Free fall Friday it was. And, how? A day when safe havens crumbled like they never really were safe. Infosys, gold and silver as a threesome make for odd company. But, they send out a message which investors can ill afford to ignore. Safe havens are safe only at a…
Quick edit: A new high or a new low are not mere benchmarks. They are milestones around which investors reinvent their expectations. A new high catalyses over exuberance and breeds optimists by the dozens. A new low triggers more converts to the pessimists’ camp. Gold hit a 10 month low this week and…
Quick edit: Short on guts, long on fear. This seems to be the mood of the markets. Delving deeper into the investor mood tells us that the major worries are elections and poor macro fundamentals. When the mood is despondent, the market response can only reflect the mood. This explains the capitulation…
Quick edit: An equity portfolio is like a garden. There always will be times like spring when it will shed most of what it has. That doesn’t stop it from reaching full bloom a short while later. Experiences tell you that the strain of shedding always leads to a search…
Quick edit: Is India really a poor country? If so, how do we explain just one temple having gold and precious stones worth 250000 crores in its cellar? How do we explain Indian imports of gold worth 5 lakh crores plus in three years between 2010 and 2012 when the…
Quick Edit: If there was a virus that is hurting the Indian equity investor, we could probably call it Macroanalitis. Terms like fiscal deficit and current account deficit have become so commonplace that one wonders why people never thought about these numbers earlier. The big picture is so scary that…
Quick edit: The budget day is indeed time for some quixotic stuff. The economists think like the citizen and the citizens think like an economist. That reminds one of the apocryphal tales on the most beautiful actress of his time proposing to George Bernard Shaw. Budgets are actually meant for…
A budget is an annual event and volatility is its constant companion. The interesting thing about budgets is that expectations are running very low in recent years. The markets have stopped seeing budgets as catalysts of sentiment overhaul. At best, the budget is an opportunity to make a few bets…
Are budgets really relevant anymore? The picture painted by the budget is never bright. Deficits are here to stay. They always seem to get worse than estimates year after year. Taxes have more or less reached their best possible state. If any, they can only start hurting those who earn a…
India has a way of defeating dogmas. Some things never seemed easy to do in our country. Disinvestment was one such. It remained a politically contentious issue every time the government even tried to talk about selling PSUs. Yet, none of the usual fuss was seen as the Indian government…