2008 was the year of the last bull run. The previous bull markets happened in 2000 and 1992. Coincidentally, in the last two decades, bull markets happened every eight years. Investors bought equity most during these phases and the least during the lean years as the current one. What happened…
Quick Edit: The AGM of Reliance settled one thing. The company’s reign as a market mover has ended. Nobody is going to be compelled to own it. Market leadership has to be established before a bull market begins. At least, the process of crowning a new leader has to begin. One…
Quick Edit: A slowdown stares at us. Bad news, isn’t it? But, it comes with a silver lining. This slow down is not cyclical. It has not been thrust on us by the times. It is systemic. Our system has invited it on us. Masterly inaction has been the best…
Quick Edit: The rupee at 56 – what does it mean to investors? In dollar terms, the much beaten equity assets have only got even cheaper. Risk averse domestic investors who assumed that debt was the safest investment in turbulent times have been badly hit. Money invested in Indian rupee…
Quick edit: It is every investor’s dream to catch a market bottom. But, catching a bottom is an elusive hunt as nobody knows it before it happens. The markets show excessive pessimism at lower levels and unrelenting optimism at highs. Interestingly, the reversal in sentiment often happens swiftly. The reversal…
Quick Edit: Predicting the index is a dangerous business. Trying to do it within a time frame is double trouble. In times like these when investors lose faith in the system, predicting can be far more riskier than investing. Investing now is a lot simpler as valuations have got lower…
Quick Edit: When indices fall, we commonly find ourselves wanting to buy attractively priced stocks and not finding enough money for doing that. Not having liquidity should not stop one from buying blue chips which we believe are attractively priced. The answer to this problem lies within each investor’s existing…
Quick Edit: Randomness. The stock markets feel its omnipresence and know how it plays an irreplaceable role in changing market direction. 9/11, the financial collapse of 2008, the earth quake and tsunami in Japan are some random events which dramatically impacted global markets in recent times. The only thing that…
Quick edit: Statistics lie. The Statistician lied. The first is an often repeated adage. The second is the appalling state of governance in our country. Manipulation of data is an old trick in a government’s bag. But, the context in which such manipulation surfaces in the public domain is very…
2011-12 was a year of negative returns on equity assets. The sensex lost close to 10.5 % over the year. Negative years will always be compensated by one bumper year of profits. But, that may not be soon enough. Usually, markets move through long years of lull trading when they…
An ominous phase of volatility in commodities seems imminent. We are seeing price fluctuations increasing across commodities. The demand-supply estimates of key commodities have either been hazy or improperly assessed over the past year and this helped traders profit from increased volatility. The current year could well see demand drop and…