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How do geo-political events affect stock markets?

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The word geopolitical is either misunderstood or not fully understood by most people. It is actually about the impact of global politics and global international relations on the  stock markets . Geopolitics is extremely important as the markets globally get interconnected. For example, when Lehman happened, the entire global trembled. Similarly, when the US and Iran got close to a war in Middle East, it had its impact on oil prices on stocks. When Europe was on the brink of default in 2011, it roiled global bond markets and also equity markets went into a prolonged slowdown. Let us understand these geopolitical factors in much greater detail and how exactly they impact the stock prices. Geopolitics essentially refers to different geographic influences on political and international relations. The virtually seamless interconnection between world markets helps in the transmission of the impact quite fast as we have seen time and again in the past. Here are some major geopolitica

Invest in market and sectors and not individual stocks!

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Stock Broker in india The  Sensex  recently completed 40 years of existence. If you look back at its journey over the last 40 years, it has moved from a level of 100 in 1979 to 41,000 in 2019. That is a 410 bagger over 40 years. That roughly translates into annual returns of 16.5% on a compounded basis ( CAGR ). If you add up the average dividend yield of 1.5%, you are close to 18% annualized returns over 40 years. That is an amazing level of returns to earn on a passive index. But that is a counter-argument to it. Over the same period, stocks like Reliance and Wipro have given annualized returns in the range of 34-36%, something which the index can never match. But therein lays the problem. These are just a handful of stocks that we are talking about. In a universe of over 5000 stocks, your chances of finding such incredible  multi-baggers  are as low as finding a needle in a haystack. So, as much as direct investing in  stocks   looks enticing, you must realize the limitation