My father encouraged the independent thinker in me: Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

“I don't know the kind of patience my father had, very few fathers would have had and I was not the only child, there were four of us,” said Jhunjhunwala, who passed away on August 14 last year.

He recounted how he read a booklet published by Standard Chartered Bank during his articleship while training to become a chartered accountant.

The book spoke about how capitalism was going to prevail in the country. “I thought India will lose its tryst with socialism and capitalism will prevail in this country, and the temple of capitalism is the stock market,” he said.

Jhunjhunwala liked the reasons for his love of stocks and their fluctuation to romance, where one was certain of love, but could not pen the exact reasons for those.

Before his foray into the market, the ace investor said that his father advised him to have a basic education for the sake of financial security and then do whatever he wanted to do. That was the reason he became a chartered accountant. “My father told me that if you want to go to the stock market, I will not support you but you are a chartered accountant so you will get a job… you are a smart person,” Jhunjhunwala recounted.  “Be fierce, be fearless and may God bless,” was his father’s advice.

When he started trading at the market, Jhunjhunwala said that he used trade whatever appealed to him, never following anybody blindly.

Giving an example of one of his big scores, Jhunjhunwala spoke about the bet he made on Sesa Goa which he heard about from his friend, Shailesh Bajaj in 1989. “Iron prices were fixed annually... the price had been enhanced for the next year and the stock was still available at Rs 27-28. That was the first punt of my life… I bought 2.5 lakh shares of Sesa Goa at Rs 27-28, then I bought another 2.5 lakh shares at Rs 35-36. Over the next six months, the stock price went up to Rs 65," Jhunjhunwala recalled. The rest, as they say, is history.