Tale of TATA coffee

What comes to your mind when money comes in a totally unexpected gamble?

T for Try again and Trot to earn more? (or) S for Satisfaction and Stop right there?

Well we chose the former as a normal human being would react. Who is WE? Well, it’s my friend and me, lets name both of us as tiger and rabbit.

A usual happening; why this hype? Well this is how I started my equity trading career along with my friend who was already pale faced with losses in the share world. From viewing it on a cricketing perspective, coming on to bat with three wickets down for my friend, had no choice but to make sure that my prophecy doesn't put him in another devastating situation.

Before I go into the detailed tale, let me introduce both of us in short for some sort of better understanding or for nothing, but just for a read.

Extremes look at each other

Tiger – IMPULSIVE, is all enough to describe. As the name goes, this guy is pretty sharp, violent and masks himself to be ‘non-impulsive’. Nothing matters serious to him, not even a loss of few K’s and never questions a wrong judgment. A cool tank, but the liquid in it seems to boil at different Fahrenheit at different moments.

Rabbit – NON-IMPULSIVE, never to miss out on Mr.Panic. A cool head if the tiger loses its self-control and hot it becomes when tiger masks itself. Everything is a serious issue, a loss doesn’t matter at all and no qualified brain to question the analytical mind of the tiger. In short, simple and chilled brain.

Tiger and Rabbit – extremes to join hands is a miracle because the carnivorous is never going to see the herbi live in reality. But, for anyone who thinks the Tiger is strong and a killer, let me tell you it has a heart and who thinks Rabbit to be cute and weak, needs to understand the fact that is has got brains.

Here we jump from ZOOLOGY to EQUITY TRADING……..

March 8^th – Night – At my house

After a long day at office, came home and got myself set for the night. Having mailed a share analyst in the noon checked my inbox in expectations of a reply from him and there was one. The table in the mail contained names and numbers and what I deciphered from it was, the trend with which TATA COFFEE (TC) and other companies had progressed and will further proceed in the coming days. Well nothing much for a novice to understand shares from a short mail, except for the attractive ascending prices of TC. Closed my mail and carried on with the other works for the night.

March 9^th – Morning 9:20 am – At my house

Long sleep and missed the market pre open at 9:00am. I switched on the television around 9:20am and changed it to the CNBC-TV18 channel to have a look at the market opening for the morning and unexpectedly, there was some news on TC and the price stood on 710. Damn, the rates have gone up by 30 rupees from the previous close, well fluctuations are to be considered unquestioned. Looks like a good buy is what my heart, brain, bones to blood vessels said to me but where is the money? dropping the idea of TC, rushed for work starting at 10am.

Midday around 11:15 am – At my office

Interested in share trading, I keep looking at few sites which render the prices of companies every second during the trading hours (updation of prices varies from 3 to 30 secs). One such site is UTVMONEY.MANGOPEOPLE.COM and I opened it in my office to have a look at the price of TC and it stood at 726 rupees. The immediate thing which struck to my mind was to call tiger and let him know of the staggering increase in TC prices. On hearing the news my friend was interested but not very curious in buying the shares because it called for grit.

Noon around 12:30 to 12:45 pm – At my office

My friend’s earlier disinterest had me lose the excitement in TC and I carried on with my work. How come you could keep out of something which you know might bring some profit. I couldn’t control myself from seeing the price of TC and was open mouthed after seeing the price go up to 737 rupees. I called up tiger and guess what; my friend became more interested to buy TC shares. My friend on a visit to his native on that day couldn’t make the buy himself and I tried to activate his account and planned on buying 30 shares to book a profit of 300 rupees minimum but damn our luck as I couldn’t pass through the login section cause it said ‘invalid password’. There we go, missed out on TC. TC closed at 759 for the day.

March 10^th 8:55 am – At my house

Tale of TATA coffee

We were ready for the acid test. The devil in me came out with the idea of buying of 100 shares when our budget could comfortably feed us 30 shares. Proposing the idea, tiger got to his nerves yelling that it comes to 78,000 in payment. Convincing him, 100 shares were bought at 784/share. What more to expect than a super downfall in price to 772 and 767 during the course of the day. I insisted on selling the shares on the same day and come out with lesser loss but the devil now played from my friend’s mind and he was not willing to come out of it, he barely need a breakeven(no loss, no profit). Do I have a choice? No. Rabbit panicked and Tiger composed. TC closed at 784.

March 11^th around 10:45 am – Trichy airport

“Passengers travelling from Trichy to Chennai via AIR INDIA express, flight no. IX 621 are requested to board the flight at Gate no.2 immediately”, was the call and I walking to board the plane when I received a call from tiger and all I could hear was cries of JOY…. TC went up to 850 after the markets opened. A moment of exaltation and there was no one by my side to share the good news. My mind started calculating the profits and was shell shocked to see it reach 2500 per head upon selling it at around 845.

  

Noon around 02:30 pm – Madras – Chithi’s house

Lunching in my aunt’s house, I received a text message from my friend and it read – “TC stands 830, shall I sell it?”. I called him and agreed with the sell idea and a quick call was made to Mumbai to sell the 100 shares. After the Mumbai call, tiger called me and said “hey rabbit, our shares were sold this morning around 11:30 when the price reached 845. I forgot that I set 845 as the stoploss and it got triggered when TC reached it.” Sweet tensions preceded over something which ended long back in the day. My plans of 2500 rupees remained alive and TC got it for us. TC closed at 859.

The following week we made another buy of TC at the cost of 889/share and this called in for some extremely gritty mindset or a freekin crazy buy and we were ready to afford the loss. Waiting for a week, we saw it touch the penultimate 4 digit figure 1000, had the highs go up to 1023 and more. The waiting week ended with a close of 1001 and we were pretty confident that the following week would render us more profit. The following week opened with a shackle and the price fell down to 996. My friend wanted to wait for the year end results to be announced by the company as that might increase the share value and so ‘wait’, ‘wait’, ‘wait’ was the call. The second day of the week saw the price go further down to 985. Tension grew as speculations failed and we made a sell order at 969 for the next day and TC left, leaving us is in profit of 3300 rupees each. The rates of TC descended in the following days and well it now highly relies on one single word “fluctuations”.

Later sometime in March - Word from the Analyst

I got the chance to meet the analyst who sent me the TC mail in the first place on March 8^th. I told about our venture with TC and chose TC by decoding his mail. He laughed aloud and I couldn’t understand the reason for this uncalled outburst of excitement. Calming himself down, said to me “I gave that table for Intraday trading and you guys went about doing a delivery trading with it and lucky you guys, cause that was a counter I wouldn’t dare touch with such volatility” and continued laughing. All I gave in response was a smile. Lucky us, cause that delivered us a huge profit and provided immunity to cope up with losses if we had to face in the future. We would have left the option of intraday, if we had deciphered it right.

JBaselineJ

Heavy plans were made for a return of 250 to 300 rupees per head from TC but our guts and luck with the help of the omnipresent, favored us roughly around 6000 rupees per head in a span of 10 days in addition with some priceless lessons as offers.

A CUP of advice – well never preferred to be heard but requisite…

COFFEE (advice) CUPS

People who are waiting for their share of luck in the equity market, three things you must know and amalgamate yourself with are;

Ø  NEVER SPECULATE

Ø  DON’T PANIC

Ø  DON’T RACE

These three are lotus roots; once you get stuck you will find it all over your mind making it immobilized in coming to a clear decision and will never allow sight of the surface water. In addition to all the analysis you could come up with, rabbit and tiger has something to say in common along with the whole world, 

“LUCK PLAYS IT ALL MATE”.