The stock market is a place to make quick bucks. Right or wrong, this is a common perception. No wonder most people come here with a mindset to get rich quickly. They enter the market to trade, not to invest. Here lies the catch. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala didn’t earn his fortunes through trading alone. It did play an integral role in him collecting money in the initial days, but the real wealth he accrued by investing the trading profits in quality stocks for the long term. Learning the tricks of the ‘trade’ is not an easy job, but investing is. The first and foremost principle of investing is having patience and a long-term outlook. One cannot be a great investor if one always thinks about buying and selling different stocks. Jhunjhunwala was a visionary since the early days, says a family friend who has known him since the late 1980s. “He did tell many of us to take positions in Titan and CRISIL, but only he had the vision to hold it for years. He could see its long-term potential and stood by it,” he said. Rakesh began investing in Titan Industries in the late 1980s, far earlier than the popular narrative of him buying the stock in 2002. Time and compounding powered returns not just in Titan but also in the overall portfolio. Rakesh set foot in the stock market in 1986. He is fabled to have begun with Rs 5,000 in his pocket. His portfolio attained a value of approximately Rs 35,000 crore in 2022, at the time of his death. Some estimates put this value a lot higher. Debashis Basu put the worth of Rakesh’s portfolio at Rs 50,000 crore in an article in Moneylife. 

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