Of course nothing can be predicted about the future.  The market conditions might become better, the Egypt political crisis might be solved, the companies could come out with better results in the next few quarters, the government might get tough on graft and a few politicians & their crony businessmen might end up in jail.

BSE Sensex performance in the past 1 month (courtesy: Yahoo finance)

Meanwhile, some of the best blue chip stocks and companies with strong fundamentals have been beaten down 20-40%.  This is another of the great time for a fence sitter to invest.  I have done too.

Bought a few stocks of Sintex Industries, Punjab & Sind Bank, Kanoria Chemicals, Noida Toll Bridge and averaged out the badly battered stocks of  MIC Electronics & 3I Infotech.

At the end of last year sold off Suzlon Energy, Reliance Communications (my worst investment ever. I would never buy any Anil Ambani companies again) and Punj Lloyd (another laggard not only on the stock market, but also in business).   I had sold them off for a loss.  It would have been a bigger loss if i had held them on as all 3 of them have been beaten down very badly.

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Yup, its tough to believe that a man who lives such a colourful life, flies over the pacific and atlantic oceans in a balloon, jumps off planes, does all kinds of wierd stunts to keep his business in news was dyslexic as a kid.  He had trouble reading, was one of the worst student in class.  But started off his life running a music store, which moved on to record label (Virgin music), music business to one of the most loved airlines in the world (Virgin Atlantic) to running a telecom company (Virgin telecom) to tens of other business.

The book starts off with his exploits on trying to cross the Atlantic in a balloon where he cheats death to his childhood life and then to his music business where his label published such world class music groups like the Rolling Stones, Phil Collins, Janet Jackson etc.

The dirty tricks that British Airways use to discredit, defame and try to kill the small and fledging Virgin Atlantic is also described in vivid detail.  The end of which Branson sues the whole top brass of British Airways and gets not only monetary compensation, but also an unreserved apology from the British Ariways brass.

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson says one of his prime business criteria is “fun.” Fun made Branson a billionaire, and few business memoirs are one-billionth as fun as Branson’s, nor as niftily written. Not only does it relate his side of near-death corporate experiences, it tells how the chairman literally cheated death by gun, shipwreck, and balloon crash.

Branson’s empire–now encompassing interests in an airline, pop music, soda pop, e-commerce, and financial services–began when the dyslexic 16-year-old dropped out of school in 1968 to found the British magazine Student. His headmaster said, “I predict that you will either go to prison or become a millionaire.” Briefly imprisoned for dodging customs selling records, Branson got his first million by releasing Tubular Bells, a maverick recording all the stuffy executives rejected. (1998′s Tubular Bells III puts the series’ sales over 20 million.)

Despite wild tales of Branson’s wife-swapping and Keith Richards fleeing naked from Branson’s studio at gunpoint with another man’s woman, the most shocking parts of the memoir concern British Airways’ James Bond-like “dirty tricks” campaign against Virgin Atlantic, resulting in the biggest award for damages in English history.

Though it’s filled with famous names, witty quotes, and pulse-pounding accounts of lunatic balloon adventures, it is as a business thriller that the book really scores. His instinctive bet-the-ranch tactics could cost him all, or earn another billion. Either way, Branson will likely remain the most entertaining entrepreneur in Europe

-source: Amazon

Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
Author – Richard Branson
Pages – 416
Publisher – Crown Business

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Philip Arthur Fisher was an American stock investor who wrote this book Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits way back in 1958.  Just like Benjamin Graham’s bible of investing, The Intelligent Investor, this book is also considered to be a must read for anyone planning to invest in the stock markets.

Philip Fisher is considered a pioneer in the field of growth investing. Morningstar has called him “one of the great investors of all time”. In Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Fisher said that the best time to sell a stock was “almost never”. His most famous investment was his purchase of Motorola, a company he bought in 1955 when it was a radio manufacturer and held until his death in 2004.

Perhaps the best-known of Fisher’s followers is Warren Buffett who has said on some occasions that “he is 85% Graham and 15% Fisher”.  (source: Wikipedia)

Fisher goes on to give a lot of Do’s and Don’ts for investors.  A few of the Do’nts include

• Dont buy into promotional companies

• Dont ignore a good stock just because its traded over the counter

• Dont buy a stock just because you like the tone of its annual report

• Dont overstress diversification

• Dont be afraid to buying on a war scare

• Dont fail to consider time as well as price in buying a true growth stock

• Dont follow the crowd

Fisher also goes about sharing his ideas of how he goes about finding a growth stock.  Fisher talks about using the Scuttlebutt method to investing.  This means that the relative points of strength and weakness of each company in an industry can be obtained from a representative cross-section of the opinions of those who in one way or another are concerned with any particular company.  Also he talks about talking to the vendors, customers etc to find the correct information needed for your investment in that particular company.

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Author – Philip Arthur Fisher
Pages – 271
Publisher – John Wiley & Sons

Above picture courtesy: Nickgogerty

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Also bought more stocks of MIC Electronics & Graphite India

This year the dividend payout has been pretty good. Add to that bonus shares from both Dabur (1:1) and & TVS Motors (1:1)

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Mukesh Ambani-led RIL’s foray into the telecom sector will entail an investment of about $5 billion, for which it is open to sharing infrastructure of younger brother Anil’s group firm Reliance Communications, company officials said. The flagship firm of Ambani, who is known for making ultra-mega projects, would invest about a billion dollars for rolling out broadband services to attain a target of 100 million subscribers through the just acquired Infotel in five years, RIL top officials told analysts last night.

RIL acquired Infotel for Rs 4,800 crore on the day the Nahata group firm emerged as the sole player to have bid successfully for all-India spectrum at the end of the 16-day-long auction conducted by the government on Friday.Apart from this, the cash-rich RIL will have to pay Rs 12,872 crore to the government as the licence fee for spectrum bagged by Infotel, which would become the subsidiary of the Mukesh Ambani group’s flagship company.

Incidentally, the second largest largest telecom player, RCOM, bagged the highest number of circles along with Bharti Airtel for the 3G license auction, which concluded recently.

Read the full article here

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The situation now is mirroring the famous words said by some great soul “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is the king“.

So, what does this crisis mean to people who want to invest for the long term?  Its the ripe time to buy.  Dont pump in all your money at once.  Buy good companies in small quantities.  The market might go down further from here. Buy some now and some more when the markets go down further.  Never try to time to market.  The markets might not go down further from here, and if you buy now, you would have still got some great stocks for cheap.

Am a big follower of Warren Buffett when he says “Buy when there is blood on the streets“.  It might not be complete mayhem now, but there are some great companies available for cheap.

I have bought a few more shares of the following companies

Alok Industries

Bharti Airtel

MIC Electronics

Punj Lloyd

I really hope that the markets fall further so that i can pick up some more good stocks at some great prices.

Important Note: Please dont follow my buy/sell advise blindly.  Do your own research or follow the advise of a certified financial planner before investing.  Iam not responsible for any profits or losses you make by following my investment strategy.

Above price charts courtesy:  Yahoo Finance

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Apart from Argentina, the Issue Group enjoys market leadership position in hair colours in Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay including a presence in Brazil.

The deal estimated to be around Rs.230 crore provides a self-sustaining platform for GCPL’s ambitions in haircare and household insecticides segments in Latin America, GCPL said.

Full article here

Jindal Steel and Power (JSPL) on Thursday announced the acquisition of the Oman-based Shadeed Iron & Steel for $464 million.

Its project at Sohar in the sultanate is setting up capacity to produce 1.5 million tonnes of hot briquetted iron a year.

The Indian company’s director, Sushil Maroo, told media the acquisition was part of plans to expand operations overseas. “The Sohar plant is a gas-based unit. We are also setting up some gas-based steel units. It is a strategic fit for us,” he added. The acquisition was made through JSPL’s subsidiary, Jindal Steel & Power Mauritius.

Full article here

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“There is a drop both in the number and the quality of Ph.D. applications, more noticeably in the last two years.” says Anand Sivasubramaniam, professor of computer science and engineering, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). “This year, of the more than 700 applications we received from prospective graduate students worldwide, the number of applications from top Indian institutes such as the IITs and IISc was in the single digit. Less than three years ago, this number was in the double digits,” he says. An article this February in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported a 50 percent decline in the number of new Indian graduate students this Autumn at the University of Georgia. The computer science department at California State University (Long Beach) saw a spate of prospective master’s students from India abandoning their application process midway.

“It’s the beginning of a trend, an indicator that something is happening and that Indian students are not coming here like they did in the past,” laments Dr. Nathan Bell, director of research at the Council.
You don’t have to look far to find the reasons for this. With the US economy in a shambles, there are severe budget cuts at state-funded universities. The prospects of obtaining a full waiver of tuition fees are slim. Dwindling grant money also means that local students stand a better chance of getting a research fellowship than foreign students. So, many Indian students end up working for free. Last semester, Atulya Prasad, a master’s and Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at New York’s Stony Brook University, worked as a research assistant sans the stipend.

The situation doesn’t improve upon graduation. The growing political backlash against the loss of American jobs, and the rising anti-immigrant sentiment means that getting a work visa — let alone getting a job — is as tough as it can get. So much so that now, even the lure of a US-located son-in-law is starting to fade. “The classic America-educated son-in-law syndrome is almost nonexistent as students, especially from tier 2 schools, hardly get jobs in the US after they graduate,” says Satyavrata Samavedi, a Ph.D. candidate in tissue engineering at the Virginia Institute of Technology (Virginia Tech).

Full article here

Above picture courtesy: Associated Content

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United Spirits’ brands include

Dalmore
Jura
Whyte & Mackay
Black Dog
Antiquity
Signature
Royal Challenge
McDowell’s No.1
Celebration Rum
Bouvet Ladubay
Pinky
Romanov
White Mischief
Kingfisher

United Spirits Limited (USL), the flagship company of The UB Group, today announced that it has crossed the milestone of clocking a sales volume of 100 million cases for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010. This achievement makes United Spirits the world’s second-largest spirits company by volumes, dislodging Paris-headquartered Pernod Ricard.

Key Highlights:

• The retail sales value of the spirits portfolio sales of United Spirits for the 100 million cases sold is Rs. 30,000 Crores

• USL’s 100 million cases contributed Government revenue of Rs. 18,000 Crores through excise and other levies

• USL has dominant market share and the fastest growing brands in most key segments

• USL has outperformed global competitors with USL brands growing 14% while the world’s top 100 spirits brands collectively grew only 1% and this when 18 of the top 25 global premium brands lost ground

• In the last 25 years, USL has sold a total of 740 million cases

• United Spirits launched Black Dog 18 YO in the super premium Bottled — In-India (BII) scotch category to further ramp up its market share

• The company upped the ante in the premium IMFL segment with the introduction of 100% pure grain-based McDowell’s Platinum whisky.

Full article here

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And the infrastructure push just for the next one year is $140 billion (approx 7 lakh crores). Once in the lifetime of the growth of a country you can see such an explosive growth.  If you can identify the correct companies and make investments, it will give you the kind of returns which you would have never imagined.

India is roaring towards an infrastructure boom and plenty of jobs will be created like never before as capital expenditure in the next financial year is expected to surge up to a whopping Rs 700,000 crore or about 10 per cent of the expected gross domestic product of about Rs 70,00,000 crore. Companies in auto, power, railways, irrigation, airports and ports sectors are on a major expansion spree and Indian banks and financial institutions are pooling in massive resources.

But this may not be enough and some bankers expect companies to access other financing avenues such as capital market and overseas borrowing. Yet others feel that financial closure of many projects might have already been achieved and the implementation might not lead to fresh sanctions.

There is an overall economic recovery, thanks to improving operating profits and favourable equity market conditions this year. Almost every infrastructure sector is witnessing investments driven largely due to government support.

Both Crisil and the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) have nearly doubled their capital expenditure (capex) estimates for the next fiscal year to a whopping Rs 6,60,000 crore and Rs 7,00,000 crore, respectively.

“Every capacity addition activity leads to job creation, it cannot be a jobless growth. I cannot put a number on how many jobs would be created from the projected Rs 7,00,000 crore capex spending during 2010-11, but for every industrial job created, the multiplier effect in form of other jobs like contracts, etc, is 1:4,” says Ajit Ranade, chief economist of Aditya Birla group.

Some of these investments include

NTPC – 16,400 crore investment to expand coal based electricity production by 4100 MW
Mahindra & Mahindra – 2500 crores at Chakan near Pune to make 3 lakh vehicles annually
Tata Motors – 1500 crores at Sanand in Gujarat to make the Nano car
Renault Nissan – $990 million (approx 4500 crores) in Chennai to make 4 lakh cars annually
Maruti Suzuki – 2500 crores investment in Rohtak, Haryana
JSW Energy – 4200 crores
GVK Power – 3200 crores
Tata realty – 1370 for highways
IRB – 1824 crores for highways
Jindal – 47,000 crores for coal to liquid fuel plant & thermal power plant in Orissa
Tata -  21,000 crores project in Kalinganagar, Orissa

“There would be huge money coming as foreign direct investment in the next fiscal while the external commercial borrowing norms are expected to be relaxed further. Besides, India’s savings rate is 34-35 per cent of GDP, which translates into huge savings at the projected Rs 70,00,000 crore GDP for fiscal 2010-11. Hence I think, despite having high borrowing plans from the India Inc, capex spending by private and public sectors could be easily absorbed,” says Ranade of Aditya Birla.

Read the full articles here and here

Above picture courtesy: Abhijitkar

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