It can be hard for new investors anywhere to keep up. As a software engineer in New Delhi, Gagandeep Singh said he made a string of investments over the last few years that cost him money, and he lent on one peer-to-peer platform that left him with losses when some borrowers stopped paying him back.
Now working for an information technology company in Canada, Singh, 37, focuses mostly on passive index funds, but isn’t completely shying away from risk. “I do keep 5-10% for risky bets,” he said. “That’s the money I play with. That gives me the thrill.”
Singh’s latest obsession is cryptocurrencies, where he invested almost $10,000 at the peak though the value of that has dropped. “I might lose money,” he said. “It might go to zero – or it might make me rich.”
Others are taking a similar approach. The head of marketing at a Mumbai education technology firm, Sunny Amlani, 38, has been stuck with a loss of 17% on his crypto investments. A tax regime that doesn’t make it possible to offset losses in crypto with any other income makes exiting digital currencies difficult.
Yet, he isn’t fully giving up on cryto, he said. “I think it’s a good time to stick around and am definitely going to hold on for a while to see where it goes.”
--With assistance from Sidhartha Shukla and Ashutosh Joshi.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.