Unlike most kids who grow up on fairy tales, I was raised on stock stories. My dad owned a stock-broking business in India and I often overheard him talking to clients. My early exposure to stocks was fascinating and harrowing because our family fortunes fluctuated with the vagaries of the stock market. If markets fell, money was tight and we were late paying tuition fees at school. Thus, at the age of nine, I experienced first-hand the adage, “Bills don’t come due at market tops”. Money—or not having it—posed such a day-to-day challenge during my childhood that I was determined...