NEW DELHI: Stock investors looking for value bets after the massive battering in domestic stock market must tread cautiously, as the damage would be permanent in most cases, says market veterans.Sanjay Bakshi, eminent teacher and practitioner of value investing and behavioural economics, took to Twitter on Wednesday to suggest that the damage is permanent in most cases, where stocks have plunged massively.“Wealth destruction on a massive scale,” Bakshi tweeted, citing a few stocks like Jet Airways , PC Jewellers, Jain Irrigation, Reliance Communications Reliance Power , R-Naval, DHFL , Reliance Infra and Reliance Capital, which he said were instances of stocks turning from ‘hero to zero’“In most of these cases, the impairment is permanent,” Bakshi said, adding that the usual suspects (behind the rot) are leverage and crookedness. “Usually, they go together,” he said.As an investor, Bakshi is better known for his moat investing philosophy.The prolonged selloff in the broader market has baffled even seasoned investors. Many stocks from the largecap and midcap segments have failed to hold ground, as a liquidity crisis triggered by debt defaults at infrastructure financier IL&FS caused Dalal Street to vent anger on leveraged firms and companies with corporate governance issues.Small investors often show a tendency to lap up falling stocks in hopes of making extra-normal returns when these stocks rebound.But analysts and brokerages have repeatedly cautioned investors that such back-to-the-top rebounds are rare.“Once the original thesis about the attractiveness of a business model and its prospects is shaken, it results in permanent derating of stocks,” ICICI Securities said.Since 2010, only eight of the 228 stocks that corrected more than 75 per cent from their peak levels have returned to their previous highs.ICICI Securities said how low this selloff can go on is a wrong question to ask. “Instead, investors should analyse whether a business model and its long-term prospects, are largely intact, the businessqualifies as a going concern (risk of bankruptcy due to unsustainable financial leverage), if it is facing temporary challenges like aggressive competition or cyclical downturn; and whether the valuation stands at the lower end of a long-term range.”