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…
Are you still wondering if it is a good time to invest in Indian equities? Or, are you waiting for the best time? Well, the answer to the wait lies in finding ways of ending it. But, ending the wait should be done responsibly. Most investors who end long years…
Companies that take on too much leverage, stretch their market capitalization, and sell a perennially rosy picture to investors actually believe that they can pull off the impossible. These companies pull out all the stops to perpetuate position and propagate their ‘story’ in the stock market. They tirelessly campaign hoping…
The results season has begun very well in January, 2013. Outperformance of expectations is absolutely necessary to bring confidence back. The fact that all three IT majors and ITC beat the street estimates bodes well for sentiment. This essentially means that the markets will be better placed to handle negativity. The sentiment will slowly…
Infosys proved why it has been a bellwether stock for close to two decades. It silenced its aggressive critics with a characteristic outperformance. One knew all along that critics of the company were going over the top and unduly panning it for slippages which were usually low single digit drops…
Quick edit: Presumption is dangerous when we try to predict the markets. When everyone presumes the same thing, the actual outcome often turns out to be the contrary. Most analysts believe the markets will rise to new highs in the first half of 2013. One finds very few contrarians on…