We as human beings are always objective or goal oriented. We may not know it, but sub-consciously, we are always attempting to do a given task or an activity towards certain goal. Many folks will not agree with me, because there is a perception that ROI is always related to money. To me, it is not. If I spend time with my family, its because the pleasure I get (that’s an ROI). If I did not get that pleasure, overtime it will automatically create a rift. Similarly, if I play any team sports, or go out with friends, it builds our relationship, it builds camaraderie, a sense of togetherness. It is not necessarily for getting any money in return, but to be part of social community. You cannot live alone in this world, right? Keeping with this, the question I am trying to answer today is what is my ROI from this blog? I need to know what I am getting out of this blog. Here also, I will use the framework provided by Avinash. There are multiple parameters to determine ROI from the blog. Continue reading rest of this article…
Determining ROI from TIPBlog
Stock Market for 2010: What’s Your Prediction ?
For many of us retail investors, there is a perennial dilemma about two issues. One is about how we should invest and where we should invest. The second one is we always say (or crib) we do not have big enough capital. We never get out of this loop. Which stock to buy or where to invest is decided based on what was read yesterday. Everybody from the top VP of financial firm to any small investors like us, we keep churning out ideas, themes, predictions, estimates, etc. But we do not have conviction in our own ideas. Honestly, I love reading all those ideas as they do make some interesting reading material, but that’s not the way to manage your personal portfolio. .
As year 2009 is nearing completion, I have been reading new predictions and themes for year 2010. It is quite amusing to read what folks have to say. I always wonder do any of these forecasters follow their own advice. Could we take a peek at their portfolios? Here are few excerpts: Continue reading rest of this article…
Investing Success Comes from Conviction and Executing Your Ideas
Do you know how many people investing and/or trading in equity markets truly succeed over long term? Success here means increase in wealth over their investing lifetimes. This group of people includes individual retail folks and professionals. I am sure many of us would have no clue. I do not have any hard core reference to share; however, I can recall reading various percentages that range from 1% to 7%. Without going in specific data points, my observation has been every time this is less than 10% of investing population. More than 90% of the folks will lose money in equity markets over their investing lifetime. Quite startling but this is very true.
We as individuals focus too much on one or two big time success or multi baggers, but ignore the importance of sustainability and consistency. We fall into the “Chalta hai” trap. Long term success is not built on few multi-baggers. Long term success is built on multiple average successes that are sustainable over time. Continue reading rest of this article…
Measuring Progress – XIRR as Personal Rate of Return
Investor’s who use long term buy and hold philosophy use varied different ways to manage risk (such as allocation and diversification), monitor their progress, and performance metric. There is no single metric that can be considered as a holy grail of progress monitoring and/or performance measurement. Depending upon what is the objective and what you want to achieve is what will drive that performance metric.
In this context, I use few different monitoring and/or performance metric. Earlier, I have talked about yield on cost as one metric to determine cash flow (or dividends) received from my original investments. YOC is a very good metric to measure the growth of your dividend based cash flow over a period of time. However, it has a drawback. It does not take into account the variability of capital invested. The price of the stock does not remain static. It keeps changing over a period of time.
SENSEX Trends – Fair Valuation and Improved Earnings
The current rally has added 98% to the SENSEX relative to March 2009 low of 8160 points. The rally is going on for last 5 months, the question is, what is fueling this rally? This rebound will make us believe it is start of next Bull Run. Any prudent investor will try to figure out what has happened since March 2009 that justifies this rally. As always, at hindsight everything makes sense.
With the unprecedented level of stimulus from many different countries, the global economy is showing signs of stabilization. In addition, the rebound of Oil prices in international market seems to give boost to many countries. Accordingly, I believe Indian economy is also showing signs of stability. I think the biggest boost for Indian business sentiment and environment has been the continuity of the pro-reform government at its helm.
Number of Equity Shares and Capital Base – A Simple Discussion
At regular time intervals, I respond to the question asked by readers of this blog. Many of my post on this blog are inspired by such questions. Today’s post is in response to one such question. It is related to number of equity shares, equity base, and calculating EPS. I will use an example to discussion these aspects. So the question is reproduced below in verbatim.
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The nse site, giving financial results,a company mentions about Paid-up Equity Share Capital. Ex For axis bank has 36crore shares ,it mentions equity share capital as 36 crore*10 = 360 crore. What does this mean. because the actual capital raised would be the shares offered to public*ipo price. Will not this be the equity base of a company? and for finding EPS why do we consider the entire number of shares rather than only the number issued to public (since the capital raised would be only that much).
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When I form a company, I use my personal capital (i.e invest my own money) into the company and business activities. In the process of forming and registering a new company, according to Companies Act, it needs to be capitalized. Capitalization is the process in which owners have to come with number of shares and its face value.
Indian Corporates Offering NCDs
In very simple terms, Non Convertible Debentures (NCDs) are a loan to the company issuing it. This loan, or NCDs, cannot be converted into equity. Public or Private companies issue NCDs to fund many activities such as growth plans, corporate expenses, pay out earlier loans, working capital, etc. I consider NCDs as a form of private or public sector bonds, depends upon who issues it.
The key attractive aspect about NCD is they are fixed income vehicle with capital being secured. In general, NCDs offer returns that are 2% to 4% higher than savings, CDs, or some of other government bonds. For example, the current L&T offers interest rates in the range of 9.51% to 10.24%, while Shiram Transports offered NCD upto 11.5%.
Future Order Book: What Does it Mean?
In my view, there is no effective way to measure the impact of future order book on future EPS. Theoretically, it is possible to translate this into future EPS. But I believe it can only be done by company executives. It is company insiders who know the operating cost, raw material cost, possibility of order completion, taxation, and when the revenue is likely to be realized (i.e. received by the company). I cannot understand how brokerage houses or independent analyst can make that estimate. I would like to know if anybody can share the methodology? To me, it only has a marketing value, nothing beyond that. Let me use an example. Continue reading rest of this article…