Ordered food from Zomato and to my surprise, discovered how to survive the bear market

The Zomato Effect..

Whenever I order food online, I usually prefer Swiggy as I find them to be faster compared to Zomato.

Recently a few weeks back, Zomato had introduced a new ‘On Time or Free’ delivery concept. Under this feature, if you pay an additional 10 bucks, Zomato lets you avail a full refund on the order if it’s late.

Cool! This means they must have got their logistics sorted and for 10 bucks I can be reasonable sure the food gets delivered within the promised time.

So for a change, I started ordering from Zomato, under this new ‘On Time or Free’ concept.

This is when I suddenly found a strange behavior change in me.

Usually, after I order food, I get a little irritated when the order gets delayed and I am waiting for the food to arrive as soon as possible.

Now ironically, I was glued on to my phone, praying for the delivery person not to make it in time. Unfortunately, I had my delivery on time – in fact 5 minutes before the specified waiting time 😦

Logically, I should have been happy that the order was delivered super quick. But I realized I was pretty disappointed. In fact, I was longing for a delay!

Zomato smartly had made the most painful process of online delivery – the waiting period – into the most exciting one!

Wow!

That is when I realized something similar has been happening to me during the current market fall.

My Strange Bear Market Behavior

Since I have almost my entire savings invested in equities, I should have logically been extremely worried with the 30-35% fall. But strangely, I was rooting for a further fall.

Now before, you brand me as a sadistic jerk, let me explain..

Luckily for me, I had some unexpected cash inflow recently which I was yet to deploy.

Now the plan was to deploy it at different levels in a bear market

1. If markets fall 20% then I will: Invest 20% of my cash
2. If markets fall 30% then I will: Invest 30% of my cash
3. If markets fall 40% then I will: Invest 40% of my cash
4. If markets fall 50% then I will: Invest 10% of my cash

Since I had invested only 50% of my cash (at 20% decline and 30% decline), I am still waiting for a further fall in markets to deploy the remaining cash.

So while a large part of my portfolio is bleeding and I should be happy if the markets move up, I suddenly find myself in regret as the markets rallied in the last week.

Logically it makes no sense.

But this psychological bias of mine, has made this supposedly painful fall exciting enough.

So this whole experience leaves me with an important lesson.

I shouldn’t deplete the entire cash. However small the portion, I need to have some small amount left to be deployed at far lower levels. This will ensure I have something to look out for and keep myself distracted from the actual problem!

This should help me shift my focus, from the actual pain in my portfolio to the excitement of deploying at lower levels.

So I was in effect using the same psychological trick of Zomato unknowingly, to handle the bear market.

Summing it up..

Not sure if this is applicable to everyone. But there is no harm in trying this out by using a small portion of cash (if you are lucky to have some) or your debt portion.

As a twist to the Zomato tagline,

You will wish the markets had fallen more!

As always, Happy Investing Folks 🙂

You can also share your feedback or queries at rarun86@gmail.com. Not that I have got it all sorted, but I maybe of some help:)

If you loved this post, share it with your friends and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog (1 article per week) or Twitter along with the 8000+ awesome people. Look out for some fresh, super interesting investment insights delivered straight to your inbox.

You can also check out my other blog articles here

I also write officially here

Disclaimer: All blog posts are my personal views and do not reflect the views of my organization. I do not provide any investment advisory service via this blog. No content on this blog should be construed to be investment advice. You should consult a qualified financial advisor prior to making any actual investment or trading decisions. All information is a point of view, and is for educational and informational use only. The author accepts no liability for any interpretation of articles or comments on this blog being used for actual investments.