INVESTOR CATEGORIES
1. A conservative investor
· Your primary focus should be capital protection even if you have to sacrifice returns.
· Your portfolio should comprise predominantly debt.
· Stick to safe options, such as bank fixed deposits and post office schemes.
2. A moderately conservative investor
· Your priority is to preserve capital over the medium to long term.
· You can take a slight risk to be able to earn better returns.
· Go for monthly income plans of mutual funds, which invest 20-25% of their corpus in stocks and the rest in safe debts.
3. A moderate investor
· You can take a reasonable level of risk in exchange for better returns.
· This will ensure good capital growth in the long term.
· An allocation of 50-60% to debt and 40-50% to equities would be suitable.
4. An aggressive investor
· You can take an above-average to high level of risk with your investments.
· A higher allocation (70%) to equities has the potential to give very good long-term returns.
· While this can lead to notional losses in the short to medium term, the long-term picture will be bountiful.
INVESTOR TYPES
1. Strategic investor
· He focuses on building long-term wealth, and knows that 10 years on, the events that seem catastrophic now will pale into insignificance.
· He sticks to an allocation pattern – say, 50% in equity, 30% in long-term debt, 10% in short-term debt, and 10% in gold – and earns reasonable returns across market cycles.
· Sticking to one’s allocation means continuing to invest in equity even as the market falls, and keeping money aside in debt even if the equity market rises.
· A strategic investor has faith in the power of time to even out volatility in market cycles.
· For him, panic-driven market crashes are opportunities to reduce the average cost and even out the expensive pricing of the preceding boom cycle.
· He takes in stride the downside in order to be present in the market when it turns up.
· He does not use borrowed capital, and is not in a hurry.
· He matures over time, primarily by blocking out the hype and staying true to his allocation.
· In uncertain times, he gives in to panic and quits the market in haste.
2. Tactical investor
· He is the one who is tested the most during an uncertainty.
· He likes to predict how asset classes are likely to perform, and tries to modify the portfolio to protect it from losses.
· As all calls cannot be accurate, tactical investing needs expertise and skill in reading the market signals, as well as the ability to reallocate assets.
· In uncertain times, he assumes that all his calls will hit the bull’s eye and borrows funds to add to a position he holds, making a risky bet riskier.
3. Event-based investor
· His temptation to buy an asset that is moving up is high.
· He uses available partial information in making a move, hoping to make money from the resulting volatility.
· He focuses on the capital in hand and is willing to book losses if his call goes wrong.
· His allocation is a small component of his wealth, in order to prevent it from getting wiped off.
· He acts swiftly, keeping his capital agile and working for him at all times.
· In uncertain times, he stakes a large amount in what everyone is chasing but fails to exit in time.
4. Financially weak investor
· He has a limited corpus, and should know when to keep out of the market.
· Risky markets are not for a person who has significant liabilities, or is worried about not earning or saving enough.
· In uncertain times, he hopes to make good an earlier loss but ends up repeating his mistakes.
· He would be better off not taking drastic measures in risky markets.