06 July 2019

The Cat is Out of the Bag!

Dear Books,

No..no..they are only moving on to a new home these and another 2 dozen or more of them, a little sentimental of course, 18 years is a long time to have stuck around. Yes this is my last month with Sharekhan a journey that started with one meeting out of the blue with Vetri Subramaniam [now Group President and Head Equity UTI AMC]. In fact I was visiting Emkay Share and Stock Brokers for an inauguration of their office at Phoenix Mills [Now High Street Phoenix] when I ran into the HR head on the street for a follow up meeting. Next day I met Vetri and it became an 18 year journey. But it feels like having started just yesterday, however it did in March 2001

Now what you may not know that the Journey named Indiacharts started with the Tech bubble in 2000, everyone wanted to own a domain name, and they were being squatted on. I wanted to air my market views So I chose to start with a free page on Yahoo Geocities to start a blog. Somehow I did not choose a blogging platform. In 2003 the tech bubble was far behind and the squatter on the ‘indiacharts.com’ domain went away. I bought it and it is now mine for life. 2007 I applied for the trademarks to ‘Indiahcarts®’. 2013 launched Indiacharts Insiders.

The Journey of the two above started within a year of each other. Now just one has ended and the other never will. Sharekhan went from a crash in revenues by 9/11 to growing 100 times thereafter. So starting with a start-up had its upside

Deja Vu –

This is where the story gets eerie.

I am moving on, just as the 'Everything Bubble' is now in the process of popping'. Is it a coincidence that 18 years later markets sit at the helm of a similar challenge they faced the last time. What challenge? In March 2001, when I quit Sanwa Finance to join Sharekhan, indices were down but the K=10 were still in distribution. HFCL stock was still 1600 and NIIT above 1000. In the weeks that followed they lost 90% of their value, Ketan Parekh was taken in for bankruptcy of 'Global Trust Bank'. And Shankar Sharma got accused of creating 'Tehelka'. Now it’s 18 months since the Midcap distribution started, the Nifty is on a perch, I wonder what the next few months hold in the backdrop of a worsening NBFC credit crisis in the banking sector that no one is giving enough attention to. One more similarity, the BJP was serving its second term. Yes they were re-elected in late 1999, the tech bubble burst in March 2000, and in 2001 stocks really plunged. They and many tech stocks were not in the index so not fully reflected in Nifty. This time stocks have already plunged and the index has not reflected it even a bit, as money has concentrated into a handful of stocks. The last mile is being run by the survivors of the ‘Everything bubble’. But bubbles do not spare anybody.

That I am moving on in similar circumstances is quite amazing. Will the end results be the same? We will know in due course. The parallels are hair raising. My next pic will be of a new office location where these books find a home, Aug/Sep 2019.

It’s been years since my economic winter call, and my Multi Asset class Multi Strategy long/short approach that I have drifted toward over the last few years as I studied global currencies and macro more closely, has come to dominate my thinking. That is the need of the hour and has worked for the last many years,

As investors and traders you need to educate yourself about trading and about alternate investments that can work apart from equities. Learning market timing might end up being one of the most important skills no matter what your time horizon. Market timing does not mean sell everything or buy everything, it can be a systematic approach to an entry/exit as well. You need a method.

It is not my intention to convert Indiacharts to an advisory or research calls/tips service because I have seen that fail and not serve the interests of the end user. It becomes a quantity business of how many calls rather than quality. Its success reigns on perfect execution by customers of every trade or a portfolio. Most do not carry that discipline. So my approach will be more informative and just short of giving a Call, leaving that last mile for you to take up. What I can do though is improve enhance and expand the content to help you get closer to your goal. Individuals mostly allocate their portfolios on their personal risk appetite and goals with position sizing and asset allocation built into them.

My approach has moved from including only equities to including the dollar gold and other assets that I discuss.

Will try to educate and build tools for portfolio and position sizing that are easy to use in general as I go along.

Suggestions are welcome on what would improve the overall experience for you [write to indiacharts@gmail.com]

Thanks for your support!

Rohit