The 1H2010 can be summarized as return of optimism, in economy, in stock markets, stabilization of global economy, and fears about euro zone. As an individual investor, should I care about macro economics, or should I even worry about what happens to Greece or to euro currency? Ambani brothers patch up and there are stories its good for markets and business! To me, being stalwarts in India Business world, instead of setting an example, it was idiotic for them to even fight and drag each other into courts. These are good academic discussion, but I doubt it is going to help in your own portfolio. I am taking stock of my portfolio.
My last progress update was for year end 2009. This post summarizes TIPBlog portfolio update and measures progress for 1H 2010. Continue reading rest of this article…
Two readers of this blog left couple of intelligent questions in comment section on some of the articles. Both of these questions relate to what I term as rebalancing the portfolio (or profit booking). I wanted to wait until I posted articles on TIPBlog portfolio update and risk analysis. I wanted to discuss these two questions in the context of TIPBlog portfolio. It will help better understand the re-balancing and profit booking processes.
I am not a fan of IPOs. I do not consider them an attractive opportunity for my investment objectives. In general, companies or organization come to the market with IPOs to generate capital. Their objectives are to generate as much capital as possible with minimum possible dilution. Companies usually choose opportune time frame to offer it to open public so that sufficient premium can be added to fair value (or book value). I do not find fault with the company. They are doing what they are supposed to do. They are attempting to meet their objective to get maximum possible value from the market.
There are many different styles, approach, and methods of investing. Many individual investors focus on trading (swing, positional, momentum, speculation, technicals etc.), while many others focus of investing (value, growth, blend, etc), and still many others on special situations (opportunistic, arbitrages, etc). In addition, there are quite a few individual investors that attempt at combination of trading and investing. Similar to glass being half full or half empty, I believe every style has its own pros and cons’ depending upon in what context one is looking at it. Individuals have to figure out what works best for them.
One common question that I continue to receive is about the efficacy of long term investing. The notable factor is almost all of them use two specific examples to explain that long term investing is not a viable solution. These examples are (1) Stock market tanking in 2008; and (2) Satyam going kaput.
Measuring Progress – Yield on Cost or Dividend Yield
Individuals need to set a goal in order to succeed at anything, including our individual investments. Logically, the next step is to determine how we are going to measure our progress. In the realm of investments, most the individual investors (if not all investors) look at annualized returns and compare it with benchmark index. Here in India investors either use BSE’s Sensex Index or NSE’s Nifty Index. In addition, based on multiple discussions I have with individual investors, many investors use percentage based capital appreciation or depreciation which is devoid of time concept i.e. no time scale is involved.
For example, investors love to say “I made 150%, 200%, or 2x or 3x, or 0.5x times my money”. I cannot comments whether this progress measurement is right or wrong because I do not know individual’s objective and/or risk profile.
Ironically, of the many folks I have talked to in last ten years, more than 95% of them have always increased their original capital. Well if that’s the case then who is loosing it? If nobody is loosing, then why the market is more than 50% down from its peak. I am digressing from the subject, so coming back to the topic of measuring our progress…… Continue reading rest of this article…