Category: Excerpts

Warren Buffett: “Interest rates act like gravity on valuation”

The S&P 500 fell officially into correction territory on Thursday, down more than 10 percent from its record reached in January.

“I cannot tell you how rare a market condition this is – that yields are rising into this risk pullback,” he wrote in a note to clients Friday.

Rosenberg cited how bonds rallied during the financial crisis in 2008 when the market fell and during other big corrections.

“But not this time. This rare occurrence of bond yields rising even as stock markets decline was a feature in 1987 and 1994,” he added. “What these periods had in common was Fed tightening concerns, jitters over economic overheating and an ever-flatter yield curve. One of these years had a huge correction and one had massive volatility and rolling corrections. Pick your poison.”-from CNBC

India’s tycoon Singh brothers took at least Rs 5 billion ($78 million) out of the publicly-traded hospital company they control without board approval about a year ago, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The funds were reported on the balance sheet of Fortis Healthcare Ltd as cash and cash equivalents, but the money was routed and placed under the control of the Singhs at the time, according to the people. Fortis’s auditor, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP, refused to sign off on the company’s second-quarter results until the funds were accounted for or returned, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the Singhs may have used the funds for. Fortis founders Malvinder Singh and his brother, Shivinder, have been working to pay back the money so the company can release its results, the people said.

A spokesman for Fortis said the company loaned Rs 4.73 billion to “certain corporate bodies in normal course of treasury operations” as of July 2017, and in the third quarter of the current financial year  those companies subsequently became part of the Singhs’ corporate group.

The loans have since been recognised as related party transactions and repayment has commenced, the spokesman said in an emailed statement.

–from Business Standard

We do not take cash call.

We remain fully invested across our funds and yes, the flows have been very strong and market near all time high level, so it’s a difficult task.

For 24 years of my career I used to pray that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) should buy so that my investors can make money.

Today my prayer is that FIIs should sell so that I can buy stocks cheap for my investors and get them money.

–from a 2017 interview by Nilesh Shah,MD,Kotak Mahindra AMC