At a time when the retail investors are grappled with fear about their investments, chairman of the stock market regulator Sebi, CB Bhave played teacher to them on the concluding day of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
See webcast of Bhave's speech
He clearly said that the entire savings kitty should not be directed towards equity market as no one can forecast how markets would behave.
"No one can predict if the market would go up or down tomorrow and hence neither full savings nor the money needed for emergency should go into the equity market," said Bhave.
Bhave also pointed out that India is not insulated from the global market situation even though full capital account convertibility regime does not exist here.
"We are closely interlinked with the world as the linkage through trade is tremendous," he said.
While the Sensex fall has been grave since January, Sebi chairman ruled out any existence of manipulative practices.
He took the current global crisis as an opportunity and said that India must learn in a bid to build a stronger system to be able to lead from the front, as the weight of the Indian markets will increase going forward.
"When the market recovers, ours will probably be amongst the first few that recovers the fastest and when we do that our weight will be more than many others and then we should have the ability to run those markets," said Bhave.
Tony Blair: Global effort needed to tackle present economic crisis | See Rahul Dravid's webcast