By PV Subramanyam So, what’s a stock market investor’s best response to dropping stock prices? First, forget about rationalising and explaining (or listening to other people explain) why stocks are falling. It’s a pointless exercise at best, and misleading at worst. Second, file the painful experience away as a worthwhile reminder […]
It is so funny that when markets are rising, everybody asks you to buy, and when it is falling everybody asks you to sell! One commentator who unabashedly acused another big investor of “luring” the poor investor into the market (when the index was 7000), then changed his mind to predict 25000, then changed […]
It is easy for fund managers and television anchors to talk about index being at a pe of 15…but let us not fool ourselves. There are many shares at pe of 58 and 38 – L&T, Tata Power to name a few. How does one deal with these companies? Well a little differently. Why should […]
When markets fall, Price Earning ratios correct. Including the PE ratios of candidates who attend job interviews! Already one is hearing about a big broking firm closing down 100 branches. I have lost track of how many branches they have, so this is an absolute number and not a relative number. What it means is […]
“Past performance is not an indicator of future performance” — the literature of every mutual fund you own, mentions something to this effect. In fact once, when I was lecturing at a mutual fund house, which was not performing well, one of the managers said, jocularly, “Can we say our past non-performance is not an indicator […]
Wockhardt and then Emaar have withdrawn their IPOs. Withdrawn is a joke. The public did not buy them, therefore the issue is gone back. What is the learning? In a rising market nobody, really nobody has any interest in saying that the issue is overpriced and the end customer should not subscribe. A greedy promoter […]
I have been inundated with calls from friends and students on what an investor should do when he or she is staring at blood in their portfolios.It reminds me of the saying — ‘this too shall pass’. I do not know its origin, but am convinced that in investing, as in life, you should keep your […]