Training as a CA has many advantages (and a few disadvantages perhaps). One of the advantages is you get skeptical about numbers, and you get to question conclusions/views drawn from numbers. I remember one life insurance company giving me their settled claims to received claims ratio. Smartly it included maturity claims, investment products, pension plans….suddenly […]
For a minute forget what the various parts of the financial services industry is telling you. The profitability of this industry seems to be fantastic. Let us take 4 parts of the industry: a. Banking: Over the years the biggest and the richest fortunes have been made by bankers. No doubt about it. Goldman Sachs, […]
In an earlier post I had mentioned that 3 shares fell into a theme for me – good companies went into bad times (eps was down), realised its mistakes and took corrective action. The 3 shares were Essel Packaging, Cholamandalam Finance and Themis Medicare. I have no clue WHY, but Themis Medicare went up from […]
OK Thailand is not in the same category as Greece and Portugal..but if the Red Shirts continue…then the recovery of Thailand will take a beating… Feels good to say …’I said it here first’….as channels would have said..see my posting of 22nd April. The White Man had NOT PRICED in the default or even the […]
Whenever the receptionist in our office wears a pink dupatta, equity markets go up by at least 50 points. I have no clue whether you would buy shares based on something like this. However, now I am being offered shares of Talwalkar (the fitness people) priced at a price-earning ratio of 44. The logic? Subra, […]
Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co. Ltd. (CIFCO) has done a great deal from the shareholders point of view. They had brought in DBS as a partner by issuing fresh shares to them at Rs. 140 a share. Now DBS has exited at Rs. 90 per share. It looks unfair on DBS but the relationship was […]
There is a fantastic group in South India – the Murugappa group – for me they have made money. That is a good test of management. I have been an investor in EID Parry, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance, Carborundum Universal and Coromandel Fertilizers. All these have been in my portfolio for long periods of time. […]