“Trade deficits hit a two year low “. The domestic headline flows clearly seems to be putting the bad news behind. But, a slowing global economy, the stalling crisis in the US over spending limits and dropping domestic growth are not giving much comfort to Indian investors. The lack of…
Talking heads with investor peers these days inevitably leads to talking politics. The conversation dwells mostly on number crunching, second guessing alliances and trend reading. Investors sound more like political analysts these days and actually spend more time talking about politics than investing. What do investors have to do with…
Predicting a crash in any asset class is a dangerous business. To the one making the prediction, the odds are inevitably stacked against the act. If you go wrong, everybody on the other side of the divide will pounce on your credibility. If you are right, there will be so…
Growth in the Indian economy is definitely set to slow. We will see our GDP estimates getting tapered down as elections near. The focus has shifted decisively to containing inflation. The slower growth and the RBI’s moves should be long term positive in lowering inflation. Business will have to work…
The drama of falling emerging market (EM) currencies taught us some lessons. The lessons were long overdue. Just that the lessons taught us what we already knew. We can’t follow the monetary policies of America which, simply labeled, is ‘bad economics’. If we keep on overspending on stimulus without managing…
What hit us? Indians across the globe are wondering what caused this economic mess. The subprime crisis of 2008 created a wave of easy money flowing into countries across the world. We added to this liquidity with our own stimulus. The Indian economy had the power of double steroids backing…
Politics always plays the dampener to good economics. This is how it works everywhere. Taking hard economic decisions is not a politician’s forte. In fact, politicians always look for easy ways. It is only when the cumulative effect of all the easy decisions land them in a soup that politicians…
Imagine 100 companies go on a borrowing binge outside India to invest in Indian operations. They have long gestation periods, no forex incomes and need to import their raw materials. The only reason they borrowed overseas – greed to enjoy lower interest rates. These companies actually speculated on the dollar.…
The past few weeks have seen the banks report soaring NPA’s. What the banks haven’t told us is where these are coming from. Non-performing businesses create non-performing assets. Businesses fail to perform when they take on much more than they can handle. One such business which is slowly but surely…
If some good happens to the Indian economy, it rarely happens by design. It is either by accident or by compulsion. So, what good can one look for in these gloomy times? The dark monsoon skies hovering outside your window is the first harbinger. With the monsoon rains filling dams…
Expectation is the root cause of all heartache. Shakespeare’s words ring true timelessly. We almost always have trouble managing expectations. So, we fault our kids who scored ninety percent because their class mates scored more. We deride performance when we feel that someone else has done better. We don’t measure…
It has been four years since ithought was ideated. To many who know my circumstances, this was a move that wasn’t easily understood. The times were such – 2009 was a year when the infra thematic funds and energy funds had drilled and destroyed investor confidence. The industry had manufactured toxic thematic funds in…