Stocks and Relationships

Every time I look at my stock equity portfolio, I cannot resist classifying them beyond the conventional ways (Sector, Blue Chip, Punter etc. etc).
What follows now is one of those random segmentation take-offs that revolves around comparison between relationships with women and relationship with stocks.

One-night-stand stocks
These stocks are dangerous opportunistic purchases. However, the thrill of making money on these is the greatest. These stocks offer great prices for a very short period of time and quickly bounce back to the earlier levels. A successful deal always leaves you with a very fond memory (smiles).

Flirting stocks
These are also opportunistic purchases but with much paraphernalia. These are not convincing stories from a medium-to-long term future but in the short-term outlook is great. Great enough for you to take the plunge and buy some. Let me clarify that these are NOT weak counters.. just that future earnings is not clearly and convincingly visible.

Serious affair
Most of the commodity / cyclical stocks would fall in this range. In the boom cycle your relationship with these stocks would be most rewarding. It would, at multiple occasions, make you believe that they should become marriage-able stocks. Much to your dismay, when supply side forces a down-turn, you will be forced to exit.
Even after exiting you will always cherish the great rewards that you had reaped with these stocks.

Marriage-able stocks
These are stocks that will remain in your portfolio for life (most likely similar to your spouses). However, your confidence in them would follow a pattern which is as straight as a sine-curve. They will test your patience, your courage, pretty much everything at regular intervals. Forcing you to re-think not about the stock but entire equity market altogether. (smiles)
Some examples – Ranbaxy, ONGC

And finally…

Mother like stocks
All loving, never disappointing, stocks. They only move up or at best consolidate. You always doubt entering them thinking that they have already run-up. But anytime is good time to enter into stocks like these.
Some examples - Reliance Industries, BHEL, L&T.

16 Core Observations of Social Design

1. Humans are complex social animals.
2. Technology doesn’t change us very fast.
3. Humans constantly search out ways to communicate more efficiently.
4. The primary use of the Internet is communication.
5. People play different roles in different parts of their life.
6. People tend to connect to those people they are similar to.
7. Who we are similar to depends upon our situation and goals.
8. Over-similarity can lead to group-think.
9. Unpredictable behavior emerges within groups over time.
10. People act differently in groups than they do individually.
11. The people we know greatly influence how we act.
12. People usually compare themselves to those in their social group, not society at large.
13. Humans aren’t always rational, but are usually self-interested.
14. When humans are uncertain, we rely on social connections to help us out.
15. We have biases that we aren’t conscious of.
16. Because life in not deterministic, we cannot always predict human behavior