A Screw

On a lazy Monday of first week of September 2001; I was ambling down towards a designated bus stop to board my office bus en route to my office in Hinjawadi. As I reached near the bus, it suddenly started moving. I run a little and asked the driver to stop but he did not. That day, I had to hire an auto rickshaw to travel 20 KM to reach office.

In office, I checked my equity portfolio. I was novice in stock market but my portfolio was showing 70k unrealized profit, about 100% return in 4 months. On the next day, I went to a Daewoo showroom and booked a Matiz. The dealer promised me delivery in 3 weeks subjected to finance approval from the Bank.

Days latter, the September 11 episode struck the stock market and the 70K unrealized profit became 20K unrealized loss. Before, it could go down further; I squared off my position and opted for cash that I eventually needed to pay off the car dealer. I neither gave up the car purchase plan nor the stock market investment. Having squared off the position, I paid the car dealer first. I still had some money left that I invested in ITI that ultimately recovered all of my losses in stock market.

On 2^nd October 2001, the dealer called me to inform that the car was ready. He gave me the keys and said, “Nobody ever died inside a Matiz, drive it without fear.”This photo was taken a days latter.

Almost Six years latter, I was still using this car for my daily office commute. Thursday, August 9, 2007, 10:30 am; I was just a km away from my office.
It was pick hour bumper to bumper traffic on R.B.M road. In a traffic jam, I stopped about 5 ft behind a container truck. An Indica stopped behind me. As I was waiting for the traffic to start moving, I heard a sound “BANG... .” Before I could react, the seat belt I was wearing already locked me with the seat.
The next things I noticed that my car was careened under the container truck even though I applied full break. The first thing that came in my mind was that I needed to live for my daughter. So, I turned the steering towards the left lane that was empty. I saw the windshield broke into pieces; the right side frame of my car hit the cantilever support beam protecting the wheel of the truck. I felt someone was pushing me towards death and it was a battle between my car frame and the cantilever support beam of the truck. I kept my eyes open as the devil’s force reduces. Moment latter, everything came to a halt. I tried to get out of the car but the driver’s door was already jammed by the impact. I then got out from the passenger’s door before the fuel tank of any of the cars could explode.

Was that the last of the screw I titled this Blog for? Please read on.

HCL Technology has bagged number of contracts in the last quarters. However, the global meltdown has dragged the stock price down below 300 from 340 to 350 ranges. The quarter ending result was due on August 13. I decided to take some risk and bought one contract (contains 650 stock@ 292) of HCL Technology August Future. The EOD settlement on August 9 was giving me 12K unrealized profit. However, my estimated target was not yet reached.

On August 10, the script opened at Rs.280 in the middle of a volatile market. It was still above my stop loss price. So, I logged on to my trading account in ICICI direct and started monitoring my holding. Around 10:30 am the market showed the sign of revival and HCL Technology started moving up. For a moment I switched to check my equity portfolio and found that HCL Technology had already moved up and trading above 300. I returned to F&O page to place a square off order. I was shocked to find that my holding on HCL Technology had disappeared. Latter, I found in the order book that the System had sold my holding to minimize my losses. They were minimizing losses when the script was going up; it did not sell when the price was at day low at Rs.280, it sold at Rs.292.30, a 30 paise profit per stock but screwed me off to loose an opportunity to make 30K in the contract. By that time the script had already gone up to Rs.314 leaving me no opportunity to re-enter.

Yesterday, the company announced its quarterly result and the script soared up to Rs.330.

Now I am sitting here biting on my nails. I had written to ICICI to explain the system placed order, but they are yet to send me a reply. They do claim to resolve dispute within 48 hours.

Five days since the accident, the car repair garage is yet to come up with an estimated repair cost. The insurance company does not show any sign of satisfactory service that they promised when they sold me the insurance. Today morning, I boarded my office bus which time traveled to 6 years back. I wish this time travel were real :)