The Accumulation Phase

During the first couple of weeks, I had accumulated stocks costing Rs.20k - twice my monthly salary. The shares ranged from ABB, BPCL, Glaxo, HLL, HPCL, Tata Power besides the first two purchases. Most of these were based on recommendations and research from sharekhan. I was good at fundamental analysis by this time and I was working on my tech. analysis.
Another good thing happened within a month. I was sent to the US by my employer. The advantage was that I got a salary from India (which went directly into stocks for 6 months); I also got a per-diem allowance in the US. This meant more savings.
During my stay in the US, 9/11 happened and all hell broke loose in the markets. Like Buffett would say, I was happier in the market because Mr.Market just put up a big "ON SALE" sign. By the end of October, the portfolio had balooned to a little over 100k including my prior investments. Even though the market was hitting the nadir, my portfolio looked strong with only about 10% under at worst days. I took (rightly) as the sign of the strength of my portfolio. By the end of November, I was 5% above. By now, when I returned to India, the portfolio had 16 scrips. I continued my accumulation over the next year or so to reach 195k cost by the end of 2002. By then, the market had slowly started picking up. My portfolio had never looked better with 50% overall return by the middle of 2003 and 115% by the end of the year, after booking some profits. This is all I intend to write about my portfolio and performance, just to give a background. I intend to add a few comments during my monthly discussion. Before I begin that, I am going to discuss the rationale behind each of my scrip selections in the initial period, complete with data.