People who have read my current newsletter and old site (tankrich.com started in 2011) may have seen my evolution as investor
Phase 1 : Hustler (2011-2018)
Had a very small capital built from saving salary, I was a Hustler often learning a framework then practically deploying in markets. I use to write regularly on variety of topics in my 20s with having spend most of my time at home in safe environment , this was first time I lived in different location and understood how world works literally.
Then came an opportunity to visit and work in Australia, start family and things got busy. Made a killing on same capital I never got a CA to audit it but it must have been 30% XIRR on a tiny sum. In fact I was so long on content creation that if you visit my YouTube channel you will see old videos from 2014/15 . I think creatively as far as writing is concerned this was my golden period. I often revisit these articles even today.
Phase 2 : Absentee (2019 -2023)
Work and social commitments and trying to build a life in new country took over, I lost touch with ground , someone who could rattle off in a minute whats happening with 100s of Indian companies got bogged down at work.
Writing went down compared to earlier years. I discovered ETFs through FIRE movement and in my article I have two paragraphs that I want re-quote
first one my active investing even with limited efforts thanks to grunt in 2013-18 was delivering well
Scorecard beat indexes and you still you like ETFs?
Scorecard has done ~30 transactions (approx 1 per month) and I have spent probably 100s of hours on research (if you ask my wife 1000s) while if I bought the large-cap index countless hours, the agony of tracking, updating thesis would have been saved and I could have used those hours elsewhere.
because picking and researching never felt like work to me
Why are you then still actively picking stocks?
For the love of it, even though I spent 100s of hours sitting in my rabbit hole (home office) reading one page after another this activity doesn’t feel tiring, in fact, this is an escape for me from work and other commitments, Also I have done reasonably well at least till now.
Kiran’s tweet is a good summary :)
But slowly I have learned that passive investing works and it’s going to get a prominent place in my portfolio as life takes over (raising children, social, learning commitments, etc)
I learned international investing as I was now a true blue NRI, my work (day job) operated in an area where I learned about crypto currencies but I was doing minimum effort to update myself on what was happening in stocks investing scene in India. I was so out of sync that in 2022 I wrote just two articles with one of them was on how to time Index fund :)
This was honestly also an era for first time, I felt I have lost stock picking skills I wont admit to it outside world but deep within I knew the world has moved from 2012 methods and I am 10 years out of touch with on ground changes.
My individual stock picks in ASX markets also bombed but allocation saved me as in middle of 2023 my portfolio was 80% passive ETFs and stocks + mutual funds
Phase 3 : Restarter (2024 -present)
Not sure but the urge came back in mid 2023, it is difficult to point to a reason but very likely it was because Sam Altman dropped chatgpt finally time limits can be overcome
apprehension was there too. I started by re reading my favourite books,
One Up on Wall Street and
William O Neil’s classic How to Make Money in Stocks
My old articles from 2014-15
By this time I was 90-95% ETFs + Mutual funds, so I took a very small amount of capital and re-started. Initial months were tough ,the world has moved from value to momentum and pure fundamentals to techno-fundamentals. I enrolled in few courses but eventually went back to method of learning by doing.
learning charting + reading Darvas + relearning price action and applying them in real life on real stocks
nothing was in an organic planned manner, it was learning whenever I met with an obstacle as example I read research papers to deeply understand momentum I developed courses on
How to trade BTC
How to invest in Mutual funds
How to trade GOLD
I also developed multiple trading view indicators , started participating in concalls.
the mojo came back.
The confidence helped co-found a differentiated Mutual Fund Distributuon business in 2025 as well
Today,I asked chatgpt to rate my second innings or third dont know did I ever leave :) ?
I am sure a small capital base + few good bets and luck has played a part, I wanted to do this analysis when we are off highs so waited for a broad correction.
The restart phase and publishing these numbers were not for anyone else but they were for me that I belong to Arena and there are few more decades to play.
Go compound!
Happy investing
