Till couple of years back after the Covid correction, stock markets were moving almost in one direction with some aberrations caused by geo-political conflicts of Russia-Ukraine & Israel-Hamas, elections in India and BJP not gaining majority on its own and some other such events. Despite such temporarily disturbances the markets maintained their upward movement. Until about ten months back when it started showing concerns over possible Trump win in US elections as FIIs started withdrawing funds from Indian markets, growth in profits of listed companies also showed some pressure, concerns over high valuations, tariff war and its likely impact on world economy etc. kept stock markets on the edge across the world. And the worst that could affect Indian economy and markets was Pahalgam terror attack forcing Indian government to launch Operation Sindoor against terrorists outfits & Pakistan. Had the government heeded to popular feelings and escalated the war, we don’t know how f...

  "You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong" - Warren Buffett The two most celebrated festivals of Hindu culture – Diwali & Holi, shows us the way how to lead better and healthier life. For Diwali we cleanse our home and surroundings and for Holi we purify our home & surroundings on ‘Holika Dahan’ and then splash the new colours of life on ‘Dulhandi’, the following day. The colours of bond, trust and friendship among our fraternity who stand by us at all times – good or not so good. Coincidentally Diwali comes midway the financial year and Holi comes towards the close of it. What we do to cleanse and purify our physical and spiritual life, the same need to be applied to our portfolio for a financially healthy life. While midway the financial year we should scan our portfolio for cleansing, we should purify it and splash it with new colours towards the close of the year. Purifying and splashing new...

  “Being still and doing nothing are two completely different things.” Jackie Chan Last Friday markets were in free fall zone, falling 1.9% on a single day or over 15% in last six months. Is this culmination of the market correction going on for over last few months or beginning of a new wave of further corrections? Usually price to earnings or PE, price to book value or PB and market cap to GDP are tracked to test if markets are overpriced or fairly priced or undervalued. Let’s try to decode and analyze them to see where market stands today.   Indicator Sep-24 Feb-25 Rise / Decline Nifty 26216 22124 -15.61% EPS 1063 1125 5.83% PE 24.66 19.67 -20.26% PB 4.27 3.29 -22.95% Market Cap to GDP 139.36 110 -21.07% Source: www.trendlyne.com...

  “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take." Wayne Gretzky, NHL Hall of Famer   Markets are down by over 8% from their peaks. Many reasons can be attributed to that like geo-political & economical concerns, domestic political/social events, inflation, interest rates, weather etc. Are these concerns over or are they deepening further. Honestly no one can answer this question, you can only guesstimate them based on your experience and understanding. Israel has retaliated to Iran’s attack, how is Iran going to reply this? How the US economic policies will shape up after elections that are just a couple of weeks away. Domestically too train incidents over last couple of months and bomb hoax in flights over two weeks now, rising insurgency post J&K elections, bomb explosion in Delhi this week definitely concerns us. And kind of political slugfest we are witnessing now-a-days, don’t comfort us of a good future at times. FIIs also withdrew 1.07 lakhs crores ove...

Lord Ganesha – the Vighnaharta or “destroyer of all obstacles that come our way”, is source of so much wisdom and power that we begin all our auspicious work only after worshipping him. Each year we indulge in 10 days extravaganza to commemorate his birth. On the day of Vinayaka Chaturthi, we bring Ganapati to our home and worship it daily for next 10 days and immerse it on the day of Anant Chatudashi in holy waters. This is a usual process that devotees of Ganesha follow every year. Does this have any resemblance to what we do to our investments? Let’s seek guidance from the Lord of Wisdom himself. This whole process involves three sub-processes – Sthapana – placing the Ganesha’s idol, worshipping it for ten days and then Visarjana – immersing it on completion of the period. Sthapana – It is akin to construction of your investment portfolio. We select a statue, cloths and accessories etc. having an image in our minds as how our God should look like (goal). Similarly we work on d...

A.     SEBI raids offices and locations of Quant Mutual Fund suspecting front running in its schemes. B.   Grow an online mutual fund transaction platform for direct investors, committing fraud with its investor. Since yesterday morning these two news are making headlines across electronic and social media channels. Investors are worried how safe are their investments and what should they do now. We have received dozens of calls seeking our views on these news and action points. Lets discuss them one by one and likely impact on your investments. A.     SEBI raids Quant Mutual Fund Offices – Quant mutual fund has grown by over 1000 times in last seven odd years from the time they took over Escorts Mutual Fund in 2018. Quant’s assets under management (AUM) stand at over 93,000 crores. Quant practices momentum strategy very aggressively and have been quite successful over last 3-4 years. Peers in most categories lagged performance by a decent margi...

“Even the intelligent investor is likely to need considerable willpower to keep from following the CROWD.” – Benjamin Graham Ekadashi or the 11 th day of the fortnight of the Panchang (Hindu lunar calendar) is a very important day for many followers. They observe fast on this day and practice self control – physically as well as spiritually. This way they try to cleanse their mind and body every fortnight. Eid ul Adha is a festival of sacrifice. On this day followers are expected to sacrifice their most beloved possession as a gesture of gratitude towards God and in expectation of big reward that God will bestow upon them for the sacrifice. Similarly when it comes to managing your personal finance, one needs to exercise lot of self control to keep away from the public emotions and the noise. Saving oneself from market noise does not mean to follow “Fill it, Shut it & Forget it” strategy, the tagline Hero Honda used to introduce its bikes. It is equally important to keep review...

" The influence on stock markets are so numerous and so complex that no person has ever been able to predict the trend of stock prices with consistent success. – Sir John Templeton" India is all set to participate in fourth phase of parliament elections. While all political alliances are claiming success, capital markets seem to be thinking otherwise. This is the general perception now-a-days. Elections will be over in next three weeks and in just 23 days from now on 4 th of June we will have absolute clarity as to who is forming the government. Till then let’s analyse the probable scenarios that can emerge from the elctions and their likely impact on the economy and the stock markets: A.     BJP wins with thumping majority – It will continue the ongoing economic policies with increased pace and vigour which should bode well for the economy and the markets. Additionally it can take some debatable decisions that may cause unrest in certain sections of the society, ...