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The trading range remained more or less similar to the week preceding week. Against the trading range of 790 points in the previous week, this week saw Nifty50 oscillating in a 668.80 -point range. As the bearish undertone refused to go away, the 50-pack index eventlly ending up with a net loss of 629.10 points or 3.83 per cent for the week.

With the recent fall, gold is nearly 12% lower than the highs set in early March this year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In comparison, the Reuters CRB commodities index has corrected nearly 6% from the 2012 high set last month. As against this, the MRCI World equity index has fallen nearly 20% from the highs set in January.

Markets have witnessed many such falls in the past. When the tides are low, it takes down all the ships. Such a scenario triggers panic among investors, who forget this could in fact be the best time to accumulate stocks.

If markets are to reverse strongly, key triggers will be needed which in the current context could be the quick easing of inflation and a pause on the aggressiveness of interest rate hikes. Currently, there are no visible signs of such turning points. Therefore, it is unlikely that the markets are bottoming out.

“The “new-age” investors, it appears, are increasing the retail’s share in Options trading in the largecap space, a domain erstwhile dominated by institutional investors. As Options and Futures are usually margin funded, retail leverage should be increasing, as the data of the last few quarters shows,” IDFC Mutual Fund said.

John Kingham is the managing editor of UK Value Investor, an investment newsletter for defensive value investors which he began publishing in 2011 after leaving the computer software industry.

Twitter’s 9.7% drop in Friday’s trading delivered a $138.8 million boost in mark-to-market profits for short sellers, according to S3 Partners data, bringing potential returns for the month to $264.4 million.

As the carnage grows deeper in the broader market, Dalal Street is now full of pessimism. Amid heavy FII outflows, retail and other domestic investors have not been able to save Sensex. Market veteran Shankar Sharma says in situations like this, one should keep it simple - buy strength and not weakness.

"We generally tend to ignore negative news about something or give more credence to some positive news. Our ability to spot positive news more and ignore negative news is one of the things. Because of confirmation bias, investors stick to loss-making investments because they believe they will do well."

The crypto market is highly volatile and hence the risk-reward ratio is high. If an investor can learn risk management effectively, he/she can gain sizeable returns in the long run. Mock trading not only helps with buy/sell strategies but also with the psychological aspects of investing.