In our communication of 16 th February, we had cautioned against the spread of coronavirus and its probable impact on stock markets. With this epidemic now converging into pandemic and spreading across continents, this fear seems coming true. This epidemic has caused 5 or more deaths in South Korea & Italy and reporting more than 800 infected people in South Korea and over 150 in Italy.   This has for sure impacted output and sales for the current quarter for already reeling world economy. But real assessment of the probable loss and amount of time and efforts that will be required to recover from it will be known once this come under control and life travels back to normalcy in affected geographies. Major markets across world over fell by over 3% today. Indian markets also joined them and were down by almost 2%. Indian markets are down by over 4% from their peaks. We reaffirm our position – this might turn out to be a black swan event and cause considerable lo...

"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 In our previous commentary we talked of some green shoots emerging in the economy. And as a precursor to revival of the economy, stock markets had started showing broad-based positive movements across large cap, mid-cap and small cap stocks and indices over the last couple of months. After the budget, RBI provided a much needed Sanjivani without cutting down the policy rates. They provided the required liquidity especially to focused sectors – home & retail auto loans and MSME sectors – a sector that is largest employment provider in the country and is suffering most post demonetization and credit crisis. With crude oil prices softening and good harvest expected for Rabi crops – inflation should remain stable in near future. Even the finance minister, RBI governor and many global reports are also talking of emerging green shoots and expect...

"The market does not trade upon what everybody knows, but upon what those with the best information can foresee" – William Hamilton Budget is an annual exercise by union government to present it’s sources and application of funds. Sources include taxes and non-tax revenue that accrues to the government and planned borrowings. Application reflects areas where government will spend its sources and the same includes capital and non-capital expenditures. As an investor it becomes important to know the provisions of the budget to the extent that one can plan his income & investments to receive higher post tax income in hand. All other provisions of the budget are not of much relevance to an investor except to know and understand how the budget will impact the economic activity in the country. In our earlier communications we had stated that very high expectations have been set from the budget which for any Finance Minister will be near impossible to fulfill. We ma...