As a process, most long-term investors over time tend to put PSUs in the touch-me-not basket. Newbies often wonder why such a strong bias against this particular class of companies despite some being pseudo monopolies boasting of attractive business characteristics. 1/n
A lot of incremental evidence not only solidifies such a stance but also keeps pushing more investors to avoid the space (with some exceptions). For instance, there’s a listed mining PSU that has not mined anything for the last 12 yrs, as it failed to renew its mining lease.
Implying this company has had zero revenues over this period. But surprisingly it continued to pay full salaries & provide all facilities like free electricity, water, medical services etc. to its workforce. In the absence of any revenues, how did this company afford all this?
Some hard investing truths & views from Kenneth Andrade, that 20-something, financially independent & full-time investors (with Papa’s money) would NOT be able to tell you on their Instagram or Youtube Video 1/n
‘Usually, you don’t beat markets in the first 5-10 years. I did not beat markets for the first decade. All successful investors made big money only after 55 years of age, by then they have made most mistakes already & stop repeating them.’ 2/n
Stop staring at the scoreboard, instead focus on the game & ensure you stay in it long enough.
‘The best of Fund Managers (with all their might) have a 55% strike rate. On average, the ones who beat the index, have a strike rate of about 45%.’ 3/n
While real value addition is 3rd, followed by 2nd, unfortunately, a significant time & mind share goes in dealing with 1st.
You may have all the passion for the financial markets and relevant experience & academic degrees to back it up, but is that enough to be successful in your
entrepreneurial journey? Turns out the domain knowledge comes a lot later in the pecking order of the skills required to be on your own.
While large institutions have consultants/lawyers, the individuals are left wondering if they are on the right side of compliance (often grey)
9,520 have died in India & 4.3 lac globally. These are just 'numbers' until it happens to us or someone we know. I lost my next-door neighbor last week, a young & healthy individual with no pre-existing illness. He was hospitalized (on oxygen) for 10 days but couldn't make it 1/n
His brother & father who also tested positive and are still hospitalized for over 15 days do not yet know about this. Wife & kids probably couldn't even see him due to the way the last rites happen for COVID patients.
There are all kinds of loose opinions floating around on how it spreads or not, how it's fatal or not, how opening up the economy is more important etc.
A Thread. FASTag rollout has helped NHAI increase daily toll collection from Rs 65 Cr to Rs 80 Cr., a 23% jump. Over the weekend I crossed four tolls en route Chandigarh from Delhi and here’s a thread with some observations & thoughts. 1/n
1) It did not take us more than 3-min to cross any toll, definitely a significant improvement in turnaround time & great for commuters, especially commercial vehicles. (would be down further post 15th Dec)
2). The biggest benefit for tolls is plugging the cash leakage, which is
evident in the overnight jump in the collection. Further, managing Rs 65 Cr. cash every day involved significant time in reconciliation, loss due to fake notes, & cash logistics - taking that cash to the bank. The digital payments completely take away all those headaches & costs.
A thread. Some of my biggest learnings came in the last two years of my first cycle (9 years of full-time investing):
1) In the beginning, everybody thinks bottom-up stock picking is the holy grail, I thought so too. Whereas, in reality, sectoral tailwinds/headwinds immensely matter and should never be ignored.
2) I always thought technical analysis is all gas and what matters is 'just' the business behind the stock. I was wrong. Price-action, volumes, delivery data, liquidity/flows, index inclusion, etc. also matter & can add value even for fundamental/value investors especially for..