Mahant!

WISHING YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR. BEST WISHES BRIJESH / FALKOR

source: Market Watch

Excerpts from Citigroup's report on Contrarian investment strategy: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The contrarian amongst us would feel this way. As interest rates head to zero in Japan and the Euro zone, very much in sympathy with the US interest rates, the reflation trade could mean a sell-off in bonds, and the flow of the money geyser into commodities, financials and real estate during 2009. The contrarian would be buying Asia Pac, EM equities and Selling US Stocks, US Bonds and Gold. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As for 2009, the message is very clear. These brave contrarians would now be putting on the reflation trade — buying Financials and commodity stocks and selling defensives, especially in the Pharma & Biotech sector. At a regional level they would be buying back into Emerging Markets and Asia Pac and selling the US. -----------------------...

Kaushik of Galatime has started a remarkable portfolio, an online portfolio management. No its not a game. Its not a 'money bhai'. Its solid portfolio management with solid reasoning to it. If you ever wanted to peek into Portfolio managers' mindset and be a fly-on-the-wall when they are making trading / investing decisions: this is your chance. Follow these portfolios HERE . May be you can contribute. This is going to be fun. :) Falkor

I am hit by a stark revelation. Stark. Shocking. I do not know what to make out of it. If it is good or bad? More I think about it, it is serious and gross error that I have committed on my part. The realization is simply this: I do not know what are the careers a person can pursue. Now, this is a dumb, probably dumbest, question one can ask after working and pursuing for years. But it is true, I have been so enamored by finance, especially high-finance, that I never bothered to look into other professions. Its like we are so fixated on becoming something that we miss out But there are thousands of careers (I won't demean them by calling it alternative careers) but which are equally exciting and worthwhile. Why didn't I ever look into it?! :-? Was I brainwashed to get into this? Was the glorified world of finance too captivating? I don't know what was the reason. But I now realize, I never gave any other career or myself any shot at other careers. I am good at so many thing...

I have always believed future is too hard to predict. Not that it can't be predicted but the possibilities are so huge it is futile even to try predicting them. Especially, if the events are linked in some ways it becomes harder. This post is deliberately divided into three parts. One carrying on from where other drops off. Part 1 : Seth Godin: Predictions Seth had predicted everything correctly 6 year back, but of course he was joking. But who would have imagined these and much much more! Predict that the number of blogs will explode, to more than a hundred times as many as we have now. If you're an opinion leader, you'll have one. A virtually unknown politician, a black man who's father is from Africa, will be elected president, in a landslide. He'll take the office from George W. Bush, leaving with the lowest approval rating of any president in history. Fidel Castro will step down. People with AIDS will be living longer than ever before, but the disease won't...

I don't write much about movies, though they form a very important part of my social observations for businesses. I remember, my last post that had anything to do with movies was a critic on Casino Royale, even then more from a standpoint of trading, investing and money management. I have long realized Shah Rukh is a marketing machine. A wonderful machine that churns out fantastic ideas and most importantly stays relevant and interesting. I would put him on par with Seth Godin, Madonna, Beatles, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and few others. So, I haven't missed a chance to understand what's on Shah Rukh's mind. Seth and Trump write books. Madonna and SRK put on an act. I want to write on Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Well, here I go. The first info on Rab ne.. came from Khalid Mohammed's review calling it a seminal work that will change the way movies are made in future. Strong words from a person who miser for praise. Second was SRK's statement, again on the sam...

In line with yesterday's post on missing Steve at Mac world, here is Maclife's top moments of master showman.

Top Pick: Suzlon Energy, Target Rs 149 A rising energy deficit, over dependence on imports for crude and nuclear energy, an inability to scale up hydro and the impact of coal on climate are all factors that will drive the adoption of alternative energy in India. While near-term concerns could stem from weak macro conditions and falling crude prices, this is a space that could witness a sustained growth trajectory given emerging policy support and structural drivers. Wind remains the best way to play the medium-term alternative energy theme in India, as it should continue to see strong builds. The medium term wind profile for the country, though, offers low average PLFs and once the windiest sites are saturated, growth could slow, in our view. We favour equipment companies exposed to global wind capex. Solar will displace wind in terms of relevance in India fs energy mix over the longer term, as India is endowed with sufficient solar radiation, given its proximity to the equatorial ...

OPEC cuts OPEC plans to cut 2mn bpd. Well, do they have any other option? Frankly no. The falshy brokerage calls especially Goldman's $30 does not help the sentiment. It further stiffens the panicky OPEC. Saudi Arabia and most of the MENA countries, which form a large chunk in OPEC, need the oil to stay above $50 per barrel to balance their budgets. And if they want to continue thier amibtious projects and more importantly complete the ongoing ones, they need much more. Apple is ceasing is Mac World. WTF! When I first read it, I thought I misread it. But with news getting confirmed on papers, I can certify Apple managers as certified nuts. "We have other avenues to approach customers"! Is that an explanation! Ridiculous. Everybody has the same methods to approach customers but they are not 'Apple'. Apple is missing out a big factor here. Loyal customers and influencers, for whom MacWorld was technology Woodstock. Apple is completely alienating itself from this cro...

This poem was written when markets were in a phenomenal bull run and bears had no idea what was going on, all the 'tops' were taken out like pins. This was the confusion of the Bear. But today, with this phenomenal bear market, I guess it is Bull's confusion. But then, replace Bear with Bull, the poem remains the same. ** Bears confusion ** ******************************************* Mirror, Mirror on the wall, Tell me when the market is gonna fall, All the kings and kings men say Techinicals is weak again. Stochastics and price say "I am going the other way" All the prophecies gone waste And oracles run to hide their face. Easy money just there to take, The truth has never been so fake; All the men run up and down, Blind in dark seek their way; Tired bulls and blood hound astray, For no king - none to say, Market's going up all the way. Sane words, "Doomsayers" They say, The age and wrinkles are laughed away; "This is new era, a new day, All th...

On this day, 1 year ago RBS paid $100bn for ABN Amro. For this amount it could NOW buy: Citibank $22.5bn Morgan Stanley $10.5bn Goldman Sachs $21bn Merrill Lynch $12.3bn Deutsche Bank $13bn Barclays $12.7bn 8.9.10,…,and still have $8bn change......which you would be able to pick up GM, Ford, Chrysler and the Honda F1 Team!

India’s export growth averaged 24.8% over the last three years, driven by strong global growth. However, over the last three months, export growth has decelerated sharply. While until recently the strong demand from emerging markets including Latin America, Emerging Europe, the Middle East and Africa ensured that export growth remained healthy, over the last three months disruptions in the macro environment of these economies have been evident. Apart from weakening demand, exports have also been affected by the lack of availability of foreign trade credit and inventory liquidation. India’s exports declined by 12.1%Y in October 2008 compared with 10.4% in September and 26.9% in August. While we expect some improvement in the second half of 2009, exports are likely to be unusually weak over the next six months. We now expect exports to decline by 5.3%Y in 2009 compared with 12.7% in 2008 (estimated) and 23.1% in 2007 Excerpt source

Well, if I want to buy a house or a Mercedes, what should I do? Earn the money. Another way, probably lousy (depending on for what you use it) is to take a loan. Now, what if, I could write my loan check - myself. Pretty similar to what if a bank could loan itself all the money it needed. Well, its nothing surprising fiat money has been around for quite a while. But this takes the cake: http://www.cnbc.com/id/28153817/ Comments of Chuck Butler: The U.S. Federal Reserve is considering issuing its own debt for the first time, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. "Fed officials have approached Congress about the move, which could include issuing bills or some other form of debt and would provide the central bank with more flexibility to tackle the financial crisis." NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE THERE, BIG BEN! This is the bailiwick of the Treasury Dept, issuing debt! You've already got the printing press for currency, and now you want to issue your...

Made a bad decision lately. Here it is. I became a member of a book store by paying 150 bucks. Now, the idea is that this store will give me a 2.5% reward points. That means I have to shell out 6000 bucks just to get my entry fee back! Ok, all is not lost, there is one more way of getting back at the store. They offer discounts upto 10% for special customers, but I know two stores (and I shop like it a lot) which offer 20% discount 365 days a year on every book. Now, there goes my only hope to retain my pride. Ok hold on, there is just one more. This store holds a sale where there are steep discounts on the books and I can buy books; the catch - no reward points. All in all, I am dumb as a dodo. I am not going to try get my 150 back, they gave me a certificate of stupidity for 150 bucks. And btw, my favorite book stalls: Premier Books and Strand Books. Premier is in Bangalore, off Church Street. Strand has branches across India. I especially love Premier and its ambience and run by a ...

The credit crisis or what started as one has effected everybody. And if there is anybody who has not been impacted, it may well be that person does not realize the extent of its impact. Like the proverbial butterfly's wing beat creating a typhoon elsewhere, this typhoon is cascading typhoons all over. This crisis is also directly impact several unrelated areas. This is putting a strain on the knowledge society as we know it. It felt strange when Bill Gates made a plea to Obama and others not to cut down on the educational aids and spending. It felt strange until the news of Tribune bankruptcy and NYT mortgage hit. Though very unlikely at this stage, the crisis could squeeze out good money away from the much needed resources for knowledge society. Imagine, if the knowledge hub like Tribune or NYT or Wikipedia or other sites were to close down. Most probably the number of sites would go down starting sometime in 2009 (most of the hosting period is for a year) that is like burning of ...

Off late there is a huge divergence. Dollar has been going up . At first it was just a simple correction. Later it was flight to quality. And still later it was deleveraging. And also unwinding of carry trade. All good and credible reasons why dollar is going up. But if flies in the face of the Austrian economics that every one seemed to have started believing. Austrian economics or monetary economics or Gold bug's pet theory suggest that as the commodity increases in supply the value attributed to it decreases. And currency is a commodity. So, is dollar. So, when the money supply of dollar is increasing in hundreds of billions and trillions in final figures, why is dollar still going up? The traditional answers don't seem to reveal anything about this unkind deviation. The sites like Kitco where I could have sensed what is going on also don't help much. The theories usually fly in the known territory. That could be one of the issues here. May be we are faced with economic...

There was a surprise early morning today, it was our dhobi . He increased his charges by cool 25%. The inflation is everywhere! ok, jokes apart; I did ask him why the increase. The reply was rather surprising, lots of coal shops have closed down it seems and he just cannot get enough coal and it is becoming expensive. If something in your brain is ticking towards a great depression story, so did mine. Just in case you dint know, there is a beautiful story (or may be fact) that highlights what happened in Great Depression. Child: Mother, why is it so cold? Mother: Because we dont have coal (to heat) C: But why dont we have coal? M: Because your father does not have a job C: Why doesn't father have a job? M: Because his coal mine shut down C: Why did coal mine shut down? M: Because there were no sales C: Why is there no sales? M: Because there is too much coal Had totally forgotten this snippet. Coal was an important industry during 1920s and 30s employing huge workforce and it did r...

Are we seeing the dollar stopping for a breath? Probably yes.