Common point: driving and investing

Like many other, these days, I too land up taking an Uber or Ola couple of times every week. The experience is mostly good, barring a few occasions when the driver has been rude. I land up getting into a conversation with most of them for two reasons – I need to first get them to turn off the radio and then talk to them so that they don’t doze off. As most of them drive insane hours each day, a chance of sleeping behind the wheels is high. The chat also gives me insights into how they are coping with the heat of lower incentives these days.

Roadmap: Observing them has also made me realise that a lot of their action is like investing, right from the time they accept your booking. For instance, the Google map or whatever that draws up the route map for them is very similar to the financial roadmap, which has a start and an end with a preferred route to start with, which can change as one progresses depending on traffic condition and other challenges that one may face during the trip. Financial goals are similar; you know the target year and the target sum when you start. You then make changes to the plan to realise the goal you have set.  

Noise and more: Although the cab drivers are pretty focused to complete the trip, many a times they get distracted by constantly looking at the route map. Sometimes, they lose focus owing to heavy traffic or incessant honking, which is so common in our cities. I feel the traffic signal is like the stock market index, which keeps changing colours for the traffic to be regulated. While markets go down and climb up; the cab stops and moves based on the traffic signal and traffic. As investors, you should know of the market noise and investing rules to react accordingly. Do not be distracted by short-term noise and do not lose focus from the long-term goal.

Waiting and patience: Drivers these days accept any trip that comes their way. Sometimes drivers tell me the number of hours they waited for a trip to come before I boarded. When you start investing; you will have phases when the worth of your investments will dip and there are times when their worth will zoom. Just do not be lost thinking of a good day or time to start investing – just make a start. The biggest hurdle to investing is the inertia of not making a start.

Adjusting to conditions: Drivers change routes to save on time or drive through a clean road – you could adopt a similar exercise when investing, by changing the amount of money you can put or the timeframe for which you plan to invest. Likewise, when the returns you are expecting are not being met by a particular instrument, you should make changes to your investments in them to meet your needs.

Guidance and help: I fancy these reversing alarms because it takes away the guesswork from your assessment of how much space is there before you can stop your car before hitting the wall. Technology helps you set limits when investing on gains, as much as it does on losses. What this means is that you can put a stop loss on your investment as much as you can increase the sum you wish to invest when the markets are at lower level for you to invest comfortably.

Manual or automatic: I find some of these drivers to now use automatic gear drives. This is a big boon for them from the start-stop-change gear-brake mode. Investing is similar – you could start with a systematic investment plan (SIP) in a good fund and treat it like an automatic investment for the next few years. Alternately, you could get into an active investment in direct stocks. From my experience, automatic is far smooth a driving experience than manual and I urge you consider a similar process when investing. 

olmdesk@outlookmoney.com