Category: Excerpts

I was angry with myself for having taken up a fight with the Ambanis. I probably shouldn’t have.

The channel had done an elaborate coverage of how their oil by-products were adulterated. That decision hurt me a lot, which I realised later.

After the dotcom bust, while all stocks took a dive, ours fell disproportionately.  In a normal crash, the price of Zee would have come down from its1,500 peak to about500 or600. But it was down to double digits.

I was devastated.

I still remember the meeting with one of the investors in New York. I broke down. I couldn’t believe that I did so in front of an investor. That was perhaps the lowest point of my life. 

–said Subhash Chandra, Chairman Essel Group & Zee

Hat Tip : Nilesh Shah

 

“We are always prepared for volatility and rapidly moving markets – they should surprise no one.

I am a little perplexed when people are surprised by large market moves.Oftentimes, it takes only an unexpected supply/demand imbalance of a few percent and changing sentiment to dramatically move markets. We have seen that condition occur recently in oil, but I have also seen it multiple times in my career in cotton, corn, aluminium, soybeans, chicken, beef, copper, iron – you get the point.

Each industry or commodity has continually changing supply and demand, different investment horizons to add or subtract supply, varying marginal and fixed costs, and different inventory and supply lines. In all cases, extreme volatility can be created by slightly changing factors.

It is fundamentally the same for stocks, bonds, and interest rates and currencies. Changing expectations, whether around inflation, growth or recession (yes, there will be another recession – we just don’t know when), supply and demand, sentiment and other factors, can cause drastic volatility.”

-said Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase