Over the last few weeks, the Indian stock market skyrocketed after the elections and most of my Good Till Cancelled orders for buying INP are of no use now. I missed the opportunity to buy then and I might get in slowly at dips.
One stock I did acquire is Apple. Even though it is still below my average buying price, it is very close to breaking even and might be one of the few gems that might make some money for me going forward. Even though I own no apple products, I see everyone around me has them. At tech meetings at UVA, I see half the people carrying iPhones and I seem to be the only one with an HTC Touch Pro (or any WinMo phone for that matter). People will live with poor service form AT&T and no 3G coverage but they still want their iPhones. I went to an iPhone development meeting and it turns out you need a Mac to develop apps for an iPhone! And everybody wants to make apps for iPhones. So indirectly that is a driver for Mac sales.
My hopes are on a recovery of the stock market over the coming years and I switched from a state pension plan to the University’s own retirement plan (about 10% of salary is put in your account and fully vested immediately with no matching requirement from the employee). It costs the University less than the state pension plan (for which the University contributes just over 11% – 5% goes to you, vested in 5 years and the remaining 6.something% goes to the state)