Categories
Anecdotes

Why India is going to the dogs

Once an eccentric rich old man explained to me why India is going to the dogs:

“In the golden olden days,people use to greet each other with “Jay Shri Ram” or “Jay Shri Krishna”.Now instead of greeting people with the Lord’s Name, they greet each other with “Hai Hai”.Agar tum itna hai hai karoge, to desh ka kya hoga?”

Categories
Humor

You are in a bull market.When…

Amusing message from Whats App doing the rounds…

You are in a bull market, When…..

…You offer your broker a car each morning so he doesn’t need to take the Mumbai local to get to the terminal by 9.19 am.

…The pink papers are the first to disappear from your lap when you fall asleep on a flight.

…Every third executive works through the day with the Moneycontrol site minimized on his computer screen

…The excitement in otherwise pin-drop offices is not about Kolkata Knight Riders’s victory but PTC India Financial hitting another circuit.

…Old-timers get nostalgic about V P Singh’s 1985 Budget and Manmohan Singh’s game-changing 1991 Budget but conclude ‘this one is different.’

…Karvy says the Sensex will hit 100,000 by 2020 and people say ‘That late?’ 😳

…You use the wizened ‘Book your profit’ line in evening conversation and people arch their eyebrows with that elevator look as if your clothes didn’t fit.

…Even Ridham Desai says it would be better for investors not to get too cheeky about buying on declines because ‘you are not going to be able to catch these declines as smartly as you think you can.’

…The most self-confessed wretched are not those who didn’t buy the right stock but those who complain they didn’t buy enough.

…You feel so wasted on Saturdays and Sundays you re-read the weekday stock quotations.

…The favorite fantasy is not (plug in your preferred weakness) but salivating with the thought of ‘If I had bought 50,000 shares of Suzlon energy @  Rs 8…’

… Half the country is talking to you but craning their neck towards the CNBC / ET NOW channels

…The real work of the day begins only after 3:30 pm.

…An entire country that was struggling to fund the confidence to price stocks on retrospective earnings has started using that seductive ‘based on FY17 earnings…’

…Conservative companies, which used words like ‘accruals’ even as recent as mid-May now pepper every third line with qualified institutional placement.

…A broker calls a company not to ask ‘Will the next quarter be good?’ but ‘Any block of shares available?’

…Gurus recommend we short gold, disinvest surplus real estate and laugh at eight per cent tax-free paper

…The best ear-raiser at a party is ‘just yesterday, I was speaking to a fund manager in Singapore.’

…You need to get to your retail broker’s office at 8:45 to get the chair closest to the trading terminal.

….. At 3.30, you wish the markets are on till 5.

…You do things you probably have not done in six years, like offering to take the family on a three-day Phuket trip.

…You go to the Mercedes showroom to ask about the price of the M Class with a diplomatic ‘just asking, you know…’

…When you are full of which stock will quadruple in how much time resulting in exactly what annualised return, but no clue why.

…If you bring up even a whispered reference to ‘The Black Swan’ by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, someone is going to soon discuss your parentage.

Categories
Links

Weekend Mega Linkfest:June 06,2014

Some off beat reads for the weekend:

How to become an Oligarch (SimonJohnson)

Why you should worry more about your profile picture (NYMag)

Why Reliance wasn’t the biggest problem at Network 18 (Caravan)

Deconstructing the collapse of Sahara (ForbesIndia)

The last Court legend (Tehelka)

Ajit Doval-The Chanakya in the team (IDR)

I sold my startup for $25.5 Million.Here’s how I did it (Slate)

Mao & Forever (ForeignAffairs)

Amazon Women:Is there truth behind the myth? (Smithsonian)

In Pictures:Dr.Subramaniam Swamy doing things (UnrealTimes)

Auto Review:Mitsubishi Pajero Sport (TeamBHP)

How to find the person behind an email address (Labnol)

Who wants to shoot an elephant? (GQ)

The Neck: The other side of the face (ParisReview)

Will Modi repeat Sabarmati truimph with Ganga,Yamuna? (NitiCentral)

Categories
Market Making

ICICI Pru Life Shares

The Insurance Sector is in the news today as the Govt. plans to increase the FDI limit in insurance from 26% to 49%

The leader in the Private Insurance space is ICICI Pru Life.Some salient features of the company:

  • Largest private insurer in India
  • 18.9% market share in private insurance space and 7.2% overall
  • PAT of 15.6 Billion Rupees
  • Earnings Per share-10.96 Rs/Share
  • Dividend of 7.65 Rs/Share
  • 99.78% shares are held by promoters and 0.22% shares are held by employees
  • Last Employee Stock Option Scheme (“ESOS”) was on April 25,2008  with an exercise price of Rs.400 per share

The Annual Report of the Insurer can be downloaded from here.

I am market making in ICICI Pru and if anyone wants to buy/sell ICICI Pru, please email me at Alpha Ideas

Categories
Interview

Cuban on Investing:Diversification is for Idiots