Betting On Wall Street
What has been the highlight for the stock market in 2020? Record retail participation in direct equities tops the list, but attraction to US equities comes a close second. The trend started in 2019, but picked up pace in 2020, especially after markets started recovering from the March crash.
Serial entrepreneur and veteran investor Pervez Hameed Sheikh was drawn to global stock investment for a variety of reasons. His four-decade-long experience in the domestic market was beginning to hit the saturation point. “I wanted to explore something new. I invested good three-four months in researching about ways to invest in the US market. Eventually I started my US stock journey with Interactive Brokers in October 2019. The process was cumbersome, but the brokerage guided me. When the market crash happened, I invested more money in US stocks.”
Hameed is not alone. Just when first-time investors were entering the domestic equity market, some others were moving abroad. The reasons vary. Some want better diversification, some others sought dollar exposure (to hedge their investments against rupee depreciation) to ensure foreign education for their children or buy real estate in the US. The rest want to play themes unavailable in India such as EV revolution, internet and e-commerce stocks or bitcoin-linked stocks.
