New entrant

Hello everyone!,
I am in a profession which keeps me occupied most of my time.Earlier generations in my family made good profit by investing in the Stock Market. I started investing in a small way back in 1978. In those days information on companies were not so freely available.One invested on rumors like " Orkay is another budding Reliance". Then one hung on to the scrips till one found it proved wrong. Still scrips like Tata Power , Sesa Goa, Grasim, which came up with IPOs sustained the interest in the market. In 1988, I went to work in a Middle eastern country. The regular salaries were not extrordinarily high as in countries in the west, but I was able to save something which I invested in a Portfolio fund in in the U.S. market. By 1995, this had, along with the Rupee devaluation ,appreciated to 10 times my investment in Rupee terms. In 1995 I sold out and had to bring the proceeds to India. A sub-broker of the Indian Stock Market who was working in the same town, persuaded me that it was better invested in the market. I invested the entire amount in various IPOs, at extrordinary premiums which was authorised by the Central Government and underwriters like the SBI in those days. Came Harshad Mehta, the entire amount dissolved into nothing. Not worth the paper they were printed on. More than half the Companies are not traceable today. In those days - no communication systems existed - No Internet,no news of the companies I had invested in, in the remote place in the Middle east where I was working, no brokers to sell. No system.
The family got fed up of all the papers and shoved it in a sack in the attic in India. I forgot about the market for the next five years. In the year 2000, suddenly somone pointed out to me that Pentamedia Graphics, one of the scrips I had in good numbers had appreciated. I learned also that 1) The allotment was as an NRE and so no broker would touch it. 2) It had to be dematted which would take 15 days. Within that 15 days before I could enquire about the procedure for dematting, the Scrip had crashed from Rs.1500 to Rs.3. I forgot about the market for the next four years when someone pointed out to me that one of the scrips I held, " Herren Drugs & Pharma had been turned around into a grand success by a superman called Prasad. I dug out all the scrips I had , dematted all the existing companies, looked a little closely at the market , sold out the unattractive ones at a loss and invested fresh in the Stock Market. Then came May 2004. Market crashed. Between 2004 & 2005 , I dabbled in FX trading and took a course which enlightened me that there was such a thing as Technical analysis and Fundamental analysis. More by chance, the restructured Indian Stock investment is looking good both in the present market and by the analysis criteria. Now I am in this game for the long term and don't go in for IPOs because it is a lot of hassle. The fear-pessimism which Mr.Jhunjhunwala keeps talking about on CNBC is born out of the repeated finger burns which Indian Investors have received in the last 20 Years. I discovered this forum when I entered into a search engine "Free Charts, Indian Stock market". I now make my decisions based upon- Technical analysis - charts in Economic times, Fundamental analysis - on Internet & tv (cnbc) and news through Squawk boxes of various sites - FX & Stock in the asset classes.