Like a Rolling Stone: A selloff rocks retail's wealth & sentiment
The portfolio value of Darshita Shah, 41, is down 40% since the market decline began in late September. The Mumbai-based homemaker, encouraged by her college-going son to take the plunge into stocks, had invested around ₹7 lakh in small-cap stocks, especially defence, IT and auto. Now, as Shah watches her holdings languish, she has lost the appetite to make fresh investments despite her son pushing to deploy more.
«My son was telling me to buy when it falls and stuff like that but I don't think I'm going to allocate any more money as of now, till I regain confidence and will stick to my current investments,» said Shah.
Shah is among the numerous retail investors who have been unnerved by the sudden reversal in the bullish stock market.
Since the peak in September, benchmark Nifty and Sensex have slumped over 10% while the broader market has suffered deeper losses. Nifty Mid-Cap 150 has plunged 14.1% while Small-Cap and MicroCap indices tumbled around 17% each.
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The primary market has also witnessed a slowdown with only 10 IPOs listing on the bourses in the first three months so far this year, compared to 28 issues in the October-December period last year.
Nervous Newbies
Many of them who are first-timers haven't seen a decline in share prices of this magnitude as the stock market has been on a near one-way upward trajectory since March 2020 — when Covid struck.
«Since this is a bear market after a prolonged period of 4-5 years, there is anxiety among first-time investors post-Covid regarding when