Tuesday 21 May 2019

Learning - 100 Bagger (C Mayer)

A very simple yet useful book on stock picking. The essence of 100 Bagger is aim for a 100 bagger.

In investment world an 100 bagger means Rs.1 invested becomes more than Rs.100 over decades.

The book is very simple and brings out the key factors to be considered while undertaking a stock market journey.

Book 100 Bagger by Christopher Mayer is worth reading.

My learning is reproduced below:


On Importance of holding and not selling

“One of the basic rules of investing is never, if you can help it, take an investment action for a noninvestment reason,” Phelps advised. Don’t sell just because the price moved up or down, or because you need to realize a capital gain to offset a loss. You should sell rarely, and only when it is clear you made an error. One can argue every sale is a confession of error, and the shorter the time you’ve held the stock, the greater the error in buying it—according to Phelps.

Phelps wrote as much: “Just a slight change in a golfer’s grip and stance may improve his game, so a little more emphasis on buying for keeps, a little more determination not to be tempted to sell . . . may fatten your portfolio. In Alice in Wonderland, one had to run fast in order to stand still.

In the stock market, the evidence suggests, one who buys right must stand still in order to run fast.” It is superb advice.

100 bagger table

Return
Years to 100-bagger
14%
35 years
16.6%
30 years
20%
25 years
26%
20 years
36%
15 years

  What is coffee can portfolio?

It all began with Robert Kirby, then a portfolio manager at Capital Group, one of the world’s largest investment-management firms. He first wrote about the coffee-can idea in the fall of 1984 in the Journal of Portfolio Management. “The coffee can portfolio concept harkens back to the Old West, when people put their valuable possessions in a coffee can and kept it under the mattress,” Kirby wrote. “The success of the program depended entirely on the wisdom and foresight used to select the objects to be placed in the coffee can to begin with.”


Buffet change in investing style

“In Buffett I,” Jason said, “the prediction of future cash flows is not that big a deal because all you’re trying to do is buy something really cheap in relation to the current year’s balance sheet or the current year’s income statement. “In Buffett II,” Jason continued, “he has to have some sense of where earnings are going. And that’s why he won’t invest in any companies he can’t understand, because he can’t project earnings.”

Great place to start i.e. initial screening

Jason starts his process by screening the market, looking for high-ROE stocks. “If a company has a high ROE for four or five years in a row—and earned it not with leverage but from high profit margins—that’s a great place to start,” he said.

From initial screening what is the next most important

But ROE alone does not suffice. Jason looks for another key element that mixes well for creating multibaggers. “The second piece requires some feel and judgment. It is the capital allocation skills of the management team,” he said. Here he ran through an example.

Say we have a business with $100 million in equity, and we make a $20 million profit. That’s a 20 percent ROE. There is no dividend. If we took that $20 million at the end of the year and just put it in the bank, we’d earn, say, 2 percent interest on that money. But the rest of the business would continue to earn a 20 percent ROE.

“That 20 percent ROE will actually come down to about 17 percent in the first year and then 15 percent as the cash earning a 2 percent return blends in with the business earning a 20 percent return,” Jason said. “So when you see a company that has an ROE of 20 percent year after year, somebody is taking the profit at the end of the year and recycling back in the business so that ROE can stay right where it is.”

A lot of people don’t appreciate how important the ability to reinvest those profits and earn a high ROE is. Jason told me when he talks to management, this is the main thing he wants to talk about: How are you investing the cash the business generates? Forget about your growth profile. Let’s talk about your last five acquisitions!

On not paying dividend

“Obviously,” Phelps concludes, “dividends are an expensive luxury for an investor seeking maximum growth. If you must have income, don’t expect your financial doctor to match the capital gains that might have been obtainable without dividends. When you buy a cow to milk, don’t plan to race her against your neighbor’s horse.”

Thursday 16 May 2019

Article on PowerPoint

An interesting write up Death By PowerPoint educates how PowerPoint cannot convey the correct message. Unless the message is correctly captured. The article is worth reading.

Last portion of the article is reproduced below:

NASA’s subsequent report criticised technical aspects along with human factors.  Their report mentioned an over-reliance on PowerPoint:

“The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.” 

Edward Tufte’s full report makes for fascinating reading. Since being released in 1987 PowerPoint has grown exponentially to the point where it is now estimated than thirty million PowerPoint presentations are made every day.  Yet, PowerPoint is blamed by academics for killing critical thought.  Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has banned it from meetings.  Typing text on a screen and reading it out loud does not count as teaching.  An audience reading text off the screen does not count as learning.  Imagine if the engineers had put up a slide with just: “foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data.”  Maybe NASA would have listened.  Maybe they wouldn’t have attempted re-entry.  Next time you’re asked to give a talk remember Columbia. Don’t just jump to your laptop and write out slides of text.  Think about your message.  Don’t let that message be lost amongst text.  Death by PowerPoint is a real thing.  Sometimes literally.

Wednesday 15 May 2019

Who was wrong about Kochhar?

The investigative agencies of India are reviewing Ms Chanda Kochhar case (Former CEO of ICICI Bank) in case of Videocon Loan sanction.

Moneylife has extensively covered the episode and they are worth reading.

Some questions to think about:


  • Why no one is asking any questions about Mr. KV Kamath (Former CEO of ICICI Bank)?
  • Success of CEO is measured by succession planning and Mr. Kamath has failed in it?
  • Was Ms Kochhar alone in this or she was walking on a familiar path?
  • Does this episode expose the abject failure of Board?
  • Is board a dummy set up in Indian companies?
  • How the boards should be penalized for giving a false clean chit?
  • What about the members in the Credit Sanctioning Committee should they not be penalized?
  • Is majority of the lending institutions have a similar Credit Sanctioning Committees?
KV Kamath statement on Ms Chanda K:


"Of all the people I have mentored, Chanda is my favourite," says Kamath. "She knows how to manage her priorities. However challenging the assignment, she always delivered. I just had to keep giving her bigger opportunities." 

It appears KV Kamath was on the wrong foot especially about Ms Chanda Kochhar.

I only hope Ms Chanda Kochhar spills out some thing which will give out the true picture. Also, agencies should not stop going deep and give a small nudge to Ms Kochhar and say investigation is over.

Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as time goes by, what is true is revealed, and what is fake fades away. - Ismail Haniyeh

Sunday 12 May 2019

Thursday 9 May 2019

Interesting take on Governance

I will reproduce a section of the article appeared in Sunday Guardian by Virendra Kapoor. This has a very different take on governance and it is difficult to accept what Jawaharlal Nehru did.

THOSE DAYS WERE DIFFERENT

The other day, when someone seeking his 15 minutes of fame falsely alleged that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's wife and daughter had misused a naval aircraft while on a visit to Goa, another BJP leader's wife recalled an incident to make the point that in the earlier times such things would have been simply inconceivable. Roxna Swamy, who probably boasts of an even better academic record than her Harvard-educated husband, Subramanian Swamy, recalled in an e-mail that "in the early 50s an American journalist interviewing Nehru expressed a desire to see the floods in Bihar from the air. Nehru, always with a glad eye for a comely white woman, assured her he would make her wish come true.

"Accordingly, he ordered the Defence Ministry to make a plane available to the lady. The file came to my father, a joint secretary, with a proper respect for the nation's property... A stickler for rules, my father turned down the oral requirement of the PM. An indignant Nehru hauled up my father's superior, H.M. Patel, and demanded to know who had the temerity to disobey him. He ordered the errant officer to be hauled up before him... My father presented himself before Nehru, who gave him a long lecture on India and freedom and the need for sacrifice for the country and demanded that my father sign the requisition.

"'Give to me in writing', said my father. Whereupon Nehru treated him to further abuse of which the least offensive was that he was 'a hidebound bureaucrat'. More abuse followed but Nehru did not give the requisition in writing. The American lady was disappointed... My father was sent to the boondocks with a reputation for being difficult..."Her father, the late J.D. Kapadia, was an ICS officer, who had served as the collector of Mumbai and Ahmedabad in the 1950s. Though senior-most, he was denied the post of Chief Secretary of the newly-created state of Gujarat because of his deserved reputation for being a stickler for rules. He took premature retirement and pursued his academic interests till his death.

However, the moral of the story his daughter was keen to convey is simple. These days when asked to bend, bureaucrats begin to crawl. All for private gains. This should stop if the quality of governance is to improve.

Other article worth reading: Nehru's Vacationing.

Saturday 4 May 2019

Will it be different for other private banks?

An article in Indian Express , regarding ICICI Bank and Chanda K, made me think harder as to whether it was applicable to other banks also. Maybe it has not yet come out in open and hence they consider themselves clean.

Now the sections from the article:

 “If we (ICICI Bank) tolerate and in some cases even reward the individual or teams…who indiscriminately increased exposures to groups like Essar…no risk measure will work however strong they are…Risk measures and controls can take care of genuine mistakes, errors, oversights…. They cannot control mistakes made knowingly.”

Records show that no loan proposal went to the credit committee of ICICI Bank without discussing and being approved by Chanda Kochhar.


"Banking is very good business if you don't do anything dumb." -- Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

"I do not think you can trust bankers to control themselves. They are like heroin addicts." -- Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

Friday 3 May 2019

Connecting the Dots - NSE Scam


One of the brokers affected in the co-location scam at NSE (National Sock Exchange) is Way2Wealth.

I will reproduce here what was mentioned in www.moneylife.com

“W2W’s CEO MR Shashibhushan, and directors CK Nithyanand and BG Srinath, GKN Securities’ partners Sonali Gupta, Om Prakash Gupta and Rahul Gupta and Prashanth D’souza, CEO of Sampark are also barred from holding any position with a market participant or entity for the next two years.”

“W2W and GKN were directed to pay Rs15.34 crore and Rs4.9 crore with an interest of 12%, respectively. Both the brokerages are also barred from taking any new client for the next one year and are not to undertake any trade for two years.”

Now the question is who started Way2Wealth?

Way2Wealth is a A Coffee day Company.

Now who started and supported Café Coffee Day enterprise?

Here I will reproduce what is mentioned in the Way2Wealth website:

The visionary behind Way2Wealth, Mr. V.G. Siddhartha, 55, is the Chairman and Managing Director of our Company. He holds a bachelors degree in arts from the University of Mysore. V.G. Siddhartha has a long association with coffee, given the family’s interests in coffee plantations in Southern India for more than 130 years, and he has an experience of approximately 22 years in the coffee business. He set up CDGL in 1993 to export coffee beans and later forayed into coffee retailing in different formats in India. He also set up his own stock broking firm, Sivan & Co., at Bengaluru. He was recognized as The Entrepreneur of the Year by Economic Times in September 2003. In 2014, he was awarded with ET Retail Hall of Fame for his contribution to the growth in retail sector. 

Coffee Day Enterprises Limited’s business interest spreads across Retail, Technology Parks & SEZs, Logistics, Investments, Financial Services and Hospitality. PE funding for CDEL from NLS Mauritius LLC, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) and Standard Chartered Private Equity (SCPE)

The next question what is Way2Wealth stands for?

Again from their website:

Started in 1984, Way2Wealth is an Investments Consultancy Firm known for making investing simpler and more profitable for investors. We offer a wide range of products & services under one roof, for the convenience and benefit of our customers. We service our customer relationships through a team of over 1000 wealth managers spread across 573 easily accessible Investment Outlets in almost all major towns and cities in India.

Question to Ponder

Is it possible for one broker (out of thousands) has a wonderful idea about taking advantage of Algorithmic trading and avail benefit of co-location (as per SEBI investigation).

Do the executive responsible at the W2W got the idea from self or someone brought the idea to them?

Here we have to agree with Ms Sucheta Dalal on the following:

Instead, SEBI opted for what is called a ‘desktop’ investigation, which was limited to examining email records and ordering the NSE itself to commission investigations without even tackling the various conflicts of interest that were evident to everybody right then. It is almost as though SEBI has got so used to regulatory capture by the NSE, that its officials feel too diffident to adopt a tough line.  

On the other hand, if it accepts the order, the amount that will be paid is less than the sum that is already impounded. Moreover, given that the business of the Exchange itself is unaffected, it can use the six-month period when it is barred from the market to work on its initial public offering (IPO) which will still attract a lot of support. The NSE is not the first major exchange in the world that has suffered such a setback and grown past it. Both, NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have had their share of scandals, but have dealt with them and moved on.

It is quite possible that the members penalized by SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) got away very lightly without reaching / revealing the ultimate identities behind the veil.

SEBI may have missed connecting the right dots.

Note:

Coffee Day Enterprise vide its letter to BSE / NSE has informed that it will take legal recourse against the order.

Mr. V G Siddhartha is an India based businessman from Karnataka. Started Café Coffee Day, invested in Mind Tree and other successful ventures. He is son-in-law of Mr. S M Krishna (Former Chief Minister of Karnataka, Former Indian Minister of External Affairs and Former Governor of Maharashtra State)

Article by Ms Sucheta Dalal in Moneylife is a very thought provoking one on SEBI.