In the mid-2000s, when the Indian stock market was melting up (alongside global markets), it was the infrastructure and the real estate companies that were the darlings of the market. Despite the portfolio having done very well for our clients during that period, there was significant disappointment that we had “missed” several real estate and infrastructure stocks that had turned into multi-baggers. It was all about landbanks and orderbooks and it seemed certain that these businesses would become multibillion-dollar enterprises over the following five to 10 years!
Fomo (Fear of Missing Out) would perhaps be an accurate description of what drove some of my portfolio decisions as a young fund manager, roughly 15 years ago during the global financial crisis meltdown. Of course, the phrase had not been invented yet back then; but the fundamental drivers of market cycles and human psychology have not changed.
