I’m still struggling to learn the intricacies of the ferocious bear that we seemed to be trapped in with pretty much the whole globe. Bad habits that I picked up (despite all my caution) during the past 4 years of the greatest bull market our stock markets had seen are not easy to discard. Now in hindsight I find myself quite some way from becoming a proper value investor. The mental discipline required to focus solely on intrinsic value was relaxed and lesser investments considered as the bull run matured. This bear run is already 14 months long and the price destruction is already the worst in our stock market history. Economic revival does seem at least 6-9 months away but maybe some sectors have already bottomed. The way Auto, cement and commodity stocks have rebounded in the last 5 months would suggest that the worst may be over for them. But any sustainable strong earnings growth is at least 2-3 quarters away for most good companies I track. So now lies ahead the tricky part of buying into them at the right levels in these volatile times.

Things are quite interesting as far as reactions to the bear goes amongst people I know. Some newcomers are now discovering the art of shorting markets at these low levels. Others who have built up images of being experienced hands pretend that they have been short all along. Just like they pretended to have bought early into multibaggers in the bull run. Typically experienced hands reveal little about what they are doing, though they always seem to be the ones asking your opinion about individual stocks. I’ve learnt very little from these so called old hands in the bull run and as expected have not learnt much in the downturn either. Maybe that is the way to keep one’s edge in the markets – leech off others and pretend to have not made any mistakes. In any case too much input is probably one of the reasons I chased all those not so resilient smallcaps in the first place. I should simply focus on improving my investment process and cut out all the remaining clutter.