Do you know what is the Wimbledon effect? Well it is the location - the Wimbledon is in UK, but no Englishman ever wins it!!

Similarly when the Indian stock markets go up, the participants are mostly White men in US or UK.

Why are Indians shy of investing in equities? Well Sucheta Dalal and Ravi Narayan have their reasons about this and I am giving mine…

1. The whole media right from the beginning keeps saying 'Equities are Risky' - of course most people in the media business do not understand the word risky. If media started saying 'Adjusted to inflation and for volatility equities give real returns over long periods of time' - in a way that the common man understood, it would make sense.

2. There is a conspiracy of the rich - if people have to be kept engaged from birth to death in acquiring a car, a house, education for children, a bigger house…the best way is to keep them away from wealth creating assets. The rich do this very well by controlling the banks (who make it cheaper to fund a new car), and make people chase vacations, etc…

3. People invest as per their greed and Risk-Return expectation. So people bought shares in Global Trust Bank (greed that it will become a big bank) and kept money in fixed deposits of GTB. When the bank failed the shareholders lost everything (price for greed) but the FD holders got their full amount back (with those ridiculous rates of interest). So the message is - take risk on FDs, not on equity.

4. The government keeps coming out with a new regulation regularly - in the capital market.

5. If the bond markets, the national savings certificates, k v p, are dematerialised and opened to trade by the members of the stock exchange, brokers will penetrate the country much better…and increased market penetration will take equities also to the masses. This is unlikely to happen - the government will not want competition at the bottom of the pyramid - the cost of borrowings will shoot up dramatically.

6. Share market movements look scary the way it is presented on tv. If a tv anchor can show the impact of inflation on savings, people would react better. You remember what you read earlier, right? The real rich control the media.

7. As the government owns all the banks, banks do not fail. Regular bailing out of banks ensures that people do not worry about bank deposit failing. This means just all the money goes to banks…14 lakh crores….is not a small amount lying in banks..

8. Pathetic Corporate Governance - in the PSU and the private sector too. This dissuades the real long term investor.

9. People not bothering about who is going to feed them from age 55 to the rest of their lives. Longevity, Inflation, Old Age care, etc. do not seek to worry them when they are 22…

(Contributed by P V Subramanyam, financial planner at www.subramoney.com)