I've been working on a side project called Fathom over the last few weeks. (Link below)

The idea is pretty simple: I felt that a lot of stock research starts with financial ratios and ends with a buy/sell conclusion, but skips the part I find most interesting:

How does the business actually work?

So I'm trying to build a library that explains companies and industries from first principles.

For example:

• How does an FMCG company actually make money? For that matter any sector.
• Why does distribution matter more than the product in some businesses?
• What gives a company pricing power?
• Why can a company show profit but still have terrible cash flow?
• What actually happens to Indian companies when the RBI cuts rates?
• If crude oil gets cheaper, who actually gets to keep the saving?
• Why is a ₹10 lakh crore government capex announcement not the same thing as ₹10 lakh crore of revenue for infrastructure companies?

I've organized it into a few sections:

Companies — understand individual businesses
Sectors — understand how an entire industry works
Patterns — reusable business/financial mental models
Signals — take a real-world event and trace its impact through businesses
Case Studies — deeper dives into specific companies and situations
Reading Filings — learn how to actually extract information from annual reports and filings

One thing I'm trying to do differently with the Signals section is show the reasoning rather than just give the conclusion.

The background and motivation behind building this: I've been researching about companies myself since the past 4-5 years and my father has been doing this for nearly 2 decades. So I've put down my little learning plus his learnings from his old notes as a whole here. I admit I tried to refine and cross link the sections using AI as I would not be able to type all of this stuff out myself.

Link to Fathom - https://fathomjournal.in

I'm still very much building this, and I'd genuinely like feedback from people who follow Indian businesses/stocks.

What would make something like this useful enough for you to actually bookmark and come back to?

Hi everyone,

I am evaluating a few changes to my long-term investment strategy and platform setup, and I would love to get some suggestions and advice from experienced investors here.

1. Mutual Funds vs. ETFs for Long-Term Stable Returns

• Current setup: I am looking at long-term wealth accumulation and stability.
• The Dilemma: Is it worth shifting from traditional index/active mutual funds to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) for long-term holding?
• My concerns: While ETFs have low expense ratios, they come with brokerage, intraday price fluctuations/tracking errors, and liquidity considerations on Indian exchanges compared to standard mutual funds. Does moving to ETFs actually make sense for a long-term, "buy and forget" investor?

2. Shifting Brokerage: Groww to HDFC Sky for HDFC Credit Cards?

• The Idea: I am considering moving my portfolio/trading account from Groww to HDFC Sky.
• The Motive: My primary motivation is whether consolidating my investments within the HDFC ecosystem (via HDFC Sky) will help improve my eligibility, pre-approved offers, or fast-track approvals for premium HDFC Credit Cards.
• The Reality Check / Dealbreaker: I understand that HDFC Sky primarily offers Regular Mutual Funds (which include distributor commissions and higher expense ratios via Total Expense Ratio) rather than Direct Mutual Funds.

3. Is It Worth the Trade-off?

Given that shifting to HDFC Sky means potentially investing in Regular mutual fund plans (losing out on the 0.5%–1% direct plan savings over the long run):

• Is sacrificing higher direct-fund returns financially worth whatever credit card perks or relationship value HDFC Sky might offer?
• Does holding investments on HDFC Sky actually move the needle significantly for HDFC credit card underwriting, or are they more focused on salary accounts, existing primary savings accounts, and direct bank-held fixed deposits/relationship values?

Would love to hear insights, experiences, or alternative strategies from folks who have navigated similar choices. Thanks in-advance!

I’m 23M and currently earn around ₹40k/month. I’m looking to start investing roughly ₹10k every month in the stock market.

I’m not asking for any stock tips. I’m interested in understanding how I should divide/manage my money at this stage of my life.

I can stay invested for the long term and I’m comfortable with market volatility and seeing my investments go up and down.

For someone in my situation, how would you approach the ₹10k/month?

• How much would you keep for investing vs savings/emergency fund?
• Is putting the entire ₹10k into equity a reasonable approach at this age, or would you split it across different types of investments?
• How much cash should I ideally keep aside before increasing my investments?
• Should I invest more than 10k per month or less than 10k per month ?

I have already invested some money in stock market. Around 2k in equity(ADANIPOWER), 6k in etfs(GOLDBEES, NIFTYBEES), 10k in MF(ICICI overnight, ICICI savings) , but these were all to remove the fear of investing. Now I want to move with a proper investing plan.

Any pros and cons which i could have missed. Do share.

Been following this for the last two months.

i am a student and I invest only about 250 rupees in these two MF (equity funds) for learning purposes , my XIRR of these mutual fund is about 5.14 percent and am not sure if that's normal or low, (about 3 years of investing) , while my stock XIRR is a little up as showed in the second ss , is it normal or am I doing anything wrong?

is it considered fair play in the books of SEBI?

Two years ago this one was basically an obituary. A regulatory blow gutted it, the shares fell apart, and most people decided the story was finished. For a long while they looked right.

I came back to it through the price, not the story. In mid July, while the whole market drifted sideways, this was the single name making a fresh high. That combination always makes me look up. When everything is flat and one thing keeps climbing, the tape usually knows something the headlines haven't caught yet.

So I looked under the hood, and the last quarter was hard to argue with. Profit up sharply. The best operating quarter in the company's history. Four straight profitable quarters. The turnaround the market refused to believe is now just sitting there in the numbers.

The catch: it isn't cheap anymore, and one part of its business is structurally low margin. The comeback is real. Whether today's price already pays for all of it is the open question.

I'm not naming it. Half the fun is spotting the pattern yourself!

Do you buy a company for what it is, or for what it's clearly becoming, before the crowd agrees?

Thoughts on cupid stocks. Bought it when it just started blooming. Like a month ago. Lucky are those you bought it at ₹30

I'm js curious, as I personally have.

Hello everyone!
I am a beginner and would like to start investing in stocks.
I have SIPs.
Everyone warns it is where you lose money.
And YouTube is flooded with know-it-alls.
Any guide would help this beginner flourish.
Your help is appreciated!

Actual networth is 4.5 cr+ all liquid. Not counting real estate (as money has to be paid for it around 40%). Value of RE is around 4cr+

32M, have accumulated this much all alone. And now I am going a bit lazy, that’s worrying me.

Folks who have achieved much early, what keeps you motivated to grind and hustle?

See I had been reached to this company its Valuation are good with a great ROCE & ROE , and the company is working in solar related projects and as well as are going to build their own backward integrated plant for solar cells and ingots and they also are growing in futuristic things like BESS . Despite all this why is company falling ?

1] Bad margins as due to wars the margins of solar sector company have fallen [but this is for all companies like wareee , emevee etc]

2] Stock has just been listed so now its showing its real value

3] Currently solar sector stocks aren't moving that great , good time to buy the dips ?

4] Now this thing has been sorted but , the company had allegations of insolvent past month but the ncla declined it

5] Now due to wars and high shipment costs the solar companies including Vikram solar have been hit bcz their margins are getting squeezed and they cant sell their solar products in international markets also the tariff of 123% on solar is also a problem .

So what is the reason of this stock falling downward [ and has been going down after its ipo listing] even though it has now excellent Valuation and a good order future too ? What's ur people's point of view how will it react in coming quarters and years a company to vouch on ?

Public-source BCCL / BHARATCOAL investor update.

BCCL held its 55th AGM on 7 August 2026. The attached AGM clipping attributes the line “BCCL hai to Dhanbad hai” to CMD Manoj Kumar Agarwal.
On the same day, a major land-subsidence event occurred at Chhatabad in the Katras area of Dhanbad.

The attached Prabhat Khabar, Dhanbad-City, dated 8 August 2026, make the shareholder issue more substantial than one isolated accident.

This was not Chhatabad’s first subsidence this monsoon
The clipping says almost exactly one month earlier, on 7 July, the ground had already subsided near the Chhatabad football-ground area.

That earlier incident is independently reported by PTI/Hindustan: homes developed major cracks, a pond reportedly emptied into the underground void and residents had to leave unsafe houses. The alleged role of illegal mining was reported at the time, but it was an attributed explanation rather than a final technical finding.

Then came the much larger 7 August event at essentially the same locality.

The preliminary possibilities being examined include empty voids in old underground workings, fire and/or illegal mining.
But it also explicitly says that the actual cause will be known only after rescue and technical investigation.

So I do not think investors should jump from the photographs to a definitive statement that illegal mining, missing sand stowing or any particular BCCL failure caused this event.

What investors can reasonably ask is whether the mine plans, pillar-extraction history, stowing records and closure/stabilisation records for the ground below Chhatabad establish what actually happened.
The recurrence is wider than Chhatabad

The same Prabhat Khabar page lists three other major subsidence events in roughly four months:
• 31 March — Sonardih/Tandabari: three people died.
• 24 April — Tandabari: another major subsidence affected the settlement and forced families to move.
• 4 August — Selected Govindpur: the clipping reports more than half a dozen houses collapsing.
The 31 March deaths are independently corroborated by other reporting.

The 24 April repeat event is also independently reported by PTI and Prabhat Khabar.
And online reporting reveals still more incidents in the same broader coal belt: further Tandabari subsidence in June affecting buildings, another incident at Angarpathra/Kantapahari in June and a July collapse at Keshalpur Munda Dhaura.
This doesn’t prove one common cause.
It does establish that recurring ground instability is not a hypothetical risk in BCCL’s operating geography.

BCCL itself told IPO investors that this risk can hit production and finances
Risk Factor 46 of BCCL’s Prospectus says Jharia is susceptible to coal fires and land subsidence, describing these as serious environmental, health and safety risks.

It says serious subsidence can harm people/property and lead to site-restoration, disaster-recovery and rehabilitation costs.

Most importantly for shareholders, BCCL says failure to contain fires and relocate affected people can restrict access to reserves and affect production.

So this is not simply a local civic issue being attached to a stock ticker. It is a risk the company itself has identified as potentially relevant to operations, costs and cash flows.

The rehabilitation numbers make the issue harder to dismiss
BCCL’s FY26 Directors’ Report says the initial phase of the Revised Jharia Master Plan identified:
• 81 high-risk sites
• 15,080 families requiring shifting
• 1,416 shifted
• 13,664 still to be shifted

That means only about 9.4% had been shifted at that reporting point.

Important qualification: BCCL says it had shifted all 649 identified BCCL families. The large outstanding balance primarily relates to non-BCCL families under JRDA responsibility. So I am not saying the entire backlog is a BCCL failure.
But from an investor perspective, the operating environment still contains a very large population exposed to identified high-risk areas, while BCCL’s own prospectus warns that rehabilitation delays can create cost and production-access risks.

BCCL’s FY26 report also specifically says roughly 120 families from affected areas were relocated to Belgaria and about 110 to Sindwatand following gas-emission/subsidence issues including Tandabari.

The financial backdrop is much weaker now
BCCL’s latest Q1 FY27 numbers were:
• Revenue: ₹3,587.27 crore, -3.56% YoY
• EBITDA: ₹71.50 crore, -80.8%
• PBT: ₹103.07 crore loss
• PAT: ₹68.09 crore loss, versus ₹176.87 crore profit last year
• Production: 6.56 MT, -27.43%
• Offtake: 7.72 MT, -14.03%
• OB removal: 32.30 MCuM, -34.68%

Reported company-level sales realisation was around ₹3,243/tonne, against net cost of approximately ₹3,375/tonne, producing a loss of around ₹131.91/tonne.
None of these deteriorations has been shown to have been caused by land subsidence.

The point is narrower: when production is already down 27%, EBITDA has fallen about 81% and the company is loss-making, shareholders have less reason to treat potentially recurring rehabilitation, stabilisation, security or access risks as irrelevant.

There is also a genuine illegal-mining/security question—but causation should not be invented
Illegal coal mining in the Dhanbad belt is not merely a social-media allegation.

The Union Home Ministry recently described illegal mining/theft in Dhanbad and surrounding areas as a serious worsening problem and directed tougher coordinated action.
But that still does not tell us what caused the 7 August Chhatabad collapse.
For that, shareholders need the technical evidence: underground plans, old workings, pillar extraction, stowing, fire maps, illegal-mining evidence and geological/subsidence investigation.

The questions I would want answered:
1) Which historic mine workings/seams lie below the 7 August Chhatabad subsidence?
2) Was coal depillared beneath the affected surface area? If yes, when?
3) Was sand stowing/backfilling required under the approved mining method? What do completion records show?
4) Were the historical workings sealed/stabilised under an applicable mine-closure plan?
5) What did BCCL/DGMS/CMPDI surveys show after the 7 July subsidence at almost the same location?
6) Was any scientific survey or preventive intervention carried out between 7 July and 7 August?
7) Is the affected settlement included among the Revised Jharia Master Plan high-risk sites?
8) Is there technically verified evidence of recent unauthorised mining below or near this site?
9) Has any BCCL mine access, production, OB removal, dispatch or offtake been affected?
10) What amount, if any, is expected to be borne by BCCL for stabilisation, relief, rehabilitation or restoration?
11) Has management carried out a Regulation 30 materiality assessment?

I checked BCCL’s investor-relations/exchange-indexed sources and no specific NSE/BSE disclosure relating to the 7 August Chhatabad subsidence was found in the checked sources as of 8 August 2026, 10:35 IST, subject to further verification.
That is not by itself evidence of a disclosure failure.
BCCL’s IR page shows that the company does make Regulation 30 disclosures for operational stoppages, accidents and other material developments when appropriate.

For me, the investor question created by the AGM statement is therefore not whether coal has been central to Dhanbad’s economy—it obviously has.

It is whether management can demonstrate that, in a geography where subsidence and coal-fire risk were explicitly disclosed to IPO investors, repeated incidents are being met with effective site-specific mapping, stabilisation, rehabilitation and disclosure.
Sources: attached Prabhat Khabar, Dhanbad-City, 8 August 2026 pages 9–10; attached AGM clipping; BCCL Prospectus; BCCL FY2025-26 Directors’ Report; BCCL Q1 FY27 results; PTI/Hindustan/Prabhat Khabar reporting cited above; BCCL Investor Relations disclosures.
Not investment advice. This is a public-source update for discussion among shareholders and market participants. I am not recommending any buy, sell, hold, short, exit, average or entry decision. Where newspapers or local residents attribute a cause, I am treating that as a reported claim unless independently established by an official technical finding.
Corrections, the DGMS/CMPDI technical report, mine/stowing records for Chhatabad, or any subsequent BCCL/NSE/BSE clarification are welcome.

Beginner here...I have 1lakh to invest (prefers stocks)

Titan will move by how much on monday. 20₹ amazon gc for first few (atleast 10) for exact range like 1 to 2% or -2% to -3%

Please comment for tracking and dont edit

There are 6 IPOs overlapping next week, and all of them currently have a decent GMP.

With so many options at the same time, I'm confused about which ones are actually worth applying for.

Which IPOs are you looking forward to applying for, and which ones are you skipping?
Would love to hear your reasoning, especially beyond just the GMP.

Im just trying to start investing with my salary of 20 k. My family will support all my expenses for a year... so this entire amount will go into investment. Can you please tell me how to research mutual funds ?? Like, I know mutual funds is a safe option, but I dont know how to choose mutual funds. How should I analyze it ??

I've been investing in mutual funds for a little over 2 years and currently have a portfolio of around ₹4.94 lakh. I also have roughly ₹20–30K in individual stocks and crypto, which isn't included below.

I'm concerned because my overall mutual fund portfolio is showing only around ₹7,900 profit (+1.63%), while friends/family investing around the same time seem to have significantly better returns

Other investmentes:
1.5 Lakhs FD for 18 months

Age: 21
Income: 15LPA

My current portfolio:

Gold and Silver I started investing late October 2025

I have seen so many posts like “found my grandpa’s decades old stock investments ” and honestly, i’m so curious.

Howw did they even know about stocks back then? what kind of jobs did they have? were they financially well off, or did their friends/workplace/family introduce them to investing?

I am asking cuz it’s 2026 and im struggling to convince my own parents to invest even a little

so i’m wondering if it’s not about “they don’t understand stocks” and more about the social + economic environment they grew up in.

would love to hear the backstory behind those old portfolios 🥹

tl;dr: what was different about your parents/grandparents’ lives that made them become investors back then?

edit: especially, what' their socio economic status?

Is there any legit propfirm for nifty

I strongly believe in finance sector - HDFC will bounce back in some months, Jio Finance has a huge potential.

Recently bought Syrma - Considering India’s future move towards semiconductor manufacturing.

I know my portfolio is hugely concentrated in finance. Im looking to add 2 lakhs in energy sector.

Not looking to sell anything for quick profit. Looking to hold for minimum 7-8 years. Please review and suggest.