Category Archives: Equity

Noise Diaries

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When something is a given, ….

…one just sheer deals with it.

And that something just got so much louder.

For example, social media is screaming with that something, i.e. …

… noise.

However, noise…

… has value.

One needs to know what’s being floated among the masses.

Furthermore, it’s helpful to gauge the decibel level.

If we look at the current scenario, everyone and their Aunty are yelling “Craaassshhhhhh…!” Dollar, bonds, gold silver, stocks, real-estate…

…everything’s supposed to “Craaassshhhhhhh!”

Fine.

Keep shouting.

At least we get an idea about the script and the concerned noise-level.

Is it supposed to scare us?

Yes.

Are we scared?

NO.

Why not?

Because we’re busy doing exactly what they don’t want us to.

Firstly, who’s ‘they’?

The floaters of the script. You were asking, ya, secondly?

Secondly, what do ‘they’ now NOT want us to do?

Buy cheap, like they are. They want us to let go and sell to them.

Wow.

Ya, it’s the biggest wealth-transfer in the History of mankind, currently unfolding.

Are you then not afraid of a crash, if you are buying now?

No.

Why not?

I’m liquid. If there’s a crash I’ll continue buying, into the crash. My entry quantum is aptly small and a function of my networth, thus allowing me entries for three to five years, upon any signs of reasonable value. Held over the years and bought with a clear head, in a growth market, assets will yield stellar returns.

So you’re saying you’ll cover the crash?

Yes. Timelines move very fast nowadays. Markets, when at all efficient, have become super-efficient, as if trying to prove a point to the level of overkill. When not efficient, they bubble or crash. Super-speed in times of efficiency is a huge bonus for us.

How?

Crashes play out within a shortish time-span. Buying through the crash is over fast. It’s not that when there’s a fire the crash is going to happen after five years. It will happen way sooner than later.

So is that enough time to get your money in, especially with a small entry quantum?

No. That’s why it’s important for small entry quantum cum long-term players like us, crash in, crash out, to keep buying amidst any signs of cheapness caused by fear-mongers creating all this…

…noise!

Exactly! 🙂

Opportunity

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Knock knock!

Who’s there?

Oppo.

Oppo who?

Oppo – rrrr – tunity, which don’t knock often (enough).

Yes, huge opportunity is knocking.

Global talent will stay indoors, to a large extent, from now onwards, come this September 21st, i.e. today onwards.

Brain gain time for us.

India is going to boom. Forget about tomorrow, next week, next month, but come medium term, and, going on to the long term, India will shine.

Sure, tomorrow, Indian IT will probably be down. Who’s in it for just tomorrow? One doesn’t get one’s house valued every day, week or year. One might do it when one is contemplating a sale, maybe after twenty years of owning it. Same goes for very long-term held compounders. Like Indian IT.

So, down? Maybe. Out? NO!!! Drag other markets? A bit. Effect to continue? Very short-term.

Beautiful thing is, Indian and possibly other corporates have been working on their plan Bs, and perhaps their plan Cs, and have, slowly but surely, been implementing these.

Also, government is boldly stepping up and refusing to get bullied. Watch out for the measures to be announced that will further boost the economy, to counter this ‘shock’. Thing is, where other nations have started thinking and acting short-term only, India has started to play a longer-term game. One can call it a meta-game.

Bottom-line.?

Time to answer the door-bell, open the door, and let the knockers in.

In my opinion, it’s safe to put one’s money on the line here.

Should Indian IT fall, large quantities of domestic funds will be lapping it up. Smart money will definitely be buying into offered margin of safety.

Why?

Fundamentals.

Clean balance sheets.

Free cashflow.

ZERO DEBT.

High RoE.

Large number of diligently purchased start-ups owned.

AI incorporation and development.

Steady growth.

Technical margin of safety being offered, possibly, tomorrow onwards.

And now, brain gain.

These are some of the big pluses that Indian IT offers.

So, one can easily and calmly go out there, and, with a cool head, put one’s hard-earned money into any margin of safety exhibited by these potential compounders with amazing track records, with a clear-cut goal of generating long-term wealth.

Wishing you happy and lucrative investing!

🙂

Proppers

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Come a crash, …

… we will let it…

…rip.

Toolkit is in place.

Having said that, the thing about crashes is, that when everyone expects them, …

… they don’t come.

If it were that easy, markets wouldn’t be markets.

That’s exactly what they are doing currently, being what they are, markets.

Some are being propped, and other markets are showing resilience, taking any kind of news in stride, and still advancing.

How long can something be propped?

Not forever.

However, longer than most players can stay liquid, that’s how long.

That’s an old market adage.

Eventually, proppers get tired, of printing, circulation, falsification or whatever gimmick they are employing. Mistakes at this level are deadly.

When a propped main market pops, initially it does take down most other markets, but resilient ones recover fast. Propped ones, after the pop, remain down, meaning that they encounter a delayed recovery.

A big pop only means entry opportunities in our resilient market of choice.

There’s no question of fear. This is what we wait for. Margin of Safety. Value. Opportunity.

Entry.

Reflex

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Hey.

By now, we play markets by reflex.

It’s become ingrained.

Took a while.

Many hits. Some big ones, or so they felt, at the time.

Learnt to play it small when bulk of hits was happening.

Gotten big hits out of the way, or so, one would like to say.

Hits happen now too, but they are controlled.

There’s an infrastructure around them, which dulls them. Such an infrastructure can take decades to develop.

Small hits are par for the course. One is looking for simultaneous big wins. Thumb rule is no big hits.

A big win is a small win at first. One needs the small win to fit into an incubation mechanism that allows it to become a big win.

Its the big wins that define one’s life’s efforts. They stand out. Form the bulk of one’s folio.

Big wins don’t come without many small hits.

Becoming used to the pain of small hits is something that needs to be learnt first up, till it becomes…

…reflex.

Winning

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Hey.

Who believes in win-win?

The new alpha-male on the block does.

This one’s friendly.

Has fewer vested interests.

Doesn’t believe in dominating its friends. Treats them as equals.

Is magnanimous.

Vast.

Benign.

Courageous.

Unexplored.

Growing.

A gold-mine.

More and more are believing in it.

Forming partnerships.

To win.

That’s the result of win-win.

All win.

What’s so difficult to understand about that?

A win-win relationship is…

…beautiful, …

…long-term, …

… and full of windfalls.

Who doesn’t want that?

By aligning ourselves appropriately, …

…we too can…

…win.

Gaugers

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Hey.

We gauge…

…situations, …

…sentiment, …

…reactions, …

…anomalies, …

…hubris, greed, fear, depression, …

…and, amongst other things, also the tendency of the human being…

…to give advice.

Sometimes, we find ourselves giving advice too, randomly, unwarranted. We gauge that too.

Our effort focuses on identifying market pivots.

Why?

We act on pivots.

These are the most lucrative points in a market’s trajectory.

These are also very difficult to predict in advance.

However, because of our mental tuning resulting from constant gauging, we are somewhat in a position to recognize pivots when they have started to develop, or when they are just about to finish developing.

That’s the cut-off.

Meaning, that if action goes in any later than that, rewards lessen.

Once the whole world knows that a pivot is in play, price zooms or tanks from there rapidly. We want in or out before the zooming or tanking, respectively.

So, apart from technicals and fundamentals, comprehensive gauging allows for better thought synthesis and thus better market action.

Whilst gauging, we learn a lot about human beings and the psychology that drives our financial life.

Markets teach us so much, that they become a fulfilling profession.

Wishing you safe and happy wealth multiplication!

🙂

Fall Specialists

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Hey.

We come alive…

…during a fall.

Though we don’t panic, …

… we do feel a pang, here or there.

However, we have trained ourselves to…

…quickly normalize, …

… and then go about our business, …

… which is, …

… buying during a fall.

It hasn’t been easy.

During the first fall we experienced, we broke down.

You see, we were fully invested, and then that fall happened.

Now came two options.

Quit? Or learn to navigate?

Chose the latter. Learnt.

What did we learn?

We found ways to remain…

…liquid, calm, composed and poised.

Slowly, but surely, we turned into…

…fall specialists.

We argued with ourselves.

How many falls had this market seen in History?

Had they stopped its long-term growth?

In a growth environment like India’s?

The answers reiterated our stand.

The central idea that remained was to stand our ground and lock some great prices in, intensifying buying towards the bottom.

How would one recognize a bottom?

Technicals, pin-bars, big intraday swings, huge volumes, nihilist sentiment, depressing newsflow, one can sense these things if one is mentally there.

And that’s what fall specialists are doing, in the wake of disruption ruling international trade, difficult quarterly results, international fund-flight, regression to the mean, perpetuating newsflow, almost blood on the midcap street, actual blood on the smallcap alley, and what have you.

Yeah, we’re locking in great prices.

Remember to come back and read this piece when sentiment changes.

India is a growth environment, where lucrative prices have been hard to find since CoViD.

So, when these come, is it a wonder that fall specialists are lapping up the action?

A-Gamers

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Hey, …

…nowadays, …

…we only play our A-game.

There’s no time for formalities.

It’s late in the day.

All weapons are out.

This is the need of the hour.

So, what are the salient features of our A-game?

A well-forged, multiply-faceted, time-tested road map – our system of systems – our one Strategy. This one’s 360 degrees. It incorporates both trading and investing, and leads to very long holds in cost-free form. Includes more than twenty highly competitive, sharpened, edge-providing Modules, about which I wrote a few articles back. As far as strategies go, we are cruising in a Maybach on the Autobahn. No worries there.

Patience. In the last twenty odd years, we have learnt how to sit. Makes biggest money, said we know who. Patience is ubiquitous, or is it? Many people have developed it. Many are born with it. But then, many are not. And, markets demand their own kind of patience. Over the years, we have learnt and developed market-patience. We wait for our levels before acting. We sit on our Cost-Free-Ness, like, forever. We are not in a hurry. I ‘can behave’ as if this is my own module 🙂 (do allow me the indulgence), but patience is universal and out there for everyone to incorporate and exploit on their own.

Liquidity. This is a module. Am reiterating it here since it is key. Our initial small-entry-quantum strategy (remember, that’s how we started!) allowed us ample liquidity, always. Yes, we were always liquid in situations, when they came, while building up the backbone of our portfolios. Slowly, portfolio-size started to grow. Then came the incorporation of position-sizing, thanks to my learnings from Dr. Van K.Tharp. Subsequently, I instinctively added my own twist to this, making it Non-Linear Position Sizing (NLPS) that we follow. NLPS initially allows for small entry quanta. As portfolio-size increases, so does each entry quantum-size. However, the latter increases more than y = x, i.e. more than linear. This means that over the very long term, entry quanta become remarkably substantial in size. Nevertheless, we still maintain balance by perhaps Fine-Tuning entries and exits to the nth level, i.e. with huge win probabilities, which automatically / mathematically leads to lesser entries. Strategy thus goes on cruise-control. Furthermore, outstanding entry-prices, followed by Quick Generation of cost-free-ness make our very long-term holdings as Anti-Fragile (thanks for the term, Mr. Taleb) as possible.

Talking of cruise-control, our back-end allows for full Automation at button-clicks. All transactional trail-mail is auto-forwarded to every required avenue. It’s a one-time self-setup time-expense, so don’t be afraid of it, since the reward is disproportionately huge. Each avenue allows preview and further transfer / storage after button-clicks. Taxation? Button-clicks. Indexing? Button-clicks. Retrieval? Button-clicks. Viewing in any format? Button-Clicks (baby).

Time. We have all the time in the world. We do our own thing. Income is sorted. Wealth is being generated on auto, and is multiplying. Learn languages. Travel. Pro-bono. I teach kids. To manage their own finances. From a young age. Currently I’m teaching four kids. It’s a give-back, and they can pay it forward.

In a nutshell, that’s my A-game. I’ve taught it forward, so I can talk about a we. You’ve seen it develop in this space over the last 14+ years. I’ve nothing to hide. It’s for everyone to use and benefit from. The act of Giving gives me the most Satisfaction in life.

Waiters

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Hey, …

…what’s your hurry?

This is a long game.

It will continue…

…after you.

Hurry will spoil the curry.

Learn to wait…

…for your level.

We’re waiters.

We win…

…because we wait.

No level, no action.

If we’ve leant how to wait, we’re already ahead of most players. Almost 90% don’t know how to wait.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Our level doesn’t come, and we don’t get some particular action. Could be a buy, could be a sell.

Fine.

We can live with that.

There’s always another day, another opportunity, another set of actions, …

…just move onto the next scrip, entry and / or exit available.

What’s most important is that we have kept our liquidity intact.

We are financially sound for the next action.

A hurried entry without the level coming would have used up this particular liquidity, making it unavailable for the next action.

We act…

…at our level.

Our level is set to make winning highly probable.

That’s why, in the long game, …

…we win.

Obviousness

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Knowledge streams…

…at unprecedented speed.

You want it?

You got it.

Lag is negligible.

Everyone has access.

Conclusion? Fazit? Nichor? Bilan?

What seems obvious is likely a trap.

Fundamentals can be fudged, to an extent. A closer look at gaps between fundamentals vs actuals unveils those who fudge. Actuals on the ground will need to match fundamentals, somewhere. For example, if there’s no debt on the balance-sheet, there will well be a surplus which the company in question accumulates, and there will be a path on which this surplus flows. This path should be visible in the annual report. If there’s no surplus, company will show visible signs of stagnation. If something officially declared by a company doesn’t match (visible) actuals, the fudging window opens. We steer clear of companies with even a fudging crack open.

Technicals can be used to set entry and exit traps.

By professionals

For the masses.

Masses act at levels.

Generally, price hovers around an obvious level till the majority has acted. Then, generally, price goes against. When crowds cut entries, institutions enter on their exits. This strategy paves the way for relatively easy and heavy entries.

Moral of the story for us?

We wait for an obvious level.

We don’t act. Yet. However, we are on alert.

We envision an aftermath play in our minds.

Entry pivots are coming quick, nowadays. There’s hardly any time to act, especially if one has an otherwise busy schedule.

Therefore…

…we only deal in GTTs. Period.

Thus we feed in our GTTs, as per mentally outlined situation, and back up these with funding, if entry-trigger is less than 5.2% away. All this we do in a cool moment, after market hours, away from the noise, when we can think clearly.

And, most importantly, …

…we do it away from the obviousness.

Chronology

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Pipelines…

…come at a cost.

And, first up, there’s no need to fret about this cost.

I know, it pinches.

Having funds at a 20 second disposal will definitely cost.

Why go this extra, extra mile?

That’s a very befitting question.

We are not mad to create pipelines on call within 20 seconds.

Well, just to give you a heads up about how things can go down, here’s something.

June 4th, India, markets tank in the first hour.

Alerts, GTDs, GTTs, what-have-yous trigger.

I’m busy. Business meeting. Can’t get away.

6 of 7 GTTs in place get hit, and I’m in on these 6 scrips, at my price. 7th gets hit. No entry. No more funds in purchase account reported.

As meeting leader delivers on taxation laws in the country, there’s regret in my mind. Why did I not have enough funds in place?

Idea.

Let’s slimily look busy, and, meanwhile, activate a pipeline, put funds in place, and forcefully enter this particular scrip at CMP.

“Could you please pay attention, Mr. Nath, and put your phone away!”

Yikes.

Meeting ends (phew).

Action stations. Funds in place. Yes.

But what have we here?

Scrip’s showing a huge pin, and live daily candle has become a hammer. Bottomed out and then some, has the scrip. CMP is now 11% above the bottom.

Chickening out.

11% shaved off my margin of safety, in 45 minutes.

Yes people, that’s the window nowadays, for getting dream entries.

45 minutes.

Had it not been for the meeting, I would have been in within a minute or two, after reading the alert that GTT got triggered but no funds were available.

Lost time in this case would have been the interval between reading messages, plus a minute or two to have funds in place and go through with the buy. I’m not very regular about messages, though, perhaps on purpose, and 30 minute plus periods can well elapse. So, window cuts very fine. Idea is, whenever awareness kicks in, one needs to be in within a minute or two, if the GTT option has failed to deliver due to whatever reason.

The case described above was the one time that did not work, despite having everything of the highest quality in place.

What puts salt on the wounds is that the scrip quasi doubled from there within three months, so those lost 11% on margin of safety were peanuts. Yeah, the final fail was my fearful mind.

Painfulllllll….

That’s how it crumbles. One learns from the pain.

No pain, no learning.

My learning from this is that when GTT limit is 5.2% below CMP, we just sheer put funds in place for that GTT…

…now.

Holders

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Holding- …

… power…

…is not a given.

Meaning, that it is not necessary…

…that an individual, ample in liquidity, …

…carries this asset to the table.

We need to learn to hold.

Who’s going to teach us?

Not text-books. How do we know that the writer concerned knows how to hold? We don’t.

Not professors. Do they even have their own money on any line? We don’t know.

So, where do we stand?

How do go about developing holding-power?

Only reliable option is to do, and learn.

How should learn how to hold?

One practices.

It’s like learning how to catch a ball…

…by doing it again and again,…

…till one can catch the ball by reflex.

Creating time-, ease-, comfort- and wealth-buffers around our investment helps.

As to the why, holding makes the difference between nominal and outstanding returns.

To generate multibagger returns, one needs to hold long-term.

This is extremely difficult to teach the mind, since almost everything comes in between, luring the mind to sell early.

Instead of teaching it, one sheer tricks the mind into very long-term holds without being bothered about how high the price might be interim.

This trick played on the mind hides itself under the banner of generating…

…cost-free-ness.

2050

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Hey,

There’s a Street View… ,

… , and then there’s a street view.

I rely on…

…my street view.

Making it a point not to heed that the Street thinks, I repeatedly look for micro and macro signs on my street.

My street is where I am.

I mostly spend my time in my own country.

And, my street view is one of staggered growth.

There’s development…

…with holdups waiting to happen out of nowhere, and often.

That’s India, for me.

Am I going to cry?

I scream, actually, at apathy prevailing, but from the inside. To no avail. At one point the screaming stops. The only thing remains is to take advantage. I’ll make it up for India. Part of the money earned will go towards a private initiative towards my country’s development. So, no guilty-conscience here. My country gives me repeated opportunities. Why should I not take them? India does give me grief too. It’s ok. I love my country. We both can take liberties with each other, as do parents and children between themselves.

Owing to our attitudinal coordinates, our country is full of bottlenecks, and these bring a rising entity down, regularly.

Apart from that we’re emotional.

Over-emotional, actually.

So what’s going down goes down by an unhealthy multiple.

Activation.

Chart Pattern?

Numbers talking to you?

Method.

System development.

Pinpoint.

Enter.

Sizably.

Making size a function of portfolio magnitude.

When something here rises, one lets it ride with a stop that eventually triggers, then trails.

One never books a winner fully in India. Not in this bull market.

Billion dollar strategy.

One first goes cost-free.

And then some.

After one’s in-the-profit stop is triggered and then hit, one takes one’s principal out, with which one will fight the next battle, the next quest for cost-free-ness.

One leaves one’s cost-free-ness created on the table and shifts if out of sight and out of mind.

One’s cost-free-ness can be held for a long, long time.

Till 2050?

Yes, if the underlying has been duly whetted for a 2050 hold.

That’s how we play India.

Till 2050.

Is Cost-Free-Ness the Holy Grail?

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There is…

…a Holy Grail…

…mentioned in the Holy Bible. 

Also, …

… human capital

… pursues excellence.

I…

… am no exception.

Having stumbled upon…

…cost-free-ness…

…after many knocks in all possible markets, …

… and having developed the concept a tad, …

… I do say to you this.

I say to you, …

… , that cost-free-ness…

… is no holy grail. 

In its pursuit, money does get stuck. And, …

… upon its generation, money does flow, at times, into expensive, “uncatchable” material.

These are the two main mentionable “nuances” associated with the pursuit of cost-free-ness, that one needs to be aware of. 

Money getting stuck? Hmmmm.

If we’re afraid of money getting stuck, we should exit from the market. Any market. Period. 

Don’t be in the game if you can’t take the heat. 

It’s ok. 

Play another game, where you can. 

Perfectly fine.

Now let’s tackle the other one. 

Purists are jumping, I know. 

I can hear them yelling “EXPENSIVE!”

Sure.

Extremely high quality…

…will be expensive. 

One legitimate entry opportunity every ten years can be possible in such underlyings.

When it comes, and if one is having a bad hair week, one can even miss the window.

When it comes, we’ll enter big.

That’s a larger game, non-cost-free initially, and we’ve played it well in March 2020, entering non-cost-free, entering big (because of the available margin of safety), and generating vast amounts of cost-free-ness within a few months, to then ultimately be sitting on large, extremely high-quality & completely cost-free portfolios, perhaps for life.

However, such timelines are anomalies. We’ll pounce upon such chronologies when they happen. Meanwhile, …

…our bread and butter is to generate small amounts of cost-free-ness on a regular basis, day-in-day-out, all year round, …

… and it’s ok to enter extremely high quality with one’s freshly generated small amounts of cost-free-ness, right here right now, at the expensive price. 

Why?

Firstly, it’s not costing you. 

Secondly, when we deploy cost-free-ness into extremely high quality in a long-term-growth-promising market like India’s, it’s probably for life. 

Seen from a perspective of a decade or two, or perhaps three, the currently expensive cost-free entry is legitimate. 

Please do the 10, 20 or 30 year math for India, and you should come to the same conclusion.

Why do we wish to deploy immediately?

Out of sight, out of mind. 

Money has idiosyncrasies. 

The biggest one is that it is spent, in the blink of an eye. 

Better, deploy it, specifically also because your mathematics is okaying a legit entry for the extremely long-term.

And, pray, have you wondered why you will be able to sit on your investment for so long?

Primarily because your entry is cost-free. 

There is no other singular, more overwhelming reason. 

Cost-free-ness overwhelms the mind into sitting on extremely long holds. Try it out for yourself.

That takes care of the second point, …

… and I say to you this, that…

… cost-free-ness, …

… though not the holy grail, …

… could well be the next best market concept available to mankind, for long-term success in the markets.

Wishing you lucrative & highly successful cost-free investing!

🙂

Is it just me?

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“Is it just me or does anybody
feel the way that I feel?
they’re just not being real
tell me, is it just me or is anybody
thinking all the same shit?
they’re just not saying it
or is it just me?”
– Sasha Sloan (also quoted below)

Waiting for…

…the rock to fall…

…is tiring.

One moves beyond.

Things happening around…

…are enough

…to make one…

…throw up.

Is it just me…

…who’s becoming numb…

…to the apathy…

…prevailing?

Does such apathy…

…deserve investment adulation?

Are we…

…even worth it?

Do those coming in…

…with funds…

…feel the way…

…that I feel…

…and are not saying it…

…because they are…

…making money?

Tell me…

…you don’t know…

…that markets can stay over-inflated…

…long enough to bankrupt nay-sayers.

“Am I…

…just high…

…or am I…

…kinda right…

…?

Is it…

…just me? “

Are you Positioned?

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What’s our biggest enemy in the markets?

This one’s invariably…

…our Self.

Cut to ’07.

Fancy hotel banquet room, snacks and drinks, chief investment officer of JP Morgan is talking…

…and we’re listening.

My friend and I…

…sitting on profits…

…feeling smug about ourselves…

…young guns…

…ready to conquer the world…

…nothing can stop us now.

Or can it?

“There will always be a correction…”. These words catch my ear.

I raise my hand.

“Yes? The gentleman with the lime-green tie has a question?”

I stand up, and before I know it, I ask the deadly question.

“Don’t you think there’s been a paradigm-shift with regard to India, and that India has decoupled from the rest of the world?”

“How old are you, Sir?”

“37”.

This was ’07, remember?

“I’m going to excuse your question, because you’re young, and have probably experienced the markets for…?”

“3 years”.

“Exactly. That’s why I’ll only answer your question with a smile.”

How controlled.

“You see, globalization is a reality, and decoupling is a myth”.

Myth, really?

“It’s fancy phrases like “paradigm-shift” that catch the inexperienced investor’s imagination, leading to huge market mistakes”.

In these few sentences, my entire comprehension of markets was blown up and thrown out the window.

And that would have been a good thing…

…had I listened.

Such is the arrogance of “youth”, that “youth” doesn’t listen.

Soon, the ’08 crash happened.

I lost big time.

Was humbled.

Took me a long time to get back and stabilize.

I remember my stomach churning and my unwillingness to meet people as markets crashed to lower and lower levels.

I almost couldn’t take it.

We are our worst enemies.

What’s it going to be this market high?

We’ve learnt, and are positioned.

However, there will be newbies (like we were) who are going to go through this chain of events.

What buzz-words or phrases will catch their imagination?

BitCoin?

Liquidity?

Vaccine?

Quantitative Easing?

FIIs?

Pending rally in small-caps?

There’s a new cocktail doing the rounds this time around.

This cocktail will ensnare.

Even the topmost analysts are beginning to feel that a correction could take some time coming.

Some weeks ago, most felt that a correction could happen anytime now.

Player psychology is set for the cocktail to do its work.

Then one needs a pinprick.

In ’08 this was perhaps Lehman on the world scale and the Reliance Power IPO in India.

What’s it going to be this time?

It doesn’t matter.

Remember? There will always be a correction.

Are you positioned?

Positioned

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By now…

…, we are positioned.

The persistence of high price-levels…

…has led us to take appropriate action.

One after another, we are washing our market mistakes clean.

What remains, is cost-free-ness, in high-quality holdings.

We’ve then also helped our relatives and friends attain the same state of market-being.

MFs?

Now cost-free.

ULIPs?

Gotten them to money-market.

Debt market holdings?

No more debt market for a while.

Bond-yields are rising.

There’ve been blow-ups. Boys @ FT and Nippon take a bow.

Parking where?

Fixed deposits.

Why?

Not in it for returns.

Just to park, safely.

We’re sticklers for parking safely.

Loss of interest will be made up within days of opportunity, into which funds then flow, and then some.

One can now say…

,…safely…

,…that we’re positioned.

What happens from this point onwards?

How many days has the main sensory index spent at PEs of 35+ within the last 5000 days?

Yeah, right?

Small-cap rally still due?

That’s what everyone feels, right?

That’s the point.

Leave the masses hanging onto something they’re expecting.

If it doesn’t happen, they’re what?

Left hanging. Devil takes the hind-most.

Please do your math, and please position yourself too, appropriately.

What if markets go on rising?

Sure, that’s a possibility, perhaps for a while.

Simple rule.

No level, no entry.

We know how to sit.

On our holdings, and then…

…on our cost-free-ness.

Now, capital will only move…

…upon opportunity.

And the pipe-line’s ample, our positioning has seen to that.

Come something like March ’20, and we’ll blast the flow of our pipeline.

Oh, another thing.

Notice the speed of moves, nowadays?

It’s fast, isn’t it?

As in markets are efficient, till they’re not, and then they’re efficient again, and then they’re not, back and forth, to and fro, all very fast.

Meaning what?

Meaning, that there will be ample opportunities, more sooner than later, and that till there are inefficiencies on the down-side,…

…we sit tight…

…to maximize the impact of our positioning.

Supremacy of Cost-Free-Ness makes itself felt in Equity alone

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The impact of cost-free-ness stretches across all asset-classes…

… that are long-term-holdable.

Equity, Gold, Real-Estate, etc., …

… with perhaps bonds being a question mark with regard to applicability.

Why is cost-free-ness not that valid a concept for short-term-holds?

That’s because multibagger appreciation of a short-term-hold is not realistically expectable.

Then, with gold and real-estate, there are certain nuances, which need to be mentioned.

Gold doesn’t adjust itself for inflation. The 100-year appreciation in Gold is 1% per annum compounded, adjusted for inflation. We can make some Gold cost-free, and then hold the cost-free Gold for the long-term. However, to expect it to burgeon into a multibagger is too much. There’s no human capital behind Gold, no intelligently thinking minds. Also, Gold is commodity-cyclic in nature. Forget about all these technical arguments. Sheer 100-year History has taught us not to think in multibagger terms with regard to Gold. Let’s say we held it for the touted 100 years. Well, then, 1 x 1.01 ^ 100 = 2.70. We’re then holding a 2.7 bagger after 100 years. Safety risk too. Naehhh, not interested.

What’s the deal with real-estate? No human capital behind it, again. Thus, the asset-class doesn’t auto-adjust for inflation. Also, we’re not taking any cash-component into consideration. What does that make real-estate behave like, in the long-term, in a regime like now? Perhaps like a glorified fixed-deposit. Or, even, perhaps, like a high single-digit yielding bond. Now minus inflation. Hmmm, after the math, real-estate becomes an asset-class that yields 2-3% per annum compounded, adjusted for inflation, let’s say 2.5%. Minus the half percent for its management (which is a hassle, btw). Well, then, 1 x 1.02 ^ 100 = 7.24. We’re left holding a 7-bagger after 100 years. With hassle in the equation, 100 years is too much effort for a 7-bagger. Not interested either.

Now let’s look at Equity. Human capital is behind it. Equity is hassle-free with regard to its management. Equity auto-adjusts for inflation. All Equity that ever existed, including companies that have gone bust, has shown a return of 6% per annum compounded, adjusted for inflation. Taking companies out that don’t exist anymore, Equity has given a return of 11% per annum compounded, adjusted for inflation, over the long-term. Intelligently chosen Equity, with proper due diligence, is extremely capable of giving a return in the range of 15% per annum compounded, adjusted for inflation, in the long-term. Let’s do the numbers. 1 x 1.06 ^ 100 = 339.30; 1 x 1.11 ^ 100 = 34,064.28; 1 x 1.15 ^ 100 = 11,74,313.45.

These numbers don’t need crunching.

It’s pretty clear, that the supremacy of cost-free-ness makes itself felt in long-term held, cost-free Equity.

I wish for you happy, long-term cost-free-ness!

🙂

Washing a Stock “Sin-Free” with Cost-Free-Ness

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Each stock has sins on the balance-sheet.

Many sins don’t show up even, on the balance-sheet.

You see, they’ve been swiped under the rug.

One’ll never know the whole story, unless one is the promoter oneself.

Some stocks have nothing noteworthy to hide, though.

Others have a side they don’t want you to see.

Still others are brimming with skeletons in their cupboard.

It doesn’t matter what you’re holding, …

… when you make the stock cost-free, …

… for you, the stock just became sin-free.

Congratulations.

You’re done already.

That’s the beauty of cost-free-ness.

Yeah, in cost-free-ness, …

… one has a universal balsam…

…that rinses the underlying completely clean to hold, like, forever.

Cost-free-ness is like a magic potion that turns around the whole story, …

… any story.

So, …

… what’s the motivation…

—in making the wholesome effort…

…of creating cost-free-ness?

Multibaggers, developing within our high quality, and now cost-free, holdings.

And how could one classify our feat of cost-free-ness, in another, very meaningful and currently “hot, happening and insider” way?

Nothing’s happening to one if markets go down even to zero, as far as one’s cost-free holding is concerned, since one has pulled out all the principal. Since one is not incurring any loss whatsoever from the holding, even upon market-reversal, for one, this cost-free holding, if I’ve understood Mr. Taleb (coiner and first-user of the phrase “antifragile”) correctly, is antifragile in nature, also then because, price contraction in the cost-free holding is a good thing for us, in that more purchase of the high-quality holding can subsequently happen, with the goal of making more and more holding cost-free, as markets swing back upwards. Market reversal after cost-free-ness is setting us up for a larger cost-free holding in the future. Seen from our initial sweet-spot of cost-free-ness, since market reversal betters our poise and increases our potential to make our cost-free holding grow in units (and size), that would be the last tick mark, required and now ticked, which makes our cost-free and high-quality holding, also, antifragile.

Being Cost-Free is like having 100% Margin-of-Safety

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What allows us to sit?

It’s margin-of-safety.

When we buy without margin-of-safety, we are not able to sit for the long term.

Long-term investing fails for us if we don’t know how to sit.

Extrapolating this logic further, what would allow us to sit on high-quality holdings, like, forever, allowing for multibaggers to develop in our portfolio?

It’s cost-free-ness.

Being cost-free in a stock is equivalent to having 100% margin-of-safety on the holding.

Such a state of being allows us to freely sit on the holding, like, forever.

A range of other benefits open up for us, and about these we have spoken in detail earlier.

For example, we become fearless with regard to our cost-free holding. Then, we experience full freedom of focus on future play, while simultaneously forgetting that we even have this other cost-free holding that we own! Like I said, we’ve discussed all this thoroughly in previous pieces.

Bottom-line is, that we understand explicitly following extrapolation : Buying with margin-of-safety translates into sitting-ability for us, leading to creation of cost-free-ness upon appropriate appreciation, and such cost-free-ness in turn equates to 100% margin of safety in the held underlying, which then allows us to sit indefinitely on our high quality holding.

We’ve thus set the stage for holding many multibaggers in our ‘folio, by the time we reach retirement age.

🙂