Is Exacting a Buy Price Important for Long Term Investing?

At regular time intervals, I like to discuss selective questions from readers of this blog. Many times, I discuss randomly with no particular theme. It is usually based on either intriguing questions or inquisitive questions or just that I like the question. Now that markets have zoomed higher relative to last year, most of these questions have slowly drifted towards buying price. I give priority to respond to all questions that come from regular readers of my blog. I make sure I give them my best response. Others, I may or may not, depending upon if I have time to get to them or whether they are good questions.

Today, I am reproducing below three emails that follow the theme of “what is the buy price”. Continue reading rest of this article…

Goals and Strategy: Source of Mess Up in Personal Portfolio

1133804_sign_success_and_failureAs a do-it-yourself investor, I enjoy the process of investing much more than finding my next company I will invest in. Admittedly, the process is much more challenging than finding the winning stocks. Yes, you read it right! Investing process is very difficult in many different contexts. Managing the portfolio requires wearing different types of hats. Sometimes you have act and behave like a leader, sometimes play the role of manager, and on many occasions you work like an employee.


Most of the investors spend a significant amount of time in looking at the quantitative part of the company analysis. We arrange data in different formats, different time scales, compare with analyst, check out google to see what others have to say, etc. In short, search and screen multiple stocks, collect data, and present observations and results. This is all about execution and is similar to what an employee will do. Is that really important?  Have you asked yourself:

  • Why this specific type of analysis?
  • How you determine earnings per share?
  • Is it only necessary to look at last one year or last three year or more?
  • Do you include dividends?
  • How do you decide multiples?
  • How do you decide value? Continue reading rest of this article…

Feasibility of Portfolio Dividend Cash Flow Goal in Year 2020

I have mentioned that one of my objective from my portfolio is to have dividend-based cash flow of Rs 500,000 by year end 2020. To show this feasibility, I could present a sophisticated excel based model with multiple different set of variables (i.e. make it complex). At a minimum, I know most of them would at least respect the effort. That’s how we are; we tend to appreciate complexity rather than simplicity. I like things to be simple. They are easy to understand and easy to implement. In this post, I am discussing a simple empirical exercise to demonstrate the feasibility of achieving my goal.


Before I demonstrate feasibility, following are few nuggets from Indian dividend landscape.

  • There are more than 1400 Indian companies that pay dividends
  • 2007-2008: Rs 52,150 crore is the estimated total dividends paid by Indian companies. This represents approximately 18.1% of estimated total net profits
  • 2008-2009:  Rs 51,500 crore is the estimated total dividends paid by Indian companies. This represents approximately 18.7% of estimated total net profits Continue reading rest of this article…

Income Portfolio Investment Goals

If I do not know where to go, how can I start the journey? This seems to be a very simple question we face day-in and day-out. But when it comes to investment plans, in general, most of the individuals fall short in identifying the defined final destination. In this post, I am discussing what is my vision and what would I like to achieve from my income portfolio. Continue reading rest of this article…



~