Archive of posts from March 2020
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What To Do During The Crisis and Lockdown?
The Indian government has called for a lockdown for 21 days. So you must all be at home with family including kids. So I am guessing you must be experiencing a taste of my life! Meanwhile the markets are doing things they are best known for, i.e. being irrational. Well, actually if you ask me, the markets seem more rational now than before. On the other hand, government and RBI are doing lots of things to overcome the negative impact of COVID-19 on people and economy. While analysts, bigwigs and news personnel are scaring the pants off us, complaining that governments are not doing enough and that there is an impending recession. It does not matter what everyone is doing, thinking or how irrational the market is, you can be more rational during these trying times and take it as an opportunity.
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Organic Gardening: Shade Net, Drips and Harvest 2.0
In one of the earlier posts, I talked about the shade net setup that we worked on in 2019. We only set the shade net on a small part of the terrace as a test and it worked brilliantly in protecting the plants. The rest of the plants outside of the shade net area were not handling the sun well. So we wanted to finish the rest of the terrace too. In the mean time, monsoon hit and the original shade net was all torn in many places, so it needed replacement. From that we understood that the shade net might need to be re-done every year after monsoon :). Eventually, after the monsoon we set down to work on the rest of the shade net project, dubbed 2.0 for obvious reasons :P
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How Am I Handling the Market
Given the current market situation, a few of my friends wanted to know how my portfolio is doing and what have I been doing during the crisis. So this post should hopefully answer these questions. I want to preface by saying that don't be fooled by randomness. I may have performed better or worse than you expect and it does not mean I made any smart moves nor that I made mistakes. Only note that luck favors the prepared.
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Drip Irrigation Control System v2.0 and v3.0
In one of my previous post, I wrote about my drip irrigation control system. But there were a few problems with it. In the process of rectifying them, I built v2.0 and v3.0 control systems. And to think people were asking if I was getting bored in retirement or if I wanted to get back to work :). Why? I love what I do now and it occupies me completely.
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Sensex and Nifty Down by 30%
At close today, both Sensex and Nifty are down by 30%. We are officially in bear territory. It is considered a bear market if the market has fallen more than 20% from the recent highs and the investor sentiment is negative. Some market pundits are predicting that there is going to be a recession worse than the 2008 crisis. I have no idea if that will happen, but I am not worried at all. Also I cannot predict market, so I can't even tell if they are correct or not. But I have a plan.
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Early Retirement, Home schooling and Organic Gardening
A few readers of the blog and myself met in Bangalore on March 14, 2020. This was the first time I met my readers with whom I had no prior interaction with. I was a little apprehensive about the meeting, but it was a great learning experience for me. I am not sure if I was helpful in answering their questions, but they helped me understand how like minded we all are. I found it interesting that not only do our interest in early retirement match, but also that we have similar thoughts or ideas about home schooling and/or organic gardening/farming. Before talking more about what happened in the meetup, first a quick word on how it all started.
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Drip Irrigation Control System v1.0
If you have been reading about my organic terrace gardening project in the last few posts, you know that I have setup a drip irrigation system that automatically waters the plants everyday. Tinkering with electronics has always been my passion and this was one of those fun hobby projects that I wanted to do after retirement. Sorry, this post may be a bit too technical (electronics and code), so feel free to skip.
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Sensex is Down 15% From the Peak
Sensex highest closing ever was 41,952. Today it closed at 35,634. That is more than 15% drop from the peak. Is it time to worry? Is there going to be a recession soon. Should we sell all our stock and buy lots of non-perishables, for the world is going to end? Nah, nothing like that really. Silly you, it is just a mere 15% drop from the peak. Keep your pants on and don't panic.
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COVID-19 vs Market
Have you seen the market lately? It has gone on a wild roller coaster ride. You get to read news like Sensex fell over 1500 points from the peak. Should you be concerned? Do you need to act on this news? Lets find out.
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Organic Gardening: The Harvest
I have been talking about my organic garden setup in the last two posts. So I thought it was time to show some results. The previous post ended with us setting up the shadenet around April 2019. From then on we have been harvesting some vegetable or the other. Although I don't have photos for some of the harvest, what follows next are bunch of pictures of fruits and vegetables we plucked from the terrace as well as ground garden. Enjoy!
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