Tag Archives: #BalanceSheet

Life at Frontier Minus One

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Sanity prevails…

…at frontier minus one.

Rat race is within the underlying’s…

control.

Virtual / quasi / substantial / semi debt-free-ness…

exists.

Free cash-flow generation on the balance sheet is…

…common.

At frontier minus one, the narrative is …

…under control…

…as proven by self-determination of speed of change…

…and by exhibition of substantial growth.

Not at breakneck speeds.

Not by borrowing to the hilt.

Not by greedy behaviour.

Not by indigestible trajectory.

Not by a reckless ‘not giving a damn too bad if you’re not so fast’ attitude.

Life at frontier minus one…

…is somewhat balanced, with a flow.

Innovation at frontier minus one is achieved much faster

…than at frontier minus two, but much slower than at…

…frontier zero zero.

No tech company that wishes to thrive well into the future is currently functioning at…

…frontier minus two.

Either the transition to minus one has been made, or, it’s in the process.

Why not go for the jugular? Straight to zero zero.

Everyone has their role in this puzzle.

Imagine an older civilization going into battle.

There was a front line, paving the way, at immense cost.

There was a reserve support line, with artillery, first-aid, communication, and what have you.

There was a third line with supply, reinforcements, semi-trainees doing other stuff normally, etc.

There was aerial support, naval support, intelligence, research and analysis staff etc.

All combined to create an ensemble of actions.

Cut to now.

Warfare has changed.

Immense cost is still there, but immense cost to the front line, as in cost of life, has been reduced greatly, speak drone and missile warfare, supported by AI backed intelligence and analysis.

Point is, innovation, a different way of thinking, disruption and all their cousins will find a way to make things affordable, implementable.

That’s the way civilizations move forward.

Not for you or me to change. It’s the way of the world.

And that is what frontier minus one banks upon.

Meaning, to keep functioning at sustainable levels, slowly, painstakingly, in the process, simultaneously, finding a way, a connect, to frontier zero zero.

The connect can be of co-work. Amicable. Win-Win. You earn, we earn.

At frontier minus one, the world view is not to annihilate, but to…

…accommodate.

To win…

…together…

…in…

symbiosis.

Symbiosis

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Imagine…

…the most value you can imagine.

That’s what this word is worth.

Especially now.

What’s the truth?

Existential question.

First we had everyone and their aunties proclaim the death of core Tech companies.

Hmmm.

Core Tech companies, and their chief protagonists, thought otherwise.

Number of believers kept waning though.

Until recently.

Something started to reverse in belief systems.

AI was behaving fantastically utilitarian with a human holding the reins.

Meaning, there needed to be a human there, for practical purposes.

Frontier AI deployed engineers to be the human face. Or so one was told.

Came the trust issue.

Do we double up on our trust in this no track record magician who just showed up out of nowhere?

Do we entrust privileged client data to the unknown?

Do we strip ourselves naked, TWICE?

NO.

Everyone and their uncles have answered with an emphatic NO.

Who is the human handler – the go-between – the trusted face – the rein holder?

Someone with a track record.

Proven.

Tried, and…

trusted.

Self-propelling.

With no liabilities. Spell ZERO DEBT.

With copious FREE CASH FLOW to INNOVATE FREELY…

…to navigate the reins successfully and as per the requirements of an enterprise.

Who is this entity?

None other than…

…our own very well known…

CORE TECH.

Leaner.

Hungry to prove its point.

To have its raison d’être acknowledged, and paid for.

To earn and compound steadily.

Forget about dying. Let’s talk about long term thriving.

Then, we had the captains of frontier AI admitting, that yes, ‘we do need core tech handholding to be implemented successfully’.

Gone was the initial hubris, that ‘we had come to wipe out old thought patterns, and all old systems’.

Reality had dawned, and these captains at least had the decency to admit it.

Actually, they had realized that their existence now depended upon how much their infrastructure would seep through. And…

…that no one was trusting them enough to hand over the job of seeping through to them, but much rather, to trusted old compatriots, to Core Tech.

So they came forward to shake hands.

Good.

Symbiosis.

We want to move forward on the back of this symbiosis.

There will be gigantic and fast development on the back of this symbiosis.

We are looking at space travel, space colonization, disease control, climate change, cheap solar, cheap desalination, perhaps even alien integration and partnership – unimaginable perhaps a few months ago, but possibly conceivable on the back of this symbiosis.

There’s new talk which has recently emerged, from the other extreme, and needs to be discarded, like its mirror image on the opposite side of the bell curve. This is the talk of frontier AI dying out because of becoming unaffordable.

Well, in whatever shape it exists currently, frontier AI does have tremendous capacity to solve problems.

Let it do just that on the back of this symbiosis, and earnings will start to flow.

Core Tech won’t let it wither, frontier AI has now become their raison d’être too.

Don’t you see it?

Two universes are converging, each needing the other to survive.

In the end, they become one universe.

Companies will merge. Synergies will multiply. Mega projects will be achieved, faster, more bombastically.

Earnings will flow.

Where do you want to be?

Remaining a doomsdayer will not help you.

Get into the flow.

Invest into debt-free, free cash-flow generating core tech as value deepens.

Look for debt-free, frontier minus one, free cash-flow generating semi AI companies, research these thoroughly for any red flags, and if those found are manageable, put in some funds.

If you find a frontier tech with manageable debt and a reasonable balance sheet, with a PEG ratio (price to earnings ratio divided by earnings per share growth percentage for the fiscal) somewhat under control. ok, put in some money there too.

Get out of the doomsday mindset.

Put your money to work, and then lock it in for another twenty years. Leave the compounded proceeds to your children.

Now.

Let the crashes come. There will be compounding post crashes too. Just look at the monthly chart of an IT index from 1995 to today. Dot-com peak looks miniscule and low compared to the levels of the monthly chart today.

Enough talking. Do the recce and then let’s talk.

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.

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.

Sniffing Out Shareholder-Friendliness

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Shareholder-friendly managements…

…are the need of the hour.

What are the signs that we need to look out for, to know that a management is benevolent towards its co-owner?

Frugality in lifestyle and attitude is worth looking at.

What I’m trying to say is…

…that one hates to see a promoter living it up on company funds, at the cost of the company’s health.

Living it up is ok. Have the balance-sheet to justify it – first – please.

Are you debt-free? Quasi debt-free will do too.

Does your company ooze free cash-flow?

Are your employees well-paid and automatons for growth?

NPM double-digit?

RoE in the 20s?

Fine.

Live it up for all I care.

Take a high salary. Throw in a hefty commission.

God bless you.

I still want to co-own your company.

Any or most of these metrics not present & living it up on company money – well, nice knowing you, but no thanks.

We’re then looking for shareholder give-aways, you know,…

…dividends, bonuses, buybacks and stuff.

Again, the balance-sheet should show enough robustness to justify a giveaway.

If it doesn’t, it means that the management is trying to appease shareholders at the cost of the balance-sheet, and that’s an avoid in my book.

Look for simplicity in the annual report.

If one is getting lost in fancy words and hi-fi design, without being given the nitty-gritty at a glance, one is probably knocking on the wrong door.

Free cash-flow is a good thing. It allows for leverage to act upon opportunity and without incurring debt, among other things.

Look at deployment of net cash-flow generated from operating activities also. Deployment should be healthy. Shows growth.

Instead of looking for fad-stuff like synergy, let’s look to see if promoter action adds to the balance-sheet and makes it stronger.

These are just examples.

Sniff out shareholder-friendliness.

Put your own metrics together, to do so.

Busy Times

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Market falls are busy times. 

No, we’re not busy whining. 

We’re busy buying.

Are we not afraid?

That the crack might deepen?

That it might go down to zero?

No.

We’re not afraid of this scenario. 

Meaning?

Meaning that even though such a scenario cannot be ruled out…

Huh!?

Yeah, it can’t be ruled out. With trade wars and back to back black swans waiting to strike, theoretically, the bottom is zero.

And you’re not afraid?

No.

Why?

Because I buy into fundamentally sound businesses…

…zero debt…

…great 5 year numbers…

…sometimes, great ten year numbers…

…and I buy with considerable margin of safety.

Still, one is normally always afraid, right?

Wrong. A small entry quantum strategy kicks out all remnant fear.

How?

This strategy leaves me liquid. Let it go down to zero. I’ll still have liquidity to buy.

And that which you’re buying…

…is sound, yes. If I buy something sound, it will yield returns. It’s like agriculture. Crops grow in good soil. They don’t grow well in bad soil. I make sure that I choose excellent soil.

How does one do that?

Due diligence. Period.

With all the scams and frauds going on…

Well, I look long and hard for shareholder-friendly managements. Representable salaries, willingness to share, largesse, debt-averseness, intelligence, business savvy, the list goes on.

What if you land up with a fraud management?

Solid research will make you avoid scamsters. I search the internet thoroughly for any kind of smoke. Crooks leave a trail, and one is able to catch their online trail pretty easily. 

Alone online?

Second recourse are annual reports. They reveal a lot. I don’t invest in a company without having a thorough look into its annual reports. I look at CSR, the director’s report, skin in the game, balance sheets, profit and loss statements, cash-flow, special items, what have you.

What if you still land up with a fraud?

After I know I’ve landed up with a fraud management, I would look to exit at the next market high. 

What if your holding is wiped out till then?

If it’s wiped out, I have many other holdings to lean on, and don’t forget the liquidity that is yet to flow into honest managements.

So you’re not afraid of the loss?

There is some risk one has to take. Here, it is the risk of being wrong. The good thing is, once I know that I’m wrong, I won’t double up on my wrong call. I’ll get busy elsewhere and look to exit from my wrong call with as little damage as possible, perhaps even in profit.

Profit?

You forget, I like to buy with margin of safety, and you’d be surprised at what people are willing to pay at market highs. 

I see, well then, happy investing!

Thanks! 🙂

Wealth-Generators often go Contrarian

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You knew that too, right? 

Sure. 

Going contrarian is a buzz-phrase. 

We hear it again and again…

… till we begin to start thinking… 

… that we know what it means. 

Well, try going contrarian. 

Yeah, try actually doing it. 

You’ll see what I mean. 

It’s real hard. 

Going against the crowd takes all the strength you might have… 

… and then some. 

Most humans aren’t able to go contrarian. 

Most humans aren’t wealthy. 

When there’s blood on the streets, there’s no telling how much more there will be. 

Under such conditions, the contrarian investor lets go of his or her hard-earned money into an investment, knowing perfectly well that the Street might even value the investment tomorrow at a huge discount to today’s price.

That’s ok too, says he or she.

Why?

Because homework’s been done.

Underlying is strong.

Debt-free.

Management is stellar.

Balance-sheet is robust.

Projections are paramount.

That the world is pricing the investment wrongly is a problem with its vision.

Underlying is not going under. With above credentials, this alone matters.

Times change. Vision of the majority changes. Investor makes a killing. Cashes out some, principal and what have you. Leaves lots of free-standing shares… forever… or till parameters change.

Wealth-generators repeat this behaviour-pattern many times in their lives.

They’re not afraid of going against the grain.

They know otherwise.

Also, the money they use has been freed up.

Its being out of action for a long time is not going to change their lives even a bit.

They will have the last laugh.

Wealth is the reward of going contrarian. 

What about Daddy Cool? 

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Boney M sang this blockbuster hit in the ’70s.

I’m sure you’ve heard it, because it’s still the rage. 

he’s crazy like a fool – what about daddy cool? 

Who’s Daddy Cool? 

You tell me. 

Is it you, in a cool cucumber moment, slow to respond to stimulus, devoid of anger, master of your situation in a kinda non-bossy, non-micro-managing (cool) way? 

And what of Mr. Hyde’s Dr. Jekyll nature? 

We’re talking about your “like a fool” moment.

Just for your information, winning behaviour is often termed foolish by the crowd. 

Contrarian investing is one such example. 

Successful derivative trading is another. 

To cap it, let’s not even talk about private equity in real-estate. 

Did someone mention high-yield structured-debt? 

There are many examples of “foolish” behaviour. 

These same examples earn very well. 

So… 

… how do we do it? 

We maintain our cool. 

We keep all basics going, as they are. 

With a small portion of our surplus, we take calculated risks, in a controlled environment. 

Sure, these risks will appear foolish to someone on the outside. 

However, our controlled environment has installed riders for our safety. 

A balance-sheet might be stressed, but not stressed enough for bankruptcy. 

A lock-in might be ultra-short. 

A stop-loss might be in place. 

Collateral might be up to 4x.

There might be a highly reputed Trustee in between. 

What have you.

Have your Daddy Cool fool-moments. 

Take some calculated risks with small portions of your surplus. 

These should give your portfolios an extra-boost.