Quick Edit: The market mood in early 2012 reminds us of the year 2001. Then, the tech crash of 2000 had scared investors away from equities as an asset class. The fear of more bad news and prolonged weakness in economic sentiment was pervasive. Nobody was sure where the new…
Year – ends have their own way of playing out on the investor psyche. The year end is not really an event of economic significance. Not much changes on the economic front when the calendar turns into a new year. Yet, there are different schools of analysis predicting how investor…
Quick edit: The capitulation did not happen this week. Nerves cooled down and value investors were busy buying selectively towards the weekend. As the markets head into the last trading week, we can’t help wondering aloud if the direction will reverse earlier than what most investors believe it will. The…
Quick edit: Everybody thinks that the BSE sensex will hit 14000 or 12,000 before it rebounds. We are told that the market simply cant go up without going further down. Really? Experience actually tells us to believe in the converse. Nobody knows where the markets will bottom. Actually, the markets…
Quick Edit: A company’s valuation is lower than the notional guideline value of the land on which its factory is built. It even has already sourced alternate land to shift its business and commence operations. It has very stable earnings and no debt. The company’s sum of the parts valuation…
Quick edit: Relative valuation is a great way to evaluate asset classes. To make the most out of money, it makes sense to buy what is relatively attractive. If we invest in an asset class which is relatively cheaper than others, we limit our downside and set ourselves for the…
Quick edit: The Stock Market had a whitewash this week. It went down every single day. The bulls who trade had a tough time. Selling seems the simplest way to make money. Anything you sell goes down the next day. This rather predictable behavior of stocks has emboldened sellers and…
Quick edit: A slowdown has a way of spreading. Some sectors hold up longer than the rest. Over time, a slowdown hits most sectors and create a perception of fear and despondency. We are into a phase when nothing seems to be going right. The three i ‘s – Inflation…
Quick edit: The war on inflation seems headed nowhere. After several interest rate hikes, food inflation shows little signs of easing. Fuel price hikes are not helping matters one bit. The perverse argument that freeing diesel prices is a sure shot way of curbing long term inflation clearly shows the…
Quick edit: The skeptics rarely get the market direction right and the habitual ones mostly go wrong. The European crisis was threatening to collapse the global stock markets. The agreement on debt waiver reached by European Nations was greeted by the markets with a euphoric rise. Investors waiting in the…
Quick edit: Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on Euphoria. So, where are we now? Let us think this through to an answer. Pessimism is not a routine monthly or quarterly phenomenon. The extreme negativity due to the financial woes of banks…