Cluster of Blessings

Hey.

We realized…

…that what we’re doing…

…is anti-fragile in nature.

How, you ask.

Since what we’re doing is in stocks. Equity. Robust at best. Not anti-fragile.

?

Well, take a definition, and expand it a bit, and the definition starts to make broader sense. One draws on the definition, and creates a utility for that definition in one’s own line of work. That’s what we’ve done. Creator of the term anti-fragile, Mr. Taleb, could turn around and say, hey, you’ve just taken my thing and used it in your thing. Of course we’ve done that. We stand on the shoulders of giants, giants like Mr. Taleb. And now we’ve got his thing, projecting onto our thing, making something new out of our thing. Bottomline, we have a thing that is anti-fragile, and Taleb gets credit for his thing starting to develop universality, at least across another asset class.

So how are we doing stocks in an anti-fragile manner?

We benefit from chaos, volatility, uncertainty, fear and the like.

How?

Before these conditions cause mayhem in stocks, we have gravitated, in a growth market, over the years, to exhibit meaningful holding power. Both mentally, and financially. So, what do we possess before topsy turvy conditions, like now? Holding power.

What else are we armed with?

Liquidity.

Liquidity is a state of mind. Our state of mind causes us to be liquid at the right time.

Next.

We have…

…high conviction. In a basket of market players. Our due diligence regimen, over decades, has allowed us the means to recognize such stocks. In these, we have developed what?

High conviction.

We are itching to buy these underlyings, at huge…

…margins of safety.

Cut to current conditions. Chaos, volatility, uncertainty, fear, war, maniac, missiles, nuclear threat and what have you.

The margin of safety that we look for starts to abound. We accumulate high conviction underlyings, over multiple buys, ending up with low buying averages.

As conditions amplify, buying averages get lower. We are benefiting from chaotic conditions in that our buying averages are getting lower and lower.

Perceptions change for the better. They always do. Gone is 1929, where it took the better part of two decades for circumstances to change. Till 2019, one used to talk about max 15 to 18 months being the length of a bear market. Information flows very fast. When efficient, whenever that is, markets are then super-efficient. Factoring in is taking days, perhaps only a day. A change in perception is incorporating very, very fast. Frankly, we’re talking months, not even years. And, we’re mentally and financially prepared, with our holding power, for a time-frame measured in years.

Comes the turnaround. Sooner than later, such are the times.

Our low buying averages multiply fast. In fact, very fast. The lower they are, in our high conviction holdings, the faster they multiply. We start to hold many 2-baggers in 3 to 6 months, for example.

Now we call the shots. In fact, our very low buying averages do.

We can choose to pull our principal out, full 100%, at 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x or what have you, depending on our muse.

The moment we go cost-free, we have moved into 100% margin of safety. Nothing can break our cost-free-ness (except ourselves). We can choose to leave our cost-free-ness to our children, by which time it will have majorly compounded. Since we have no principal invested in our cost-free-ness, we won’t be in a hurry to liquidate it. In fact, we won’t even be looking at it.

We’re calling our low buying averages anti-fragile. The lower they get, the more anti-fragile they behave in the aftermath of chaos. We’re adding an allowance towards fast incorporation of change in perception to the definition of anti-fragile, because of which our inherently anti-fragile low buying averages get to benefit from their anti-fragile nature (thanks again to Nassim Nicholas Taleb for giving us the framework of anti-fragility).

And what are we calling our cost-free-ness? I mean, it is seeming to be beyond fragility. It is giving benefit beyond any scale. Generational benefit. I don’t have a name for this effect, yet.

Our cost-free-ness has generated generational well-being. It has allowed us to not liquidate it, by the state of mind it has caused in us. It has allowed itself to be passed on.

Hmmm. Taking a phrase from Nichiren Buddhism, it is our…

cluster of blessings

…that we pass on…

…to the next generation.

Positioned

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.