Time to Buy

If not in India, at least in America, its the time to buy equities, opines the Oracle of Omaha. Probably the fear has not really percolated as much in India. The real “real estate” meltdown on the streets is yet to take place. Property prices are yet to correct by a lot. Slowdown is yet [...]

The Five minute management course

Yes, the markets are not good. But some humor won’t hurt during these times. 
Lesson 1: 
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings. 
The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. 
When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbour. 
Before she [...]

Was Indira Gandhi a visionary?

Lehman Brothers is already down. Bear Stearns and WaMu sold. AIG has been nationalised. Fortis too has been nationalised by BeNeLux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) yesterday. Bradford & Bringley gulped by UK. Many to follow. One after another bank is being taken over by the respective governments.
India has a lot many of these nationalised banks [...]

Good Ones

It just so happened that I came across the following and considered it worth a share.
First: (an excerpt from WSJ’s news on Buffett’s USD 5 bn injection in Goldman)
Mr. Buffett received a call at 4:30 p.m. that Saturday from a private investment firm trying to assemble a group to buy the embattled financial giant. “I’m [...]

Yet another extraordinary event

The yield on 3-month U.S. Treasury bills fell to 0.02 percent early afternoon New York trade on Wednesday amid investors’ panicked scramble into the safe haven of ultra short-dated government securities.
The 3-month U.S. Treasury bill yield last traded at 0.02 percent as an actual trade and had traded negative earlier yesterday. Its so bad that [...]

Risk

My definition of RISK: Reckless Investing Sans Knowledge!
We used to play “chidiya ud”, “tota ud”, “bhains ud”………
Now we will play, “lehman furrr”, “bear stearns furrr”, “merill furrr”, ……..
Extraordinary times ahead!

Shorting Nifty – Updates

I have been vocal about shorting Nifty when Sensex crosses 15000. It has crossed 15000 in today’s trade. Does it make sense to go short the Nifty? May be yes, but the probability has certainly decreased. Why? Because our dear Oil has been on a continuous downtrend since the last few days. At yesterday’s close, [...]

Time to short Nifty

Our dear Nifty keeps on meandering these days. It has come back to a level (4413.55) where it would make more sense to short it. It is trading at approximately 18x TTM (trailing twelve month) earnings with a slower growth outlook. Definitely expensive. Oil was also up in the last trade and is at $125 [...]

Real estate in bad state – 2

RBI governor, Mr. Y. V. Reddy has hiked the Repo rate by 50 bps and CRR by 25 bps. Repo rate is the rate at which our banks borrow rupees from RBI. A reduction in the repo rate will help banks to get money at a cheaper rate. When the repo rate increases borrowing from [...]

The Dhando Investor

Finished reading the simple yet excellent book by Mohnish Pabrai. I believe its a good read even for those who are not a bit interested in stock picking. He talks about Patels, Mittal, Branson and himself highlighting the common gene of value picking in businesses they have done.
Not too thick also, a one day read.