“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”- Benjamin Franklin
“I made a killing in the stock market; my broker lost all my money, so I killed him.” –Jim Loy
First quote holds the forte of truth everywhere and more so in financial investment and wealth management, probably with greater importance.
Second quote, though on a lighter note is another aspect of the stock market; if you don’t invest in educating yourself about fundamentals, probabilities, permutation and combination, you will lose whatever you have earned and much more.
Internet has made all the information available to us on our fingertips, but unless and until the information is vetted by a person of authority, they are meaningless. That’s why; we decided to cut the clutter and take you away from routine and bring you the wisdom of someone who has been in this industry for close to two decades.
Mr. Sameer Kapoor, CEO of Elite Wealth Advisors Ltd. has close to two decades of experience in the Financial Market. He has worked as Senior Vice President with Religare Ltd, VP – Online Business with HSBC InvestDirect (India) Ltd., ILFS, Mansukh Securities and Mefcom. For majority of the time he was building up and growing the Online Business on pan India basis.
His LinkedIn Bio reads,”Blogger by choice, Finance Enthusiast, Speaker”, and believe us, he excels in everything that he has written. But what he modestly didn’t mention in his profile is that he is an astute and avid inbound marker, helping the information to spread and businesses to grow. His two blogs www.simplypaisa.com and www.mysharebazar.com provides great insight of the financial market and handholds the end users in the process of intelligent investing. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) from ICFAI, Masters of Financial Management from Pondicherry University and B.Com from Delhi University.
Let’s learn together from his knowledge and experience….
Review Board: Journey of investment sentiment in India starts from greed and reaches indifference travelling via fear and despair. Is it the scenario only in India or also in the rest of the world? Has intelligent investing ever been a pattern or will it ever be the pattern in future and if yes, then what does it look like?
Sameer Kapoor: Any investment that makes decent returns can be considered as intelligent investing and if I guess it right, Indians have always made decent money whether it is in Stock Markets or with Real Estate. The only difference of opinion comes when you actually wish to evaluate your decision.
The invested capital in couple of days may be giving different returns in terms of IRR as compared to that of couple of years. So it is important for investors to define the tenure of investment before investing.
Upcoming breed of Wealth Management businesses are very well articulating these things and will surely redefine the perception.
Review Board: What advice would you give to small investors for intelligent investing?
Sameer Kapoor: A small investor looking to invest should clearly define and most importantly correlate Risk, Return expectation and Tenure. Any uneven proposition giving very high returns may not be recurring or may not be true also.
I haven’t seen Super Heroes in my entire career so only capabilities seemingly true for a human should be trusted upon.
Review Board: Mess in the Indian financial system and the mistrust of common man in the people running this market is largely of their own doing. Their greed has definitely done a huge damage. What are the short and long term steps that need to be taken to restore the faith of common man and strengthen the structure of financial system once again?
Sameer Kapoor: Greed of little better returns brings everyone to these markets so nothing bad in this. Difficult part is that very few people with limited capital exposure and practically no discipline in their investing approach tries to represent the very large mass of small and big investors. Increasing market capitalization with more and more IPOs/Public issues getting over subscribed reflects confidence of people only. Historically, we have seen returns of people invested in businesses through stock markets have outperformed that of any other financial asset class like FDs or Gold.
SEBI always keeps bringing measures to bring more and more confidence of investors and is doing a great job.
Review Board: Whatever happened in 2007-08 due to US Subprime crisis is nothing when we compare to something like China, US and Global debt scenario. Chinese total debt crossed $33 Trillion few years ago, which is three times more than their GDP. Global debt stands at more than $217 Billion against the Global GDP of around $65 Trillion. What is your opinion on that? How long will this bubble sustain? What is your advice to common man to safeguard himself from any such eventuality?
Sameer Kapoor: I guess Global debt figures are in Trillions and I think it stood at $237Tn for Q3 2017. See, high debt figures are always alarming and creates a risk of afloat.
A major component of this debt comes from Governments who borrow money to fund social schemes. Here you will find few which will have extremely high debt and few with very manageable debt.
As an investor, I would like to be in a place which are producing growth and using debt to manage that growth. Others which are using debt just to fund their facilities are bound to see a bad day in future times. This may be very high depreciation in currency or extreme inflation or total economic fiasco. However, few hard workers will sustain their growth and come with some amazing numbers.
I would certainly be on the side of these hard working borrowers rather than crying on few lethargic borrowers. Similar to this, investing in such companies always yield good returns as their management understand how to sail through difficult times and grow business.
Review Board: Under the current Market scenario when SEBI has been proactively tightening the rules and regulations for Market Operators reducing the maneuverability, how do you see it impacting the Brokers?
Sameer Kapoor: Definitely, it is going to impact the complete broking business. I feel broking business is going through a big change.
It is getting primarily divided among investors and traders. While Traders are getting more focuses on derivatives and automated trading. Investors are trying to outsource their direct interaction with markets to Portfolio Managers and Investment advisors. Both sides are witnessing a big growth and newer technological advancement.
A traditional way of calling and servicing clients is slowly getting outdated and speedily getting replaced with self service or completely outsourced approach.
Review Board: In this digital era, customers are educated and informed. It has made customer acquisition easy and tough, both at the same time. Easy, because sales team is not required to spend good amount of time on educating the customer about the product or services and tough, because customer is already informed and has multiple choices. So, what would be your advice to anyone looking to acquire new customer?
Sameer Kapoor: Business never gets tough with customer education rather one needs to find a way to service this educated customer in a most cost efficient way and reduce cost associated to such customer education.
Online has come up as a most preferred way for individual investors as it brings convenience to access and operate, freedom to choose own investing method and cost efficiency with reduced pricing models. It is now a proven fact that Online is not only better than in Brick and Mortar model in Acquisition but also in Servicing.
Businesses now see a lot of competition on online space also but the smarter one still find their niche and create acquisition spree. Within Online, now there are multiple ways to generate opportunities but cost efficiency is the name of the game.
Online Marketing is not like what it used to be 10 years back but has changed shape. My three key advices would be
- Never hire any person for Online marketing who do not understand the Industry.
- Maintain your online reputation as the recourse from bad reputation in online space is very difficult.
- Never rely on business model which depends on customer ignorance as awareness spreads very fast online and will eventually destroy your business.
We had great time talking to Mr. Kapoor and few things which came out prominently from our discussion were:
- Educate yourself about the battle you are getting into.
- Whoever you are; evaluate the risk, reward and time frame.
- Stick to the normal, expect what is humanly possible. -
- Little bit greed is good, because that’s what brings you to the market, but overstretching is not only bad for you but the market as well.
- Online marketing has changed what it used to be ten years back.
- Keep a close eye on your online reputation. A small mistake and lethargy can cost you the reputation built over years of hard work.
- Never rely on the business model which depends on consumer ignorance because awareness increases faster in online domain and anything wrong can destroy your business.
As we enjoyed our discussion and learnt from his experience, we are also sure that you will find it informative and valuable.
Note: To read more insights from professionals working in different field, keep visiting
www.reviewboard.in . You can ask us about our services at
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