This caption was conceptualized with a lot of happiness and a little bit of arrogance. The ability of human nature to feel proud and happy on success is natural. Hence the kind of success that TheEquityDesk has generated for all its members through their collective debate and reasoning especially relating to the investment potential of consumer stocks is extraordinarily phenomenal. Most of the consumer names here have been up by four to twenty times over the last 2 years even while the broad market has done almost nothing!
Taleb would call this a random event and if it is that so be it. As someone mentioned that given an option in between being lucky and smart he would rather be lucky then be smart, the same logic applies for all the members of TheEquityDesk who have made a ton of money in the great Indian consumer boom.
In my relentless endeavour to interact with money managers and analysts I have seen no one being bullish on consumption stocks. Most of them have found it expensive and a few of them were courageous enough to admit that they missed it while a small percentage of the others were waiting for a fall to buy it. It is strange that people always want to buy a stock a in a recurring infinite loop 20% cheaper then what it quotes at.
So this story repeated itself with many of the consumption stocks where most of the Ted members made money while the world waited to buy it at a lower scale the believers pyramided with incremental salary cash flow thus creating a portfolio of multibaggers.
Most analysts argue against consumer stocks on the basis of a relatively high PE ratio. Quality growth stocks have to be bought with the thought that if the growth continues for a couple of more quarters the stock would become cheap. They are seldom available at absolute levels of cheapness (whatever that means) and when they are as in March 2009 the others trade at PE ratios of three and five with an yield greater then the PE ratio and many of them generating returns of 20%+ on invested capital. So relatively speaking, quality is always expensive.
The general market consensus is that everyone else has bought consumer names and are hiding in them so it can crash but no one says that he has bought it himself, so it is a case of no one buying this in bulk but still assuming that everyone else has bought it.
Another argument is that if you add the market cap of the top best performing consumer stocks (TTK Prestige, Page Industries, Jubilant Foodworks, Hawkins Cooker Bata etc) the total market cap is less than US$ 5billion. If you add Titan to this list then it moves closer to US$ 10 Billion. This is certainly not the sign of a bubble in an economy where private final consumption could hit US $ 3.4 trillion over the next ten years.
Over the past couple of years as these consumer stocks moved ahead there is a case of not even a single consumer oriented mutual fund being floated. How many did we have before the infra and real estate sectors went bust? I guess around three dozens and a few more.
But, here comes the important but, like all sectoral rallies this one will also collapse and to counter that we have to keep our eyes and ears to the ground both in terms of what the companies are doing as also as how the market participants are thinking. Both are equally important and also amongst the consumer names one has to keep getting out of the relatively expensive ones and buying more of the relatively cheaper ones something that is easy in hindsight and almost impossible in foresight but investing is about making educated guesses and we keep doing that.
However even when this music stops most of us will keep dancing as has happened in every boom over the last four hundred years and so it is important to stop and make sure that we have to dance as long as the music plays rather than assume that the music will keep on playing till we dance!
For the moment though there does not seem to be any signs of the drums stopping though depending on the beats one has to keep evaluating and switching the dance steps.
Great Article Basant Sir.
[QUOTE=subu76]
Great Article Basant Sir.
[QUOTE=subu76]
[QUOTE=nikrod12] [QUOTE=subu76]
From a very macro perspective the consumption story looks self sustaining for the next 30 years. That is a long, long time. The question is whether it translates to the same kind of growth in the companies we are targeting and in their prices in the stock markets.
Great Article Basantji, Subuji and other esteemed members of TED. I feel a bit ashamed to say that I never knew the power of the Indian consumption story. My first multibaggers were in the Power sector - Tata Power and BSES - and I was lucky to enter in mid three digits and exit at almost their peak. I am very ashamed of my investments methods then.
Great write up Basantji as always.
We should all be thanking you for leading us on to this path and ensuring we dont stumble in between and make mistakes.This article is another of those reminders that there is still money on the table for anyone who is willing to bury his ego/mistakes and get on this train. Most of the companies we discuss on TED can easily do a 25% CAGR for 10 years - that is about 10 times in 10 years even after all the ups and downs that we'll see in the next decade - which can be an enviable result for a common man who dumps all his earnings in a fixed deposit or in buying apartments.
We need to take that step to allocate a meaningful amount of our portfolio to equity and then invest a meaningful amount in these consumer stocks and then become Rip Van Wikles. We probably won't do too bad.
Basantji - You have Superbly put across this consumption play story. Although i am not a very good dancer but am sure that will definitely learn one or two great steps with you @ TED
[QUOTE=basant]This caption was conceptualized with a lot of happiness and a little bit of arrogance. The ability of human nature to feel proud and happy on success is natural. Hence the kind of success that TheEquityDesk has generated for all its members through their collective debate and reasoning especially relating to the investment potential of consumer stocks is extraordinarily phenomenal. Most of the consumer names here have been up by four to twenty times over the last 2 years even while the broad market has done almost nothing!
Taleb would call this a random event and if it is that so be it. As someone mentioned that given an option in between being lucky and smart he would rather be lucky then be smart, the same logic applies for all the members of TheEquityDesk who have made a ton of money in the great Indian consumer boom.
In my relentless endeavour to interact with money managers and analysts I have seen no one being bullish on consumption stocks. Most of them have found it expensive and a few of them were courageous enough to admit that they missed it while a small percentage of the others were waiting for a fall to buy it. It is strange that people always want to buy a stock a in a recurring infinite loop 20% cheaper then what it quotes at.
So this story repeated itself with many of the consumption stocks where most of the Ted members made money while the world waited to buy it at a lower scale the believers pyramided with incremental salary cash flow thus creating a portfolio of multibaggers.
Most analysts argue against consumer stocks on the basis of a relatively high PE ratio. Quality growth stocks have to be bought with the thought that if the growth continues for a couple of more quarters the stock would become cheap. They are seldom available at absolute levels of cheapness (whatever that means) and when they are as in March 2009 the others trade at PE ratios of three and five with an yield greater then the PE ratio and many of them generating returns of 20%+ on invested capital. So relatively speaking, quality is always expensive.
The general market consensus is that everyone else has bought consumer names and are hiding in them so it can crash but no one says that he has bought it himself, so it is a case of no one buying this in bulk but still assuming that everyone else has bought it.
Another argument is that if you add the market cap of the top best performing consumer stocks (TTK Prestige, Page Industries, Jubilant Foodworks, Hawkins Cooker Bata etc) the total market cap is less than US$ 5billion. If you add Titan to this list then it moves closer to US$ 10 Billion. This is certainly not the sign of a bubble in an economy where private final consumption could hit US $ 3.4 trillion over the next ten years.
Over the past couple of years as these consumer stocks moved ahead there is a case of not even a single consumer oriented mutual fund being floated. How many did we have before the infra and real estate sectors went bust? I guess around three dozens and a few more.
But, here comes the important but, like all sectoral rallies this one will also collapse and to counter that we have to keep our eyes and ears to the ground both in terms of what the companies are doing as also as how the market participants are thinking. Both are equally important and also amongst the consumer names one has to keep getting out of the relatively expensive ones and buying more of the relatively cheaper ones something that is easy in hindsight and almost impossible in foresight but investing is about making educated guesses and we keep doing that.
However even when this music stops most of us will keep dancing as has happened in every boom over the last four hundred years and so it is important to stop and make sure that we have to dance as long as the music plays rather than assume that the music will keep on playing till we dance!
For the moment though there does not seem to be any signs of the drums stopping though depending on the beats one has to keep evaluating and switching the dance steps.
[/QUOTE]
Basantji,
Is there a way that we can consolidate all your posts and zip them :) I want to read them over and over again.
Please do publish a book.
I understand that great people are born not made...
Thanks a lot for your contribution in our life.
Regards
Supratik
Posted on:10/12/2011 7:13:47 AMJaishrikrishna
Keep writing Basantjee, Every bit you write on TED, is a learning experience for us.