This is not financial advice. All views are personal.
FOMO doesn’t arrive with a warning.
It arrives when your colleague mentions a stock at lunch. When the auto driver tells you his brother doubled his money last month. When your ex-GF just posted about an IPO that’s already 2x.
By the time everyone is talking, the easy part of the move is usually over. You just don’t know it yet.
My Yes Bank Lesson
I bought Yes Bank while it was falling.
Not because I had a thesis. Because the noise was everywhere — “too big to fail”, “RBI will intervene”, “promoters will fix it.” The media was running wall to wall coverage. Everyone had an opinion. The stock had fallen so much it felt like value investing.
It wasn’t. It was a falling knife with blood on it.
I sold at ₹6. Took the loss. And then did something more useful — I built rules so it never happened again.
That loss didn’t just cost money. It forced me to define what my system actually was. What qualifies as value. What qualifies as noise. Where the line is.
Yes Bank is why NoTradeZone exists.
The IPO Machine
Indian IPOs are frequently priced to give early investors a profitable exit — not necessarily to give retail investors value.
When Paytm and Zomato listed at valuations that demanded extremely high future expectations — the media didn’t ask hard questions. They ran headlines about listing gains, grey market premiums and how many times the issue was subscribed.
Nobody asked: does this business make money? Who is actually getting rich here?
The noise machine doesn’t cover fundamentals. It covers excitement. And excitement is almost always someone else’s exit.
Where FOMO Actually Comes From
It’s not just media. That’s too easy an answer.
FOMO comes from:
The colleague who made 3x on a tip and won’t stop talking about it at lunch.
The auto driver whose brother doubled his money last month.
The ex-GF who just bought an IPO and it already doubled.
Each one feels like proof that you’re missing something. You’re not. You’re just hearing the winners. Nobody talks about the losses.
Media covers what’s exciting. Markets reward what’s patient. Those are rarely the same thing.
By the time something is exciting enough for everyone to talk about — the opportunity has usually already passed. What’s left is the risk.
What I Do Instead
When everyone is talking about something I don’t just ignore it. Ignoring feels uncomfortable — like you might actually be missing something real.
Instead I study it.
Check the business. Check the competition. Check the margins. Check who is actually making money and how.
If the study confirms the noise — maybe there’s something there. If the study finds nothing — I close the tab and move on. The process gives me satisfaction that I didn’t just blindly ignore it. I looked. It wasn’t worth it.
That’s the process. Not blind ignorance. Informed indifference.
The NoTradeZone Rule
If everyone is talking about it — study it, don’t buy it.
If the study justifies it — then and only then consider an entry. On your terms. Not theirs.
FOMO is just noise with urgency attached. Remove the urgency and it’s just another stock to analyse.
The market will always give another opportunity. The difficult part is believing that while everyone else is getting rich without you.
Related Reading
→ The NoTradeZone Methodology — How I Think About Entries and Exits
→ How to Stop Overtrading — A Framework That Works
→ Why 90% of Traders Lose Money in F&O — The Real Reasons
→ Why I Don’t Use Stop Losses — And What I Do Instead
About the Author
Jonathan — Endurance athlete. Investor by discipline. I document real trades in real time — entry prices, thesis, risks and honest updates. No tips. No calls. Just disciplined thinking, publicly archived.
All views expressed are personal. This is not investment advice. Please consult a SEBI registered advisor before making investment decisions.