New Delhi, Sept. 24 -- A couple of months ago, I was addressing the employees of a large, old company, and the organisers told me that some of the employees now nearing retirement age had never invested in anything other than fixed deposits, their provident fund and tax-saving schemes.

They kept thinking that they did not know enough about markets and would start once they understood a bit more, and the years just slipped past. Many now regret having done so because their retirement corpus is a lot smaller than it should have been.

This reminded me that the secret of sensible investing is that it is neither as complex nor as simple as it is made out to be.

On one hand, what I love about markets is that even after tracking them professi...