Ask this question to people across different spectrum and you will get as many answers as there are spectrums.
- Conservatives will tell you stock market is nothing short of gambling. It demonstrates lack of understanding what stock market really means.
- Broker will tell you buy today, sell tomorrow. It shows what is the motivation; jacking up transactions and fees. Holding for more than few days is not in his interest.
- I can go on an on like this …. but you get the point. Right?
We all want to succeed in making some good money, some quick money, and/or some money. It is my belief that most of the individuals will lose money in stock market over their lifetime. Whether we admit it publicly or not, it is a reality. I do not doubt that people sincerely want to succeed at investing, but the only issue is they do not know how. So they try to follow something that appears to be succeeding. A fund manager or business honcho mentions some stocks or strategy that is doing good in the market, and they jump on board. Only to realize later that they are late to the party. With little drop they jump off and then try to latch on something else, or many times they say, “I am out of the market”. It is a fashion to use market lingo’s. Continue reading rest of this article…
Social Media is a new buzz in business circles and marketing machinery. If you have an email address and read popular news articles on internet, then it is hard for you to avoid the talk of social media. It is the new in-thing in today’s World Wide Web. There are many different connotations of social media such as social is influence marketing, social is conversation, social is inbound marketing, social is permission marketing, social is community, and many more. At a fundamental level, it is nothing but organization of social groups. I think of it as similar to group of people in our building, our society, our group of colleagues in work place, etc albeit much larger now. One aspect about such web based social groups is that we may not know folks in our society (physically close), but many of us will probably know much more about somebody we have never met.
What do you do when stock market, and hence all stocks, are trading at a much higher price than you would be willing to pay? If you are like any other value investor or like me, then you would continue your reading and prepare your watch list. On many occasions, you would like the stock but unfortunately they are trading at a premium for pulling the buy trigger. In early December, I had shortlisted 
Recently, I looked into Hyderabad Industries Limited (HDIL) and discussed my analysis on this blog. There were few comments and mild discussion with reference to my conclusion and turnaround aspect of the HDIL. Simultaneously, I also posted the same analysis on Moneyvidya’s blog. Over at Moneyvidya’s blog, the discussion was also centered on similar characteristics of HDIL. There were few good points which I believe would be worth mentioning on my blog too. Therefore, I am presenting those points here with some additional thoughts. Readers can refer to the 
Gold is going bonkers. At present, all it knows is how to climb up. Central banks around the world seem to have caught the bug of buying gold. China wants it, India bought it, Sri Lanka bought it, Russia openly expressed interest, and probably few more. One common theme in all central bankers buying gold seems to be the desire to maintain the value of its assets. Since the continued supply of printed dollar is flooding the global markets, individual nations believe there will be reduction in value of dollar. And hence these central banks want to hold their assets in gold (rather than dollar). Few other factors that one can think of are as follows:
I received quite a bit of interesting response to my last post about THE HINDU working in foreign partners. When I posted this note and a question for readers to judge, I had decided not respond because it was not related to investing. However, reading through this discussion, I can see many have put lot of thoughts behind their responses and I got to know differing viewpoints. I respect your differing opinions and hence I am compelled to present my thoughts too.
Media pundits and business experts are again beating the drums of bonus shares from Reliance. And we all individuals, without giving the thought, start beating the drum of the bonhomie, and are rejoicing that we are getting something for free. Because it is termed as “Bonus”, it is free and we all should be happy for it. Happy that company management is thinking about shareholders and giving them “Bonus Shares”. Coming from school of “value thinking” I believe this is fools paradise. We have lost our ability to think rationally and then make a judgment call. Let us discuss little bit more….
