Had been working on some of the investment calculators to work on plan for long term investments. We are talking about Equity investment only here, with time horizon of 5 years.

Have choosen 5 years as time horizon, as that is typical time horizon for investments done by our parents in erstwhile investment instruments like NSC, which in 1990's used to double the money in 5 years.

Having seen parents invest the money in NSC and then forgeting about it and enjoying the good forgoten money showing up with good returns was always welcome.

My long term vision is based on these good memories and hence keeping the time span of 5 years.

Running through the calculators, saw some interesting numbers on the screen, with following return assumptions:

• Low Return : 12%
• Medium Return : 20%
• High Return : 40%
  

For an Investment of Rs. 10000/per month (Total Money Invested: Rs. 6 Lacs over 5 Year)

• Low Return : Rs. 816697 (8 Lacs+)
  
• Medium Return : Rs. 1017582 (10 Lacs+)
  
• High Return : Rs. 1845594 (18 Lacs+)
  

As you can see, with low investment of Rs. 10000/per month, one can almost triple the money in 5 years with average return of 40%.

If you are not an active investor, you can invest via the mutual fund route. The top 5 mutual funds have given average return of 50% + even in the volatile last year.

This is one Golden Rule i've learnt and in process of mastering and applying. Never Ever let your money sit idle.

Typical mistake which i myself do is Sell Stock and let the cash sit idle to catch the next fish. And in process what happens is Stock Sold moves up and I end up missing the movement.

This is not to say that go against the "Stop Loss" Rule of investing. But it is applicable only when you either:

• Decide to Skim the milk aka sell the Profit Stock Or
  
• Sell Stock which has tanked substantially (Either due to Stock Market Crash or not using Stop Loss)

Definetly there is risk of stock you are holding moving downward, but here in either case you are in good shape.

• For profit making stock, you are going to lose part of profit but not the investment.
  
• For tanked stock, it wont make difference as the upmove potential will have more weightage than downside
  

Having lost 50% of my portfolio in the recent sell off, i did post mortem of my portfolio. What i realised is that in case of bearish market, the portfolio risk balancing theory does not hold true, whether you hold momentum stocks or not.

Firstly i decided to sell off my portfolio and convert to cash . Though most of my stocks have moved up 10% since i sold off the portfolio.

My strategy for this market is Swing Trading with aim to first recover my losses. For this i'm going to buy stocks of single company from my entire cash kitty.

Last few months have seen the worst declines in Indian Markets since the last 5 years bull run. The indices are down more than 30% from their life high. Worst hit stocks are midcaps which have come down 50% from their peak in January, 2008.

I had built a portfolio of midcap stocks based on value investment criterion, but even it could not save the portfolio from diminishing to half its value.

After watching for 2 months for my portfolio to move up, my patience finally weared off. The entire portfolio moved maximum of 2% to 5% and then swinging back while the markets recovered 10%.

Powergrid is in right place at right time. Rel Power IPO is making buzz and taking all power stocks up up and up alongwith that buzz. But the damn PowerGrid is sitting like lame duck and refuses to even move leave flying.

After holding this for more than one month, it moved up to 155+ levels, giving me good hopes of atleast making my bare minimum profit target of 10% on my investment.

But lame duck was first one to fall when the midcaps fell in last 2 days.

Strategy: Exit
Target: 155+ levels

Bhagwati Banquets is based out of Gujarat and small hotel player. Initially had brought the stocks after seeing huge purchases by MF's and large volume.

This resulted me in making trade at 52 week high and post trade consolidation. On checking, saw stock being in T2T segment, with wide spreads in bid/ask prices.

Stock moves up/down randomly and there had been no pattern established of movement till date.

Target for this stock as per brokers is 120 levels. This can be reached only when stock will move out of T2T segment.

Strategy: Exit out of this stock but without any loss.
Target: Exit@95+ Levels