This is the Time

Shorting India…

…has now become an international norm.

Institutions are angry.

Tax surprises.

Massive corruption. At every step.

Slimy Indian counterparts. That’s us, right?

Lack of ability to understand how our system functions. If at all.

Prominent world leaders have written us off.

Soros et al are out with a…

…vengeance.

BooHoo.

Nobody likes us.

Which is ok.

Why?

It’s ok for now. As we get fully invested. No or minus hype factor, our shining ex-examples now shorted down to triple digits, should we start to cry and call it a day?

NO.

This is the time. To, slowly, get, fully, invested. Period.

When there will be hype, it will be accompanied by a hype-multiple. That’s exactly not the time to attempt full entry.

And there will be hype.

Where else is there ample growth?

Young, ‘hungry’, consuming, raring to go population?

You see, you can’t make robots consume. Humans are another story.

Where else is there ‘jugaad’?

This is the output Claude just gave for ‘jugaad’ : ‘At its core, jugaad is the art of getting something done with whatever is at hand—finding a clever, low-cost, unofficial fix rather than the “proper” (and usually expensive or unavailable) solution. It carries a sense of ingenuity under constraint: making do, hacking together, improvising a path through obstacles that a rulebook says shouldn’t be passable.’

Come on, dear shorting Western counterparts (of course I’m not shorting, I’m as long-long-long India as one can get), don’t you see it?

This is a thirty year story unfolding.

Time to get in, and stay in, is now.

Your quarter to quarter focus is so short-sighted, that even the optician doesn’t have appropriate glasses for you.

What can one say for the likes of Soros et al? Wrt the ideology that a country needs to be taken down financially, latest exploit Thailand, failed at India takedown attempt 1.0, did you, with three lending banks going down? Right? Either involved in current attempt or planning 2.0 currently, right?

Our sentiment is raked up. We will face. And overcome all shorters. In the long run.

More and more of the populace is moving its savings to its own markets.

Barely lets say 15% or less have demat accounts in our country.

Imagine the kind of money going in when this number tops 50%, which is the case in the countries shorting.

At current stand, our own very DII inflow, of which SIPs form a bulk, has managed current onslaught very reasonably. At 50%+, FII activity will not have any significant effect. It does now, not to a great extent, but to a visible one.

We are getting there.

Till then, there will be bumps.

Use the bumps.

In some years, one won’t get reasonable entry.

About that Crash

Everybody…

…and their Uncles…

…have been yelling…

Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash.

We delved earlier. Ad nauseam. Last we spoke was about deception.

Crash always happens. Nature of markets. Inflation, then deflation, back to mean, first below mean, then to mean. Questions are : how much inflation first? How much deflation then? When does deflation begin? Does anybody know?

NO.

Model the answer?

Sure. It’s at best a…

…guesstimate…

…and please don’t pretend otherwise.

Champion modellers?

Many. TV’s brimming with champions. Some called dotcom. Others gold. Few called silver. Someone’s calling Nasdaq to -70% between 2 weeks and 2 years. Call, call, keep calling.

Meanwhile, we go about our business.

Rather than ruminate and drown in fear of a crash, we go about getting fully invested upon available opportunities.

What?

Why?

Isn’t it better to just save up for the bottom, and then pump it in.

Hmmm. Here, there’s been a shift in thinking at Magic Bull, over the years. At the bottom, here’s a numerically hypothetical scenario, your close one will be whispering in your ear something to the tune of oh-damnation-this-is-going-down-to-5000, and then the index bottoms out at 7749 or something, and reverses upwards like a F1 Red Bull Racing vehicle. Leaving all 5000ers and their bulk liquidity on hold. For re-reversal downwards. Doesn’t happen. At 10k, the 5000ers are losing it. At 15k, they can’t sleep. At 20k they go all in at an interim peak, after having spent half their liquid capital on vacations, splurging, expensive rubbish and whatdon’tyouhave.

Meanwhile, we’ve entered at select spots, and in select underlyings. Fundamentally sound. Zero debt or virtually debt-free. Free cashflow. Clean balance-sheets. Clean governmental audits. Skin in the game. Track record of navigating through disruption. Track record of shareholder-friendliness. Intelligent, diligent, industrious, vigilant people running sound businesses. This is the stuff multibaggers are made of.

Since we are in the game of bringing multibaggers into existence for us, what’s a few months of a good, hard crash to us? It will come and it will go. We are in a growth market in India. For the next three decades. Why are we getting paranoid of a few months when we will be notionally down, still going about our business, lapping up new opportunities which will have set up, not needing our invested funds for five years plus.

We’re not.

Ya, let the crash come.

Apart from the fact that segments across Indian markets are already down 50%+ after having been down 65%+ (crash in India has already happened to a noteworthy extent), a blowdown on the Nasdaq will probably knock Indian counterparts to their recent lows, perhaps another 10 to 15 to 20 % to boot, and then…

…watch the recovery baby.

It’ll leave you behind. You won’t be able to get in funds fast enough. You’ll be a combo of missed the bus and fomo and ruing it and damnation and sleepless nights because of your current fear of impending…

…crash…

…whenever it happens…

…as if 65% off from top for many, many stocks isn’t a crash already…

…and there you have it.

Crash? As in more crash? Fine. Let it come.

Meanwhile, we continue to go about our business. Till the crash. During the crash. After the few months of crash. Well into the V-shaped recovery. In our very own growth market. No need to look elsewhere.

Only Misses for the DoomNixers

Stadiums full.

This is what we see at the FIFA World Cup.

Gloom and doom about no one travelling to watch…

…seems to be nixed.

Are any doomsdayers amounting to anything?

AI taking over and slaying all else?

It’s a collab. No one’s taking over anything completely.

US markets were supposed to crash…

…like yesterday. And with that, the world.

Whenever a full blown crash does happen, it will very probably be at a time when most shorters are exhausted, read in big losses and retired hurt, didn’t want to use the word bankrupt.

AI is supposed to lead the ‘bubble burst’.

Has AI just smelt some monetization in collab with the back-offices of the world?

Back-offices have the capability to hold the system up on the back of their picks and shovels work, which, obviously, DoomNixers ‘nix’ themselves upon. You see, it’s not glamorous enough. They didn’t see it at all thus, and stumbled and fell.

Here’s another one : No one can beat the effthurteefiive. True? Hmmm. We saw what we saw.

Attackers felt they would bring the opponent down over the weekend. Opponents, fighting for their lives, seem to have emerged better than their attackers.

When one fights for one’s life, one fights with every ounce of resource and every joule of energy.

The Dean at his Univ advised Max Planck to study Music instead of Physics, since he felt that every meaningful thing in Physics had been discovered already.

Max Planck went on to found a whole new branch of sciences. Quantum Physics. On which anything and everything today is based.

There’s this thing about optimists. They believe in their systems, their hard work. Their ability to fight for their lives. For their systems. For the passing on of their legacies.

Max Planck fought for the entire field of Physics, and what a legacy he’s passed on. Conventional Physics builds the framework, and Quantum allows us to traverse the Universe.

Core Tech is fighting for its life. Pushed to the wall, it will devise a way to emerge, as a monetizing handholder for AI to be implemented. It’s fought for its life many times before and has emerged victorious, and very lucratively.

There are two paths emerging here, in the example with Core Tech.

Path one – DoomNix. Pronounce it dead. Invest elsewhere, with expensive valuations.

Path two – research. Find companies that are transforming with the times, with clean balance sheets and free cashflows. Invest in these, as valuations are very reasonable currently.

One can even follow both paths MINUS the doomnixing. Meaning that one takes punts in expensive companies, no idea how that will pan out in the very long-term, and one also invests in very reasonably priced and transforming Core Tech, with clean balance sheets and free cashflows. This will give a decent return in the very long-term.

We leave the doomnixing to the pessimists, nay-sayers, lacking-in-hopers, non-believers in themselves and in good systems – this breed will keep collecting misses in life.

Having expunged the breed from our eco-systems, we stride ahead with our very long-term bullish view in our growth market, since the essence of sitting on a compounding portfolio for multiple decades is…

…an optimist mindset.

Miss Giving

There’s no Hurray…

…yet…

…on the Street.

People have…

…doubts.

About anything…

…even everything.

The general public seems to be containing its enthusiasm, because who knows what might be around the corner.

Owing to the cast in the mix, like Diabolo TryMeButDon’tTryTooHard, and the opponents, who, well, have championed in sins committed, and who perhaps have now been overtaken in sins committed by Diabolo TryNotTooHard and ally NotMuchYoohooThere, …

…a cease-fire…

…could mean anything…

…but a cease-fire…

…as of now.

Enthusiasm will flow once certainty replaces misgivings.

Hesitancy to come out and fully invest, given the circs, allows us future opportunity.

At every small insinuation of an anomaly, reversals will follow.

Diabolo’s back and forth penduluming on everything, for a good while now, has capped the risk appetite of the masses.

Fine. We accept the circumstances as those which will allow repeated entries over the short-term, perhaps over the short to medium term also.

The Magic Bull approach here would be to enter with whatever there is to enter, …

…over the next three to four months.

Who knows when Miss Giving will turn into Miss NotGiving. More sooner than later. Since the penduluming has gotten on everyone’s nerves now, reactions are not under control owing to nerves, and masses might come out that much harder once it becomes clear that the peace-flag persists.

Cut to our ongoing discussion on full exposure preferred in a growth market over dilly-dallying or semi-exposure over the long run.

As far as our own microcap market vis à vis world market cap is concerned, entry more sooner than later is a thing.

As time will tell, …

…a big thing.

Fable me this

Fable…

…we’re being told about…

…Fable 5…

…is that Frontier Country has disallowed its usage…

…for non-Frontier Countries or semi-Frontier Countries.

Thing is, …

…not every country needs to be a Frontier Country to make the world go round.

There’s a front-end, fine, accepted, and it seems to be calling the shots. To the extent of over-estimation of its own capabilities. Over-reaching. Over-stretching. Over-everything. That’s the front end. They’re doing what a front-end would do, in its position, and perhaps more.

However, there’s a back-end to everything in the world. Some countries are great at being back-offices to the world. Please understand, that the front-end can’t function long-term without cowork with the back-end.

Back-end streamlines.

It monetizes.

It affords the front-end penetration.

Infrastructure-seepage.

Bridging of the getting used to gap.

Bridging of the trust gap.

Process pinpointing.

To lever to becoming an accepted norm, front-end needs back-end, forever, since remaining the norm is also a priority.

The episode with Fable 5…

…reeks strongly of something big back-firing…

…in the front-end’s thought process.

They came sweeping in, full of over-confidence that they had something which would wipe everything else out.

Caused havoc.

Meanwhile, back-end started to adapt. FAST.

Some four months into the storm, fronties realize that backies have the usage figured out, and are implementing so fast, that very, very soon, their numbers promise to be fab.

Panic.

What to do?

Deny the backies usage of the frontest-end, i.e. Fable 5. Lest they overtake us in looking good.

Ha.

Just gave yourself away.

We know you now. WE SEE YOU.

And we’re going to use this dawning realization to our benefit.

We’re holding the line.

Our back-end is rock-strong, highly adaptive, and will find a way to monetize any situation.

Anything you throw…

…at us. We…

…will…

…monetize.

We’re just doubling down in our own back-yard.

On our own horses.

Period.

I want to be that fool

You know…

…the bloke who gets called out…

…at social gatherings…

…as the fool who got fully in at the top?

In a long-term growth market, I don’t mind being that fool.

It’s a short-term affliction. I think I can…

…bear looking like a fool for a not-longish duration.

Why do I say short-term?

First up, that’s my estimation of my tolerance levels.

Never happened, so it’s all estimates we function with.

Then, field of action is a long-term growth market, remember?

Here, we risk not being exposed to growth and compounding, if we’re conservative in entry.

No one’s saying get rid of your small entry quantum.

However, do let your small entry quantum expand with portfolio-size.

Also, make more entries.

Till fully invested.

In a long-term growth market, we wish to be fully invested, more sooner than later.

What’s the risk?

Growth…

…is NOT…

…a linear entity.

If we understand this one sentence, we can stay invested. Sit. For the very long term.

Thing about growth is, it happens, and then it does not, and then there’s a crash, and then it suddenly resumes, and then it can fire back to back doubling, or 50%+ for three years in a row, or what have you. Non-linear entities have peculiar equations defining them, not linear ones.

So it can well happen, again all hypothetical, that we get in fully, with precaution, with a small entry quantum, with many entries, over 12 months, and right after that, Wham. Down it goes, big. Ya, we look like fools then. We’re called out at parties. People laugh. It’s not necessarily a ‘serve him right laugh’ but more a ‘relief laugh’, as in ‘thank God I’m not in such a position’. And that’s OK.

Why?

Ya, Nath, why so cool about the whole thing?

Will tell you why.

In a year’s time after such hypothetical crash, when the market has sunk some more, people don’t know whether to laugh at or cry for us. There are feelings of pity, and questions like ‘Are you ok?’ crop up. Just doing a simulation. Picked up the ‘Are you ok?’ from a recent smaller crash, because that exchange actually happened. These situations are also absolutely ok. Why?

Things are about to change.

Long-term growth market, remember?

Growth not a linear entity, remember? When it sets in, can happen very fast, before one has gotten significant money in.

We are fully exposed, remember?

What do you think happens to our folios? In another year, we could not only cover up, but be up 2x. In five we could be up 5x. In 10, we could be up 12x. In 20, perhaps 25x. No longer foolish.

Those who don’t get in, miss the growth market.

Others get in to some extent, and catch growth to some extent.

Fools get both extremes, …

…the looking foolish one, and…

…the long-term vindication one.

Lumpsum vs Piecemeal

What’s a…

…better…

…market entry?

Lumpsum, or piecemeal?

Since I function in a growth market, …

…which can be seen as a microcap vis à vis the world, …

(you guessed it, India, currently exhibiting value, …

…but for our discussion please treat it as a growth market,) …

…and, because this discussion makes the most sense for a growth market exactly, …

…please, therefore, treat this comparison as a tool to help you decide…

…your growth market entry strategy.

You come into a lumpsum, let’s say.

What are your options? For the investible portion that is.

Pump in – one shot?

Average down, bit by bit, as and when opportunities arise?

Two ends of the spectrum. Where do you stand? Let’s break it down.

What’s your capacity for drawdowns?

Can you take a 50% notional drawdown, and not have a sleepless night?

Yes? Sure? Ok, pump it into the long-term growth market in one shot, provided you know your stocks well enough. In ten years time you’ll look like a star. In three months, a fool. One year, bigger fool. Perhaps. Slowly, growth will show, …

…and compound.

In two decades, you’ll rule.

Not able to take the big drawdown? Don’t like looking like a short-term fool?

That’s ok.

Very few people can handle big drawdowns.

Even lesser individuals like looking like fools, even if for a short time.

Then you can go in bit by bit.

Two strategies.

If you know your stocks well, you can average down.

If you want the market to throw you winners, you can average up.

Disadvantages?

Sure. You aren’t subjected to big drawdown pangs, and aren’t chastised by the masses for investing on interim highs. In lieu of that, not all of your money is in, and thus, not all of it is exposed to growth, or for that matter compounding. Also, your money hangs around to be…

…spent.

Don’t like the downsides of either extreme?

There’s a way out for you. You can take the middle path. You can also decide for yourself how ‘middle’ it is.

Decide for yourself a time-period that you want to be in by. 3 months? 6 months, 9 months, 12 months? Longer will take you towards full-on piecemeal.

Decide also, for yourself, about averaging down, up, or down till a level, and from that point onwards, only up. You can say that you are for example going in to a stock with margin of safety, up to a level, but then you would like the stock to prove itself, and from that point onwards, you now start averaging up as the growth story unfolds. You can then couple your averaging down and up combo to your total time-frame selected for going in.

Bottom-line : in X months your funds start getting full growth and compounding effects, as per the cost-averaging mix Y you have chosen.

Both X & Y should be a function of your risk profile.

Isn’t that the reason why you chose the middle path, because you didn’t want to be exposed to lumpsum drawdowns?

So, three choices, break it down, follow what suits.

On a personal front, if money needs to go into a growth market, for me its better sooner than later.

Took a long time to realize this though.

My pursuit for financial independence was impeding this understanding.

The moment financial independence was achieved, along with it came the realization…

…that we don’t wait on a long-term growth market.