Few months back I wrote, post about MPROFIT, a product for personalized portfolio management which is desktop based. In simple terms, this is solution for retail investors to manage/track their transactions across many different types of asset class. It simplifies many of the mundane tasks of portfolio tracking. Some of the highlights are:
- Manage an unlimited number of individual and group portfolios: This is good for all do-it-yourself investors. Almost all of us tend to manage different types of assets/buckets/type of portfolio.
- Manage assets like Stocks, MFs, ETFs, ULIPs, Insurance Policies, Private Equity, FDs, Bonds, PPF, Gold, Silver, Property, Art and many more…
- Online update of BSE stock prices, Mutual Fund NAVs and ETFs – I like this one
- Track income received from investments – I love this one
- Annualised Returns (XIRR) report – My favorite feature because I believe this has much more relevance in personal investing. CAGRs are nothing but mathematical jugglery.
- Online update for newly listed stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and company name changes
- All your financial data is saved locally on your computer – My preferred choice, I like my personal financial stuff in my own computer, especially in Indian context.
In addition, I like that team at MPROFIT listens to its customers. It keeps adding features that customers are looking for and makes more sense to individuals like us. The most recent update (v5.0) has added capability with different methods of “data importing”. Different ways to import data are: Continue reading rest of this article…
As 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…
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…
It has been very close to a year I have been writing on this blog. Almost on all occasions I have discussed about buying and holding my position. I have said multiple times that I tend not to sell my positions. There have been multiple questions about why not book profits? Why not sell profitable positions and invest in other opportunities? Before I discuss on selling any positions, let me clarify, I do not blindly believe that buy and hold is holy grail for long term investing. I have no misconception about “not selling” any positions. In any system (eco-system, car, machines, or even our body), there are multiple elements and each have a role to play. Similarly, in portfolio management process, selling a position is also very important, and hence it cannot be ignored. In my process description, I have captured this part as ‘exit plan’. Continue reading rest of this article…
What a year 2009 was? At the beginning of the year, the stock market was trying to find how deep the abyss was. Every other participant in the equity market was trying to run away like there was no tomorrow. Fast forward to second half of the year. The story changed and now the stock market is trying to find its peak. It was in true sense a roller coaster ride.
When the equity market goes up like it did in later part of the year, it gives a false sense of confidence in our abilities to pick stocks. Irrespective of what one thinks, any company stock you had touched in second of 2009, it has zoomed. It really did not matter which company stock it was! Lately, I have seen quite a bit of emails trying to point me towards how the stocks that I negated (or did not pick?) have zoomed up and made them money. I do feel happy for everybody who made good money in 2009. I wish you had shared those winners with readers of this blog. We all want to make money here. Right? Continue reading rest of this article…
Once in a while, I discuss about topics other than investing such as THE HINDU’s website design at foreign source and my thoughts about it. That particular post resulted in passionate discussion on both side of the aisle. There was one theme that seemed to be echoed by quite a few commentators, and that was; there are companies and entrepreneurs that are focusing on developing products. Many entrepreneurs are in fact attempting to develop solutions for Indian consumers. Continue reading rest of this article…
In my last post, I discussed about two important but overlooked aspects about dividend investing. Today, I am discussing few tidbit that I have learnt over the years.
Dividends provide stability in your portfolio: Companies that are generating profitable cash and sharing with shareholders are the ones that do not go bust. Even in down market they give you cash dividends. While your portfolio’s capital values go down, your dividends are positive return to you portfolio. I crave for such a scenario. I position myself to make sure I have enough cash to buy such companies at lower valuations. I see downturn such as early 2009 as an incredible buying opportunity.
Dividends to investors cannot be manipulated: Companies demonstrate profit in their books which fuels the market price. But can you as an investor spend company profits? Profits can be generated from financial engineering, ROC or ROE can be engineering, but cash flow from operations or dividends to shareholders cannot be manipulated. As an investor you need cash to spend, and not company profits. The company you work for gives you cash (and not profit statement). Will you be willing to work for profit statement? Probably not!
Continue reading rest of this article…
