India, March 1 -- Is the market in a bear grip? Veteran investor Krishna Jha thinks so.

The veteran investor made his first fortune when he exited a technology company in his younger days. Since then, he has lived through bull and bear cycles. He now knows soaring markets and gut-wrenching crashes and promises of "this time is different" never hold true. He has also learnt that a bull run, fuelled by excess liquidity and overconfidence inevitably, collapses under its own weight. And yet, investors who piled into the market over the last three years don't see it coming. He has the humility to acknowledge he didn't know either when it would hit either.

A year ago, the Nifty was at record highs. Retail investors were flooding into the mark...