Late last week, US Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate fell to an eight-year low of 4.9 percent.

In the year 2009 it was 10% and now the change should be welcomed but after the data was released the Dow Jones index fell off sharply. Nasdaq index too fell off to reach 15 months low. Interestingly last week Apple closed below its 200 DMA which is a bearish sign for the stock. Most technology stocks like Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and LinkedIn fell off sharply like a house of cards.

Back in India, the scene is not different. Many stocks dropped between 10 to 20% last week creating panic in the minds of investors. Recent earnings and economy review reports confirm investors' fear that the economy is slowing considerably. January market has indicated that it is going to be a tough year for the bulls. However this is the good time for value investors but that species is extinct now. In this market everyone knows the price of everything and value of nothing.  The business channel and increased activity in internet have helped the brokers, hedge fund and technical analysts to profit from the short term fluctuations. In fact, in the current scenario, some of the stocks are trading at attractive valuation. Most of the bank stocks are trading at very attractive valuation but we refrain from mentioning any of them as they may sink further from the current level owing to market sentiments. We expect Oil and Gold to move up in the year 2016 though Deutsche Bank has informed through a research report that oil will tank down to $6 per barrel owing to excess supply. Recently, Deutsche Bank informed that massive charges on its investment bank assets could result in a loss of $7 billion in the third quarter. Probably their research team is doing a wonderful job to create huge losses to their investment banking assets.

Under these circumstances, I happened to flip through the book richest man in Babylon from my bookshelf when I was cleaning my room. It’s a timeless classic which gives us the secret key to the personal finance. This book was written by George Samuel Clason as early as in 1926 which teaches us how to manage our finance through a collection of parables set in ancient Babylon.  I was curious to find out the price of the book in Amazon website and I was surprised to find that it is available at Rs 108. I must have bought it at much higher price but I won’t repent for paying higher price to this book as it has given me more courage to deal with any financial problem.

Let us check out more about the market in our next edition but as informed much earlier the market is not looking great at least in the near term.