Category: Observations

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Observations

How the Indian Media of 2014 is like the French Press of 1815

I am quite amused by the speed at which our Main Stream Media has started fawning over Narendra Modi. They had spent a good part of the last 14 years demonising him and now have only good words for him.

This reminds me (as a history nut) about how the French Press behaved in 1815.

Napoleon was imprisoned in the island of Elba.He escaped the island and marched onto Paris where he deposed King Louis XVIII and regained power.

The following is a list of Paris newspaper headlines reporting the journey of Napoleon across France, on his return from exile on Elba, March 9 to March 22, 1815:

March 9

THE ANTHROPOPHAGUS HAS QUITTED HIS DEN

March 10

THE CORSICAN OGRE HAS LANDED AT CAPE JUAN

March 11

THE TIGER HAS ARRIVED AT CAP

March 12

THE MONSTER SLEPT AT GRENOBLE

March 13

THE TYRANT HAS PASSED THOUGH LYONS

March 14

THE USURPER IS DIRECTING HIS STEPS TOWARDS DIJON

March 18

BONAPARTE IS ONLY SIXTY LEAGUES FROM THE CAPITAL

He has been fortunate enough to escape his pursuers

March 19

BONAPARTE IS ADVANCING WITH RAPID STEPS, BUT HE WILL NEVER ENTER PARIS

March 20

NAPOLEON WILL, TOMORROW, BE UNDER OUR RAMPARTS

March 21

THE EMPEROR IS AT FONTAINEBLEAU

March 22

HIS IMPERIAL AND ROYAL MAJESTY arrived yesterday evening at the Tuileries, amid the joyful acclamation of his devoted and faithful subjects

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Observations

A post-election stock strategy

I have always maintained that it is impossible to keep secrets in a country like India.The reason is two fold-our sheer numbers makes privacy all but impossible and secondly, we as people, just love to gossip.

An interesting tidbit came to my ears via a banker friend.

A prominent political party gave a mandate for its poll advertising campaign to a leading ad agency.

The ad campaign was launched but soon enough, the “white” funds got exhausted.

The political party then insisted that the ad agency take funds in cash (i.e. black)

The ad agency demurred saying that even if it did, its media partners (TV Channels,Newspapers etc) will not.

A satisfactory solution was found for this knotty problem.

A leading industrialist stepped in-he makes all the payments in cheque on behalf of the political party to the ad agency !

This banker friend of mine is waiting for the results to come out.If this political party comes to power, he will go long the shares of this industrialist’s company.

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Excerpts Observations

True Confidence in Trading

When people wax poetic about their conviction in trades, my emotional reaction is:  Whatever.  A trade is a bet at the poker table.  Some bets will work, some won’t; some you’ll size up, some you’ll fold.  Whatever.  Over time, if you play the odds, you’ll do OK.  Beyond that, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to beat the chest and invite overconfidence bias to replace normal confidence.

Every forecast of a statistical model can be wrong.  Every trading judgment is fallible.  If you have a 50% hit rate on your trades and you trade once a day, on average you’re going to have an occasion in which you lose every day for a week during a trading year.  That doesn’t mean you’re in a slump; it doesn’t mean you should change what you do.  It’s going to happen and you can mentally prepare yourself–and size yourself in such a way that five consecutive losing days won’t take you out of the game.

The goal is not to eliminate losses–that would require omniscience.  Rather, the goal is to  anticipate losses so that you’re never surprised, never overwhelmed, never thrown onto the back foot.  True confidence comes, not from believing that you must be right, but from knowing that you can survive and even thrive if you’re dead wrong.-from TraderFeed

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Observations

My bets for the banking license

One timepass activity amongst finance professionals is to guess which companies will be selected for the banking license.

There are around 25 applicants for the license (see entire list here)

My bet is on the following companies:

  • IDFC (Its the cleanest one)
  • JM Financial (Mukeshbhai Zindabad)
  • India Infoline (Smart money going here)
  • LIC Housing Finance Ltd (Hum sarkari hain)

Who do you think will get the banking license?

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Observations

Forget stocks, the real bull market is in veggie prices

45.67%

This figure is not the return of any stock or investment.This figure is the increase in retail vegetable prices in October y-o-y

How can any ordinary investor inflation proof his savings with such high persistent and sticky inflation in food prices?

Maybe Jim Rogers was right after all:

 

Young people who have not decided on their futures should pursue agriculture degrees rather than MBAs, investor Jim Rogers told CNBC in a recent interview.

 

The reason? “Finance is in decline. In the future, the center of the world will not be finance — it’s going to be the producers of real goods.