new productivity app, a different fitness routine, or a new investment trend. He follows ten finance influencers and sends me screenshots of fund comparisons late at night with the question, “Which one is slightly better?”

But behind trying to be on top of things, or probably due to that, I often find him stuck and uncertain. His savings are erratic. His investments are scattered. His health is going downhill, and he says he’s lost connection with a few close friends because, in his words, “There just isn’t time.”

[Read more…] about Do What Matters: A Framework to Invest and Live Better

The Psychology of Investing #13: The Deception of a Good Outcome

A few quick updates from Safal Niveshak HQ:

Special Anniversary Discounts:
🎁 The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices for a limited time (till 30th July):

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

Offline Value Investing Workshops in Hyderabad and Mumbai:
Join me in-person for a day of deep learning, reflection, and conversations around value investing and life. Click here for details and registration.

Online Masterclass – The Art of Valuation:
A 3-hour live session on decoding intrinsic value and learning how great investors think about price vs. worth. Click here for details and registration.

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.

I have a friend from school who works at an MNC in Gurgaon. This is from around 2018. Every Friday night, his office colleagues would gather at the same bar. Alcohol followed, and by midnight, my intoxicated friend would swagger out of the bar and slip into the driver’s seat of his car to drive back home. It became routine.

As he told us, he knew he’d had too much, but he also knew something else: he always reached home safely. Not once had he been pulled over. Not once had he gotten into an accident. And so, when a few of us school friends, out of worry, tried to talk to him about the obvious danger of drinking and driving, he would wave us off with a grin and say, “Guys, relax. I’ve done this for years. I know what I’m doing.”

To him, the outcome of reaching home without incident justified the decision. Over and over again. Until one day, it didn’t.

[Read more…] about The Psychology of Investing #13: The Deception of a Good Outcome

Letter to A Young Investor #13: The Secret to Avoiding Costly Mistakes in Investing

A few quick updates from Safal Niveshak HQ:

Special Anniversary Discounts:
🎁 The Sketchbook of Wisdom & Boundless: Now available at discounted prices for a limited time:

🎁 Mastermind Value Investing membership: ₹3000 off for new members. Click here to join now.

🎁 Value Investing Almanack newsletter: ₹3000 off on the annual plan. Click here to join now.

Offline Value Investing Workshops in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai:
Join me in-person for a day of deep learning, reflection, and conversations around value investing and life. Click here for details and registration.

Online Masterclass – The Art of Valuation:
A 3-hour live session on decoding intrinsic value and learning how great investors think about price vs. worth. Click here for details and registration.

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 start with a story. It’s about two remarkable athletes. You’ve probably heard of one. The other, maybe not.

Michael Phelps is regarded as one of the greatest Olympians of all time. With 23 Olympic gold medals, he redefined the world of swimming. With long arms, enormous wingspan, and an efficient dolphin kick, his body seemed designed for the water. For over a decade, Phelps was virtually untouchable in the pool.

[Read more…] about Letter to A Young Investor #13: The Secret to Avoiding Costly Mistakes in Investing