It is like a school where you do not have a headmaster or principal and then the whole classroom goes into chaos. I think it is a very chaotic country even now, and all sorts of problems are there, such as NPA. When the boss is not there, everything goes haywire. I think in various aspects of it, whether political, social or economic, there is so much of work in progress. So I am quite sure at some point of time things will start suddenly happening. We are waiting for that day when India takes off.
I mean of course we are very stable growing at about 7%-7.5% but when will that great moment come that we get into leapfrog into 9%, 10% and for a decade or so we grow at double digit or something like that. So there is all kinds of preparation is on and I am not an economist to figure out so I think still things are slow and earnings, I see stock markets guys so I look at from a stock market point of view right now we still see earnings stuck four years back at Rs 400 for Nifty still around 400 ..
when I started my career in 1987, 1987 we started Motilal Oswal. I started buying stocks in 1980 so till about 1994 I used to think I am very smart guy and in my 10 crore portfolio I had 200 stocks more than 200 stocks all sorts of junk were there, some good stocks were also there. Then I took one after I read Buffett first time I cleaned up the portfolio and I had only 15 stocks that very year my portfolio doubled. So what happens is another thing is a power of compounding, power of compounding ..
In 2003 we incurred loss for a year or two typically if I had a public market portfolio I would have sold it but today what is the value of the same thing so holding on for long period of time a good company is most important to have. Buying good company is very important and holding it for long time both are important.
Actually this market really allows you to be a billionaire I mean you have to put your head down do not allow the billion to get into your head, look at your net worth this is about market cap not your net worth so do not mix these two things. My net worth is only may be 1000-1200 crore and not even that much I think just about that much so it is not billionaire or it is like that so because I cannot touch my billion.
So investing and investment management these are two different things. So when you start asking about sector and companies and all, then you are getting into the field of investment management and there as I say stock picking is only one of the traits. The stock picking is not the end of investing. You need to select the stock and allocate well. If I give you a good idea and you buy one percent of your portfolio and I buy 20% of my portfolio, the impact of it two years when stock goes three or four times. why Motilal Oswal is actually enriching me so much because my 100% of my net worth is into Motilal Oswal.
So I have 100% in equities so that is not the right profile for everybody. But let them see their own… the younger people like you and all you must have 110% in equities. So I mean like everything should be in equity to start with because you have so much of time, even if you lose out, after five years or seven years you can again, I mean it does not set you back so much. But if you are right in equities, it can take you very far that really sets the, lays the foundation for making big money. You will start with few lakhs at the age of 25-27 and in 10 years you are 20-30 lakhs because you can make lot of money in stocks only if you have some amount of capital to start with it.
Zero multiplied by anything is zero so you got to have some capital to start with and it takes lot of time to build the capital like I started in 87 with zero capital so the first struggle was how do you build few crores on which you can apply your ideas.