Everyone knows the basics.
Buy low. Sell high. Don’t panic. Don’t chase. Have a plan.
Nobody argues with these. They’re not complicated. You’ve probably known them for years.
And yet.
The Fall Is Pain
IOC at ₹133 still bothered me more than I expected.
I knew it might fall when I entered at ₹147. That was part of the plan — enter in the lower third of the range, average if it drops further. I’d written it down before the stock moved.
But when it actually fell, I kept checking crude prices more than usual. Refreshing the same data I’d already seen. Not because anything had changed. Because the position being down feels different from knowing it might go down.
The temptation wasn’t to sell immediately. It was subtler — a creeping doubt. Did I miss something? Is this time different?
What pulled me through wasn’t confidence. It was one question — has anything in the business broken?
Marketing margins under pressure — yes, known risk, accepted. Crude elevated — yes, known risk, accepted. Government policy uncertainty — yes, known risk, accepted.
Nothing new. Nothing that changed the original reasoning.
So I added Lot 2 at ₹133. Not because the discomfort disappeared. Because the thesis hadn’t.
A Line I Keep Coming Back To
There’s something I’ve told myself for years — not just about markets:
Never be too proud of a good call. Never beat yourself up over a bad one.
Not because outcomes don’t matter. They do. But there are too many factors outside your control for either reaction to make sense most of the time.
What you can control is narrower than it feels. Did you understand why you bought? Does that reason still hold? Are you being honest about the difference?
The question isn’t “am I up or down right now?” It’s — why did I buy this? Has that changed?
If it has — get out. If it hasn’t — stay a bit longer.
I don’t always find that easy to apply. But it’s the question I keep returning to.
REC at ₹600 — It Wasn’t Genius
I didn’t buy REC at ₹600. The stock went from ₹200 to ₹600 and I stayed out.
I want to be honest about why — because I’ve seen people call this kind of thing “discipline” or “framework” after the fact.
It wasn’t genius. It wasn’t superior analysis. The move from ₹200 to ₹600 itself made it hard to think clearly. Every channel had a price target. Everyone had a thesis. The noise was too loud and my entry conditions weren’t met.
Could I have bought at ₹500 on the way up? Probably. But that would have meant buying into vertical momentum — and I’d have been buying the narrative, not the business.
I entered at ₹337 instead. Whether that’s right — I’ll find out. I’m not certain it is.
When Panic Is Correct
Panic exit has a bad reputation. But sometimes it’s the right move.
If a fraud happens — exit. Immediately. Price doesn’t matter. Thesis doesn’t matter. When the integrity of the business itself breaks, get out.
Yes Bank taught me that. I held too long. I kept telling myself the thesis was intact. It wasn’t. The business was broken and I didn’t want to accept it.
The mistake wasn’t panicking. The mistake was not panicking soon enough.
But selling IOC because crude went up for a week — that’s not panic. That’s impatience. Selling ITC because one quarter disappointed — same thing. The stock going down is not the same as the thesis breaking.
That distinction is harder to make in real time than it looks on a chart. I know because I’ve got it wrong before.
Cheaper Is Not Always Cheap
REC at ₹337 is 44% below its recent high. It’s also roughly 4x above where it spent most of the last decade.
Both of those things are true at the same time.
Which one matters more? I’m not entirely sure. It depends on whether the post-rerating range holds or unwinds further. I don’t know the answer to that.
What I do know is that the entry at ₹337 felt less emotionally crowded than ₹600 did. The dividend provides some cushion. The conditions were closer to met.
That’s the most honest thing I can say about it.
Anything Without a Plan
I know how this sounds. Have a plan. Stay disciplined.
Easy to write. Genuinely hard at 2pm when a position is down 8% and you’re second-guessing everything you thought you knew about the stock three weeks ago.
But without a plan, every decision gets made in the emotional state of the moment. And emotional states are the worst time to make financial decisions.
When a position falls, the emotional state says sell. When it rallies, it says buy more. When it goes sideways for months, it says something must be wrong.
None of that is driven by the business. It’s driven by the feeling right now.
And here’s the thing — that emotional state is also what every sales strategy is built around. Look at real estate. Most property gets bought at peak FOMO or peak fear. The developer creates urgency, scarcity, social proof. The product being sold isn’t the flat. It’s relief from an uncomfortable feeling.
Markets work the same way.
If I hadn’t written the IOC averaging plan down before the stock moved, I probably wouldn’t have added at ₹133. The discomfort in the moment would have won.
The Only Thing That’s Actually Hard
The ideas in this post are not complicated. Anyone reading this already knows them.
The hard part is doing it — when the stock is falling, the news is bad, and the doubt is loud.
That’s what this site is trying to document. Not the ideas. The gap between knowing and doing.
Whether I’m closing that gap — the timelines will show.
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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.