Equity investing is a discipline with attendant quirks and can be occupationally hassling. Giving your very best doesn’t assure you of immediate outcomes. There are times when the best effort stays dormant without showing up anywhere. Investments in equity have a habit of hibernating. One simply has to dig in…
Indian investors have had an uneventful investment year in 2015. None of the asset classes did well. Gold disappointed badly. Property seems perched dangerously on a precipice and investors now fear the worst. Equity didn’t live up to what investors expect as a reasonable risk-reward. Commodities lost money for investors.…
Prediction is a risky business. Often, a prediction going wrong can endanger reputations built over lifetimes. Yet, most of the investment world’s attention is obsessed with the business of prediction. Somehow, most people greatly excite themselves with the business of predicting. They get an adrenalin rush either in the hope…
A month of incessant rains tend to dampens one’s mood. When the rains culminate in the century’s worst floods, one tends to become too philosophical to think of money. When we see people around us lose everything they had just one evening ago, it make us wonder if one can…
Tax reforms in India are never easy. Resistance comes from all corners. In a country where the tax adherent lot is a miniscule minority, it is politically expedient to delay reforms that widen the tax net and bring everybody under tax scrutiny. To be fair, both the Congress and the…
India’s economic recovery seems to be an uphill climb. Two battles are being fought at the same time. The slowdown in the world which is affecting our exports. And, the crony capitalist policies and dealings of the past decade that have got our economy into the crosshairs. So, the government…
There are times when you simply buy. There are times when you have to hold on and do nothing. There are times when you should just sell. India has seen all three situations. Our response to every situation determines our outcomes in investing. Indian investors have a long history of…
What happens now to the development agenda? This is the only concern of the stock markets. Election outcomes are always seen by the stock markets only from this narrow prism of self- interest. Markets want events to support its sustenance, there is nothing new about it. What one needs to…
Results season inevitably become a question hour. Instead of getting worked up about the questions let us try and find some answers. Is the economy really recovering? Market watchers keep getting this self-doubt in waves. The results season is clearly a time when the waves resurrect themselves. One bad result…
The argument about how smaller companies have a greater ability to run faster has been floating around for the past year. This argument is finding strong retail investor backing. Hope is driving retail investors to pour money into the mid-cap space. Past performance is seemingly the driver. If mid-cap earnings…
Investing in an uptrend is usually very different from investing in a slowdown. An uptrend usually does not give you the opportunity to wait and buy stocks. There is strong competition to buy stocks. You end up trying to grab market opportunity. In markets which are subdued, the stock…
When you sit down and calculate how much money you will need after a decade to send your young daughter to study overseas, the realization dawns on you that a wide gap exists between want and have. What you can earn and save is significantly lower than what you will need. Think of the retired life you fancied for yourself and…