Making things Complex

A few industries that I have been seeing from close quarters – and have very strong views on are food and health, pharma, financial services. One thing clear in all the 3 industries – the more you complicate, the more money you can make. So whether it is a Kellog, or a Gillette they can [...]

Warren Buffet needs own medicine?

  Warren Buffet is a great investor, and a great CEO for Berkshire Hathaway. He regularly makes very profound investment statements regarding the investment world…and the other managers. One of the statements attributed to WB is: ‘When all you have is a hammer, the world looks like a nail‘. This is easy to interpret. Take [...]

Yes it is a bear Market: what to do?

The term Bear Market is not easy to define. A loose consensus is when the market falls 20%, it is officially called a bear market. Let us say the market has fallen from 21000 to 17000, then it is a bear market. However, just hold on, life is not so simple! Too many pundits and [...]

How to mis-sell or wrong sell…

  There is a big problem all distributors face. When the product becomes good and has a successful track record, the distribution margins reduce. So it is a catch 22 situation. You work hard, collect money for a fund house, they employ a good fund manager who delivers good results…so the scheme does well. Then [...]

Bad news for old portfolios…

The people with old portfolios – some of them in their ’80s is coming from a completely unexpected source (that is what risk is supposed to be, is it not?). My parents lost Cadbury, Kodak, Hoganas, ITW Signode, …significant shares in their portfolio to a ‘buy-back’ in the 1980s…or 1990s, not sure. Buy-back is a [...]

Saved by my broker!

About a year back we were all perhaps not so optimistic about the markets. Now we all are optimistic – what this means is the risk in the market has increased !! Risk is counter intuitive and it has always been like that for a long time. About a year ago when I saw the [...]