Feast and Famine at the same time The only thing that is predictable about the stock markets is its unpredictability in the short term. The stock market indices not only touched new life time highs, and they did so in the face of India’s worst bond market crisis. However, there was no celebration this time. As a matter of fact, stock & mutual fund portfolios of most investors are nowhere near all time highs. “Josh” among investors is low to say the least :) The key reason for the above ...

It would be an understatement to say that a lot has happened between the previous article dated 18th Sep, 2018 – Memo 25: Market View – Who Shall Pass the Litmus Test? and this one Memo 26. The stock market decline that started in Feb, 2018 reached its nadir in October, 2018, with the panic spreading to bond markets as well. Interest rates spiked; currency went into free fall, touching almost Rs75/$; petrol prices touched an all-time high of Rs. 90/litre. Timely government intervention & sharp d...

Let us start this note with the small caveat that we usually put at the end of all our articles – “Equity as an asset class can be extremely rewarding in the long term. However, only those individuals who can bear the interim volatility should invest in equities”. After almost four years of relatively smooth ride, this “interim volatility” is very much here and this could well be the litmus test of the investor in “you”. The reason for terming this phase as litmus test is because this will be t...

After almost four years of steady rise, the past few months have been rather challenging for Indian stock markets. The thousands of whatsapp groups which were buzzing with new recommendations every day have become unusually silent; the newspapers and TV anchors are no longer talking about multi-baggers and public personalities are no longer boasting about their winning bets. Let’s take a moment to understand why the euphoria suddenly turned into fear. The damage at the index level looks small (...

11,000 is just a number! We will take the liberty to borrow a few lines from our June 2017 article titled “10,000 is just a number”, where we discussed at length that the Indian stock markets are headed much higher in the coming days. It’s almost a déjà vu as Indian stock markets made fresh highs and NIFTY crossed 11,000 for the first time. As in the past, only a few are celebrating this feat. Through this article, we want to specifically address the three reasons why folks like us are not ce...

While we claim no expert insights or inclination on this topic, the record number of queries that we have received over past two months have pushed us to write on it. The interesting commonality to all these queries is the “left out” feeling. People have almost stopped short of asking"I don't understand anything about bitcoins but is it okay to buy them?  Am I missing something big if I don't buy them?" Again, we are no expert on bitcoins or block chain, so allow us to borrow some insights fr...

Much to our surprise, we received record number of "WhatsApp forwards" over the past 30 days, highlighting the failure of current government and the severe economic slowdown that India is staring at. The surprise was not in the content of these messages but the fact that these messages were forwarded by friends working in areas that have got little to do with day to day economic news. Some of them even went to the extent of asking if their investments in stock markets were at risk and if they sh...

Marilyn Monroe, the sensation of 1960s, once famously said “if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best”. I am forced to correlate this with the Indian stock markets - the folks who endured the worst (demonetization) phase are now enjoying the best times as far as their financial health is concerned. Stock markets have been making new highs every week and NIFTY, the benchmark index, crossed 10,000 for the first time in Indian history. The ironic part abo...

Steve Martin, an American actor, once famously said “the public has a short memory, that’s why we can make terrible movies and still get back in business after two years”. It’s been just 150 days since the much criticized demonetization exercise ended but the swing in sentiments have been nothing short of incredulous. Be it the media or ourwhatsapp messengers, the tone has clearly changed from impatience, anger and despair to hope, opportunity and optimism. The data coming out of corporate In...

While there is no disputing the fact that last three months were tough for most of India, few things still managed to hit an all time high – number of whatsapp messages on our phones, the number of people expressing their opinions, the number of counter-opinions and the intensity of media’s rhetoric! It was information overload at its best. Relentless media coverage of the long queues & deaths at the ATMs, pictures of deserted mandis& trade markets, farmer distress, deaths at hospitals d...