Author Archives: ZerotoBillion

I’ve not been this bullish on a stock for a very long time. This is what we live for in the investing world. When what you have been silently dreaming about appears to happen in reality, on corporate announcements about the results of the quarter gone by, and then the stock moves up like you have always been borderline fantasising; you sense the sweet scent of success.

FBSE came out with its numbers two days ago and what a sensational set it was. The quarterly revenue were over ₹650 crores with PAT over ₹265 crores. That means that it was now making more in profits in a quarter than it used to make in a year until one year ago!

The Equity derivatives are now bringing home over ₹100 crores in revenue every month from near zero for the entire year! That’s close to ₹1200 crore revenue for the year, assuming zero growth whereas it’s growing every month. The star MF is clocking close to ₹50 crore revenue a quarter! So for this year; it won’t be a surprise if it does close to ₹3000 crore in revenue and over ₹1000 crores in PAT.

For a company which never did a 1000 crore revenue in its 150 years of history to go to almost 3000 crore and then onwards mean that the markets are going to finally restate the stock at a P/E it deserves. It’s growing at over 100% y-o-y and can’t be trading at 35-40 multiple but would soon be doing at least 65-70 multiple. Plus, with profits at over 1000 crores, BSE should at least be over ₹70,000 crores market cap in a year or less and that means that the stock would be at least worth ₹5,000/-. It means that on a per bonus basis, the stock would then be worth ₹15,000/-

Just wait and ponder. In 2018; it was trading at ₹700; during Covid it gone down to ₹275 and even until 2021 October; it was sub ₹800 levels. From there to where it is now; this has been the biggest story of my career and I’m sure, the next double will come much ahead of my limited understanding.

But the game has just begun. NSE is doing close to ₹2500 PAT a quarter and BSE can easily be doing that much in five years time. At 50-60x multiple, BSE should be worth close to $50B market cap or close to ₹425000 crores. That means BSE will be worth over ₹30,000/- per share at that price. So the game I’m playing is at least a ten times in five- six years time.

This time, the entire bad news which would have hurt the stocks made it correct 35% in three months. It’s still down over 20% from its April 2024 peak.

For those worried about the F&O taxation and regulations, I’ve only the example of tobacco companies to offer. ITC was India’s biggest wealth creator since 1980-2014 with all the taxes going up in tandem. Altria , the maker of Marlboro was the best stock of the past century in the USA, turning $1 into $2.65 Million between 1925-2013. Yes, it was worth a million times.

So for anyone worried about taxation should look at that and ask himself if it’s all worth it.!

Overall, I can’t even complain about the markets as the much needed shakeups are arriving regularly to wake all of us up. The Indian story is well and truly underway and my constant belief, that by the end of this decade, the Indian markets and India as a country will be truly different are intact.

PS: my other love, Tata Motors has came out with the new Curvv and am sure with the kind of numbers it’s delivering consistently, we see a double in two years!

Stay bullish on 🇮🇳, stay invested!

PS:

As I update this blog, BSE trades at ₹3825/-, over 60% from the time the original blog was written less than a month and a half ago! This move has only made me more humble and grateful and I truly am! This stock is funnily so less covered that I am always anxious when it’s in the news.

Remember, the true big, huge money is made in sitting. From the absolute covid lows of now adjusted price of ₹95, the stock is up over 40 times! Yes, 40x in 4.5 years and still we hardly give it the credit it deserves. This is what the supposedly smart money does- chase momentum. I’m proud of having owned BSE since August 2018 and having ridden it all the way!

BSE now is over ₹50k crore market capitalisation and I won’t be surprised if it goes up 8-10x from here in this decade itself!

Stay bullish, get rich!

Disclaimer- The views expressed in this blog are personal opinions and are shared for educational and informational purposes only. They should not be considered as financial, investment, or legal advice. I write primarily to document my own learning and thinking process. I am not a SEBI-registered investment adviser, research analyst, or financial influencer, and no part of this blog should be seen as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Please do your own research or consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

This was the epitome of when whatever which could go wrong, did go wrong and then got worse. The Budget turned out to be a dose of heavy realism for the markets- higher Short Term gains tax; higher long term gains tax, higher STT on F&O- it was the recipe of a perfect disaster. And guess what happened, the markets collapsed in unison. It collapsed for a total of one hour and then, it roared back up like a phoenix.

Those of us who have been in the markets for sometime remember that fateful day in February 2018 when Arun Jaitley introduced the LTCG after a hiatus of one decade plus which led to the end of the then mega run in mid and small caps and there was a total panic in the markets which didn’t recover until after the corporate tax cuts in September 2019! One must have to have lived through that peril when the pessimism about the India story was immense. And the markets tanked and just didn’t recover. It took four years for the small and mid caps to come back to their 2017 highs, long after the Covid Period was over.

So what happened today! The taxes have been raised to an even more higher levels and the LTCG rate hike was completely out of syllabus. Everybody almost desperately wanted the F&O tax but higher LTCG and STCG- no way. It was the killer punch from the government. How the hell did markets recover?

The answer lies in two things- one, we are in the middle of a structural multi year sustained bull run which is going to rise above all walls of worries and two, this is the bottom for the market related stocks- the BSE/ Angel one types.

I’m calling it with my neck out as the absolute multi year bottom for BSE stock. you’ll not get this stock at anywhere close to 2000₹ for a very long time now. Why do I think so?

BSE is the director beneficiary of market activity as its volumes are rising since this is the place where trading happens, apart from NSE. The markets have made new lifetime highs but the price of BSE is effectively at October 2023 levels, having corrected 35% since May 2024! All the things which could go wrong, did go wrong- the SEBI tax demand which led to that famous 30% drop; news of higher F&O taxation, potential curbs by SEBI and the stock went into hiding. The poster boy of their post 2020 bull run collapsed while the markets made new highs repeatedly. This was also the time when it consistently grew its business side and achieved over 20%+ market share on a sustained basis in Q1 2025 and is on track to do over 25% in July 2024 in terms of volume in F&O. It’s cash volume is up over 50% YoY and it’s F&O volumes are rising at 10% month on month basis.

So I was convinced that the peak of the bad news will mark the end of the panic bottom and today was the absolute panic- 2105₹ post announcement of the budget which recovered to almost 2295 an hour later. It is obvious only in the hindsight but in my limited understanding of to markets, this is how bottoms are made.

The other newsmaker of the day was ITC! It’s a core holding for me and I was raising my positions all through the year and the stock is now clearly on track for at least 700+ levels. It’s the absolute best stock to own currently and I’m in love with its dividends!

Coming back to dividends, the newest member of the five digit club OFSS is still trading at 2.5% yield! It has been the fastest tripler of my career and with IT back in fashion, it won’t be a surprise if it doubles from here, at the very least!

Of course everything I say is with a huge ownership bias but anyone who has read this blog since inception knows that going back to the dark days of Covid pandemic, I was convinced that we are at the cusp of something incredible and what journey it has been! By the end of this decade, it won’t be a surprise if we go up 2-3x on index levels!

Stay bullish on India, Budgets or no budgets, the bulls won’t budge!

Disclaimer- The views expressed in this blog are personal opinions and are shared for educational and informational purposes only. They should not be considered as financial, investment, or legal advice. I write primarily to document my own learning and thinking process. I am not a SEBI-registered investment adviser, research analyst, or financial influencer, and no part of this blog should be seen as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Please do your own research or consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

In lives of men and in nations, there aren’t very many moments which are truely historical in the sense the world is never the same again. Tomorrow, we are at the cusp of one such moment when the Indian polity, as we have known hitherto will never be the same again.

With the incumbent government winning a third term with a full majority, the Bhartiyakaran of the Indian state will be complete. We will break shackles of the left-leaning, pseudo socialist and anti Bhartiya narrative which had ruled the nation for over 80% of the post independence period.

This will be the beginning of an era when the India will be run by a system which takes prides in the Bhartiyata of our culture; which puts the safety of our nation borders first and is hell bent on retaking our rightful place at the Big Boys table on the global arena; which wants India to have the best public infrastructure, which is striving to free the country from the malaise of deep rooted inefficiencies and ofcourse, is not shy of the cultural roots of our great land.

By the time this government completes its term in 2029, half the bureaucracy at the lower to mid level would have no idea how the babus used to be the Kings in the old days of socialistic planning societies. The country would have moved past the days of power shortage, bad airports and filthy railway stations, potholed roads and a mobile connectivity only in the name for over 15 years. The nation would be a thumping Third Largest Economy, with over a Trillion dollars of Exports; the mega expressways connecting the citiess would already be operational; Bullet train would be up and running; Indian households would be running on Solar energy and the Indian consumer the toast of the world through its insatiating lust for the luxury goods.

Come tomorrow evening and we will have the political stability at the very top for the next five years wherein we can harness on the mega foundations laid down in the previous five years. The highways which are currently under construction will be completed at a faster pace and the economy which has finally moved out of its perpetual repair mode can finally take giant strides forward.

The Wait at Ayodhya took over five hundred years; Kashi and Mathura will not take that long. Our temples and public places are getting cleaner at also maintained better; The rise of jihadi element in Europe must be a wake up call for all those high on the Woke opium. India cannot afford another lost decade and I’m so happy that the Elephant’s dance has finally begun.

Today’s markets only reflected part of what is to come over the next decade. This will be and is most likely to the Indian decade like the US had in the 1980s. Our companies are growing at a fast clip and the market capitalisation will grow at an even faster clip. Our markets are already the fifth largest in terms of capitalisation and we will rigthtfully lay claim to be the second largest in another five ten years. The Indian middle class is only waking up to the equity cult. Once the markets move up and the FIIs come in, as they bloody have to with their hats in hand, the Indian markets will experience a bull run unheard of in the history. Never before in the history that a $3.5 Trillion economy growing at 7-8% a year was so underallocated by the large Global funds.

With the Chinese weights in the Emerging market indices going down, India is already close to 17% weightage which will only go up from here. Our Mutual fund industry is hardly $700Billion in size whereas Blackstone alone manages over $10 Trillion. Once you have the sovereign wealth funds lining up for a piece of action, the daily funds inflow will be close to $3-5 Billion for years to come.

I see a bull run like never before. Like Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has maintained, the mother of all bull markets is ahead of us in India and there will be a Tsunami of flows rushing inside the country. I’ve unwavering belief that our markets will triple by the time 2030 is here and most stocks selling for peanuts will be worth their weights in gold. If you’re on the right side of the India story, you will make 10x in 5 years or less.

The Bet on India is beginning to work! The amount of wealth creation which will take place in the rest of this decade will be cumulatively more than what has been made in the past 75 years put together. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s final figures, can you!

Disclaimer- The views expressed in this blog are personal opinions and are shared for educational and informational purposes only. They should not be considered as financial, investment, or legal advice. I write primarily to document my own learning and thinking process. I am not a SEBI-registered investment adviser, research analyst, or financial influencer, and no part of this blog should be seen as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Please do your own research or consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

Not everyday you come across a book which changes your perception of life. I’ve discussed at length how Richer wiser happier by William Green allowed me to make bigger concentrated bets and hold my winners for longer.

I recently finished Billionaires’ Row by Katherine Clarke and I’ve not stopped obsessing over it ever since. It has completely transformed the way I have thought about making it big in life by positioning of a North Star in what big actually is!

First the book- it’s the story of Skyscrappers built in New York post the global financial crisis in 2008 who share certain characteristics- they’re all at least a 1000 feet high, are all overlooking the Central Park and are of course, only available for the absolute wealthiest. Not for the 0.1%, but for the 0.001%!

I’m an absolute believer in the art of making money and have huge respect for anyone who has built generational wealth from scratch, on his own, by fair means and by paying full taxes. If only you’ve it in white can you buy a Ferrari and paint the town red. So my rock stars are the likes of Bill Ackman, Stan Druckenmiller, Mohnish Pabrai and towering over all of them is the late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.

They all have one thing in common- they’re all first generational billionaires( not sure if Pabrai is one but he’s at least good for a hundred million). Also, they’re all into the markets- stocks mostly.

So when you’re in the field of finance, be it in banks, NBFC, hedge fund or a financial regulator, you’re all part of the game of managing money. The winners take home the most and the rest are left with peanuts. So for anyone reading this and saying, oh I am not in the race of making million dollars a year is being a fool. If you’re in the financial sector, you’re naturally competing with someone who is making a million dollar a year at least. And more often than not, you’re more qualified than him as well or have better understanding of the rules and the game also. So if you’re trading dollars and making a lakh a month and are fooling yourself that you’re doing great, the person on the other side of the trade is doing the same work but is making ten fifty hundred times more than you do and is happy to call you Sir while taking home the moolah!

Financial sector is a giant trading ring. Everyday you’re competing with each other to make money. You’re either playing or umpiring or just being a spectator but in the end the money is right there for taking. And if you’re not playing to win, you’re just being dumb!

In this context, understanding the full potential of the game is essential. So when I read about $50Million homes being normal, when I read that home by Ackman worth $90Million plus $20M for interiors, I understood wah making big smells like. When I read that if you had $10M, you might not be even able to buy the smallest condominium in there, I understood how small we are playing now. I understood why all the private bankers and hedge fund guys are so polite when talking to someone from the government or the regulators because they’re simply massaging their ego since they just don’t want anyone else competing for the fat bonus at the year end.

So this is why I realised unless you’re in it to make hundreds of millions, you’re not even playing. A person with five crore portfolio is like a club level cricketer playing with tennis ball while the real boys are playing Test Cricket. Just imagine the distance one can and has to go to achieve some semblance of success or in other words, make it big. 🍻

It’s been three years since I started this blog and it’s time to do a celebrational post. No, not for the blog but for the markets!

So the markets are at a new all time high and are digesting a full bumper majority government at the centre, like most of us are. Personally, it’s going to be a phenomenal result because the kind of infrastructure, both digital and physical has been put in motion in the past ten years must not just be brought to completion but also to fruition. India just can’t suffer another lost decade of appeasement, corruption and lawlessness like the one it had between 2004-14.

So in the past three years, markets have virtually doubled from around 11-12k to almost 23k nifty while a lot of stocks have been sensational multibaggers.

I was fully convinced since four years ago on April 24,2020 that we are in the midst of a multi year mega bull run which will make some of us who dare to dream rich beyond imagination and the same has been beginning to take shape. Every single blog since then has stated that if you bet big on India, you’ll make tons of money and it has been vindicated ever since.

Every bit of dip must be bought, every fall to be celebrated as a discounted buying price and staying invested is the name of the game. Anyone who has remained invested has at least seen his portfolio gone up at least three to four times in the past three years. I’ve said this before, it’s not the percentage gain which matters but the multiple fold wealth which results in a life changing wealth building.

This is a full bloom mature bull run taking its shape where now everyone’s convinced that we are in a bull market. If you read my blogs since 2021, you’ll see that I was talking about the phases of bull run and how crowd psychology tells you as to where are we in the rally.

Post June 4, with the official announcement of return of the current dispensation, you’ll see everyone including the FIIs turning big time positive on Indian markets. The infrastructure story, the defence story is all in the play and people have made tons of money.

Some people ask me why I haven’t bought into any of the DLFs, the HAL, Canara Bank or any other metal mining plays etc. This is the topic I wanted to share with you all today

The end game for all of us in the markets is to get rich. It doesn’t matter how you make a million dollars as long as you make one. Every big investor has made his big money in different stocks. Warren Buffet had American Express and Coke; he never had Google/Meta/Nvidia etc. Jhunjhunwala made his billion dollars in Titan and Crisil; he never had HDFC Bank or Eicher or page. So would you say that they missed the bus? No, right.

So everyone who’s in the markets for over five years ( seven plus for me now) will discover his own trading style, investment philosophy amd it may be extremely different from other equally successful imvestors.

I began my career with the PSUs, the metal mining stocks etc and even though I did make money, I was never comfortable owning anything which made me uneasy- a NALCO can fall twenty percent due to some metal news overnight; an IOC will fall thirty percent a day ( it did in October 2018 when Jaitley announced ₹ 1 , yes just ₹1 subsidy in petrol prices)or a Vedanta can go down twenty percent on a corporate governance matter.

We are in that phase of the market where people have forgotten how these companies languished at decadal lows for years together and those who are jumping over each other to buy Vedanta or third rate real estate players will do well to remember that in the eventual bear market which follows, DLF didn’t cross its 2007 peak until 2024! Yes, 17 years!

So my investment philosophy includes three essential elements

1. Low debt good, zero debt excellent- anyone who doesn’t owe anything to others can’t go bankrupt!

2. Corporate governance must be tried and tested and should only be of the most pristine standards.

3. It must be a positive secular aspiration Indian growth story

So for all the companies I’ve bought and held. TaMo had huge debt concerns but is now on path to be net debt free this year and it’s being shown in results as well. Reliance has debt but has at least three lakh crores in cash so that’s not an issue.

I just don’t want any company who can either go bankrupt due to debt or bad management. And for the love of PSUs, I just am too capitalistic in my approach to believe that they can actually deliver once the frenzy subsides.

My investment thesis is simple- India is getting rich, Indians richer. They’re in love with luxury, better lives- cars and goods combined. They’re also madly in love with the stock markets as essentially we Indians are entrepreneurial people. Plus, the savings are increasingly being channelised to markets and it’s on an irreversible generational shift.

So you buy whatever is the core beneficiary of this trend which will outlast every war, election, World Cup frenzy etc.

This allows me to also have a multi year long term approach which helps calm my nerves when BSE fell 18% that day or when TaMo went down 12% post staggering results. It allows me to hold AMC or an ITC beyond the downetrends and collect dividends as and when due.

PS- BSE recently made a new high of ₹3264 which is pre bonus adjustment ₹9800/-. Please go and read my three year old blogs when I had said that this will be at least worth ₹10000/-. The victory is sweet!

TaMo is on track to produce Assembled in India Range Rovers beginning yesterday and it’s a huge move towards catering to the aspiration of Indians who are now in love with their luxury SUVs. Don’t pay too much attention to the short term price movements, it will at least be a double in three years from now.

So I reiterate what I’ve said ever since- bet big on India, it works!

Four years ago, on March 13, 2020, we witnessed the first circuit down on Indian markets since 2008. The COVID crisis as it came to be known had officially begun though on that day, it was more an oil shock which led to the capitulation. Yes Bank had failed a week prior and Saudis have started the oil price war which led to the price of Brent crude settling in the negative territory, albeit technically.

It was crazy time. You start your day at 4 AM with markets falling in Australia to 6.30M when SGX nifty fell in Singapore to 9:15 AM when you watched your markets fell 10% like a pack of cards without breaking a sweat. Stocks collapsed in unison and the mega caps like Reliance dropped 10-15% intraday for fun. The portfolio lost 40% in less than three weeks and it was crazy times! Nifty which was almost 11K in the last week of February 2020 went to 7500 intraday low on March 24!

Anyways, today is the fourth anniversary of the crazy day and markets have given a salute by falling across the board, with mid and small cap indices falling 5% each. The froth in PSU and select other smaller companies has cleared out a bit where some stocks have corrected almost 40%!

The erstwhile darlings such as Angel one are down 40% too and this is a sign that there is a strong churn going in the market when not everyone who has a demat account will make a million bucks in a month.

So what do I think now? Well, today’s fall was a brutal capitulation when the screen showed a near vertical collapse all day long, barring a minor recovery at midday. Is it the beginning of a bear market? No. Is the top in place? Absolutely no!

I’m a student of market history and market psychology and in my limited understanding, tops are not made when the SEBI chief warns of a bubble and the indices correct the next day like good obedient students. The tops are not made when everyone is worried if the bubble is being built and how valuations are frothy and why there should be a correction. Tops are and will be made when after two years of 40-50% index returns, at around 35-40k NIFTY the then SEBI chief or someone as prominent will defend the valuations and say that all’s well on Dalal street and in their opinion, the markets are likely to go higher.

This is nothing but a textbook bull market correction which will scare the hell out of you and many others who will miss the strong rebounds we are likely to see and then curse themselves for selling out at the bottom.

For me, the stocks which are not falling as much as their peers are going to lead the rebound and the next leg of this rally. BSE is the absolute king of the post covid run and it will be a one lakh crore company, a darling of all MF and PMS and FII portfolios in three five years and then be talked like Bajaj finance does today. Please remember, Bajaj finance was hardly 100₹ in 2014, 1000₹ in 2017 and corrected by over a third multiple times before hitting the absolute top of 8000₹!

Tata Motors is the HDFC Bank of this decade which has gone over 15x since COVID, the highest a large cap had and will see its weight in the index go from currently 1.7% to over 4% in two three years. This story is a secular decades run and the only thing which can derail this is if the electric cars stop selling in India.

The other joker of the pack is OFSS! It has been my fastest doubler and the way it’s holding up, it won’t be a surprise if it becomes the Nestle or Page of this decade! The thesis of strong growth, low float and great management is playing out very well!

It’s not on the days when everyone makes money that you give a bold call. It’s days like today which separates the man from the boys. I’m strongly bullish and if I have any money left, I’d go out and buy at a frenetic pace. When the screen bleeds, you buy stocks! This correction will be over sooner than you imagine and the rebound will be sharp. It won’t be long that the portfolios which are down 10-12% from recent highs, go up 30-40% in six months time!

PS- the Indian economy is growing like crazy. People are spending to buy better stuffs like anything. One of my friends told me about a 2023 Range Rover Velar which was sold to another buyer at no discount to the ex-showroom price after a year! In a normal world, it would have gone for at least 15% discount! The India story is real and kicking. Stay bullish, let the screen bleed red!

This week I have completed seven years in the markets. Back in 2017, I first bought some shares of SunPharma, HUL and Asian Paints as my first investments. That was also my 25th year and I was still two years away from declaring to self that investing will be my final destination.

The journey from zero in 2017, from making first 20-30k ₹ investments to now having quite a few multi-baggers in the bag has been phenomenally good. God has been kind and the journey has made me a better investor and thrown me on a lifelong pursuit of knowledge.

I titled this blog as Zero to Million for reminding myself two things- one, I started at zero which keeps me grounded and thankful for everything I have and two, a million dollars is the absolute million a normal investor must strive for. It also is a way of telling myself that what I have currently is not even a fraction of what I am supposed to make in this market and that keeps me off from losing focus and wanting to do more.

One of the most important points I have learnt is that a professional fund manager can never equal a person like me who is investing for the sheer joy of it. If you’re doing it for a salary and I’m doing it for fun and passion, I’m going to be better than you hands down. I am not often into self-praise but when you realise that some people with fancy degrees suck at basic investing is not because they’re not smart but because they lack the zeal of learning whatever there is!

For example, if a person with a lot of finance degrees can’t understand that a balance sheet is fudged and its implications are horrendous, he or she will never appreciate what bad governance can do to a company because unfortunately, governance cannot be taught and can only be learnt. Here’s an example:

Over the years, I have made some great investments and some terrible ones. Reliance Home Finance went from ₹105 to ₹0.95 in three years and yours truly lost 99%. So was the case with Yes Bank when I lost my shirt. This was all due to bad governance and nothing else. The balance sheet will never scream a fraud; you need to decipher through the arcane world of nuances in the notes to accounts.

I got off the PSU basket in 2021 for I realised that even if they will go up, like they have these days, I am not the kind of investor who will like to sleep well with a NALCO or an IOC with the fear of a news announcement from the ministry bringing an end to the party . It’s essentially a case of luck that the sector is doing well and people are going gaga but I have learnt a lesson- essentially it’s about what not to do in the markets is all there is to do!

So my investing style now encompasses to worry early, and worry a lot about the bear markets. You can’t survive for a decade if you can’t survive two bear markets. And thus the maxim, a company with no debt can’t go bankrupt. So this is one of the reason I love the stock ITC-Colgate-HUL type for they are there through the rainy days.

Investing is about longevity- longevity requires patience, grinding it out alone for years together for one multi-bagger to emerge through multiple suzlon types!

PS- Oracle has been my fastest doubler, almost on the verge of a tripler in a year. The story is beautiful, one of P/E rerating of the entire sector along with earnings expansion after a decade! Can it be a 15000₹ stock? Who knows but I do pray.🙏

This was an eventful week, even if you’re not a Paytm shareholder! Markets killed all the naysayers and put sellers on Friday with a sharp reversal in what until then looked like an uninterrupted move on the upside. Let’s talk about a few things one by one.

TaMo has come out with unbelievably good set of numbers which makes the current price of ₹880/-deliriously cheap. On a trailing basis, it’s hardly trading at 18-19 PE and like I mentioned in the past post, it’s on its way to 2000₹. Two related things have happened; one, it finally crossed Maruti’s market capitalisation after 8 years and two, it now has 14th highest weight in Nifty 50 index which I believe will go only upwards from here. The stars are aligning and with the additional production kicking in full throttle from its Ford Sanand plant, the party is now truly on.

Personally, it has been a huge multibagger and the taste of this victory is very sweet and full of money!

BSE is releasing its Q3 numbers on Monday and the Friday volumes are on a tear. At over 3.56 lakh crore notional turnover, it is on its way to do close to 20% of the market which will allow the thesis to play out completely.

Now let’s come to Paytm. In my view, it’s not going to stop at 400 or 300 but will go down to a low two digit figure in the medium term. It’s a horrible time to be a BCCI sponsor, along with Byjus but when too much money is chasing too little brains, people tend to behave as if they’re gods, when nobody is. I had long maintained that Byjus deserved to go to zero and it’s now trying to raise money at 99% discount. Read this again- it was valued privately at $22Billion and is now trying to raise money at $220 million. It’s like a stock trading at ₹100 going to ₹1/-.

If I have one piece of advice, stay off Paytm for you’ll be burnt trying to value hunt here. When the Revenue Secretary talks of money laundering charges, it’s a horrible piece of information.

I am only waiting for all these great money managers who were gung ho on Paytm until last month trying to explain how they always saw it coming.

Currently, I’m reading a book titled Chaos Kings by Scott Patterson and it’s possibly the best financial book since I the Big Short. It’s about a hedge fund Universa whose idea is to lose small money during good times but make exponential returns when the crash happens. They made over 4200% returns in three months of Covid in March 2020! Yes, over 42 times of a their money!

The principle of avoiding large irreversible losses makes a lot of sense to me and this is one reason, I’ve begun to fret about being in absolutely debt free, free cash throwing dividend heavy companies in my portfolio. I love the secular themes, the decadal stories like HDFC AMC and Reliance which in my opinion will be up 5-10x in this decade.

A large part of your effort should be to survive in the next crash and if you, like me are hundred percent invested, it makes sense to be absolutely certain that a price drop in your stocks is a buying opportunity and not a cause of concern to your financial well being. And no company which isn’t leveraged can go broke! Thus, an ITC or a Colgate survive for centuries while a Paytm rise to the sky and then in flames, all in a matter of a few years!

Longevity is precious and the companies which are alive and thriving for decades deserve that much respect, doesn’t matter what an Ashneer Grover say. The truth is, people like him or a Vijay Shekhar Sharma deserved to make a lot of money for the work they did. They, however, made a few hundred times more than they deserved and could handle. This, corrupted their very idea of looking at the world and the accompanying arrogance was born. So the next time you hear a person who has suddenly become wildly rich, be a bit cautious!

PS- JLR said its highest end Range Rover is selling like hot cake. The car and thus the stock, is aspirational!

How can’t I not brag about this one! I believe I picked this up exactly one year ago, in January 2023 at just below 3000 and slowly built up through the year. And what a move it has been! Up from around 4500 to over ₹7000/- in three days! This has been the fastest doubler of my career and I am so very proud of myself 😋

It was a pretty easy stock pick to be honest. It had a fantastic dividend yield of then over 6% with one of the lowest P/E of around 15 at around 3000-3500 levels and had nothing wrong with it. Its parent is the global giant Oracle corp, does fantastic recurring revenue business of selling banking software to large banks which throws in annual payments with no incremental costs and most importantly, the stock had done nothing for almost 10 years.

I believe I have hit the sweet spot in my journey. Once a stock which gets derated spends enough time doing nothing and tires people off; shows multiple false breakouts and then goes down again; increases its profitability and thereby its dividend yield over time and has irritated its investors so much that people aren’t willing to buy at any price is the perfect time to get in.

It sounds very easy but is extremely gruelling and nerve wrecking to stand against the cumulative wisdom of the crowds. It wasn’t easy to buy ITC in 2021 June when it refused to move above 220 for ages; it was horrifying to add to Tata Motors all the way down from 430 in January 2018 to 60₹ in 2020 covid lows and it was excruciating to keep adding BSE when for three years in August 2018- August 2018, the absolute return was zero!

So everything looks great in the hindsight but if it actually was so easy, everybody would be rich!

Investing is simple but not easy. You have to hold on to your convictions against the price action, for years together. The company might do everything right but the market just doesn’t recognise it or worse, refuses to even acknowledge. It on the other hand keeps taking less brilliant companies to fuzzy heights and everybody thinks you are nuts holding to a dumb stock.

Well, the true test of the investor is in these times. Except OFSS, every multi-bagger which I have took off in the fourth year of holding when it gave me zero to negative 40% in the first three! So I don’t even worry if the stock doesn’t move for a year or two. I just don’t like the idea of selling out on price action as that’s the cardinal sin of long term investing.

I only have one regret of not building up the position of OFSS double the one I currently have. Well, that’s the problem of investing. Your ideas are more than the money you can put in. And your top three positions will always invariably be added more because they’re there for a reason. I am however sure that the rally in OFSS is exactly about the low float plus low ownership which I had elaborated in a previous blog about how BSE was benefitting from such a move.

In case of OFSS, there’s hardly any share available in the market and thus the scarcity premium is working to our maximum advantage. It alaways happen the same way. It still remains cheap compared to its peers and with a profit jump of 70%, it’s expected dividend will top ₹250-270 this year and that’s a four per cent yield even now! At an EPS of around 270, it’s still trading at 25x almost trailing earnings and with its growth rate, remains a fantastic buy. The leader of the COVID tech bull run was Tata Elxsi and LTI; OFSS might do the same this time! And if the PE are rating does happen, you can’t rule out a 60-80x multiple or a ₹17000-20000₹ stock price! Who knows!

PS- I now believe that the erstwhile dear ones like the HDFC-Kotak-BajajFin and Asian Paints-Berger are going to go through the decade of no return period. People are going to be so tired of holding that maybe in three years, I’d be writing a post about how I’m adding Asian paints to my portfolio!

I’ve been torn to decide as to which stock does I really love as the third best idea. The first two are clearly BSE and TaMo and BSE wins hands down for it was a micro cap when I began to invest and it still is a small cap. My bet on TaMo can’t be said to have discovered the stock for it has been the part of Sensex ever since the inception of Sensex!

There are some investors who pride themselves on the idea of having discovered a stock and they come on TV and keep repeating the fact that they’re the ones who have discovered HDFC Bank and Nestles and Eicher and Page. I mean seriously? How can you discover a publicly listed company! That idea is a formality in self-aggrandisement. Just watch TV and people, especially the Saurabh Mukerjee types come on TV and say they have discovered the beauty of a Nestle or an Astral. It works like this- some people do take a contra bet and buy distressed stocks or the out of favour large caps or unloved small caps. They make the first double or triple for the stock does well on its merits. The Stock then starts to appear on every screener and charts as it beats the markets. Then the momentum players get in and so does these PMS walas who buy when the tide is rising and then hype the stocks as the solution to AIDS!

The stock, if managed well, does well and then the mutual funds have to jump in. I can’t stop repeating that most, if not all of these fund managers are just momentum hunters who will say anything to justify their buying and sound intelligent.

Ramdeo Agarwal was talking how he only buys quality stocks like Nestle Eicher in 2017-19 and how he had held quality stocks for decades until Zomato happened. He hyped zomato in 2021 and dissed it in 2022 publicly and is back to singing praises as the stock has moved up! Such buffet like geniuses I must say.

Samir Arora was all about only buying HDFC Bank and Bajaj Finance and how he has beaten every index since inception and he never touches a PSU until SBI began to outperform the market and he quickly discovered the greatness of SBI as his top holding! He couldn’t stop dissent PSUs in 2017-20 until he realised HPCL was the stock of the season and I heard him yesterday that it also pays out hefty dividends. I mean wasn’t this the same reason why they criticised the capital allocation policy of PSU! so basically, don’t trust anyone who’s job is to sell you the idea of being rich when in reality he’s living off the commision of your investments in his funds.

So coming back to the idea of inventing ideas. There is no such thing as the first prize for discovering a stock as it doesn’t pay anything. The real prize or the only prize in holding on to the stock for the longest possible time and making the most money off it. There aren’t many people who can claim to discover Apple or Alphabet or Nvidia but there are guys who made their millions holding on to them.

I’m not too interested in self praise but I guess I have been able to discover my style of stock picking. I love a stock when it’s out of favour- be it ITC/HDFC AMC/TaMo or even Oracle Financial. It pays to look at companies when nobody wants to buy them and you literally have to pay people to buy them. Nobody wanted to hear about Colgate till July this year for it had done nothing for years. It’s up 60% this year. Oracle Financial was a dud for a decade but is up 50% since March lows.

ITC has been a double while TaMo is up a whopping 13x from COVID lows. I’ve said this before that even Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, the greatest Indian investor and possibly one of the best investors globally of all times too bought stake in TaMo around and that time for the same reason- TaMo was selling vehicles for over ₹3 lakh crore but had a market cap of less than 25k crore! It just didn’t add up. Today, the market cap is ₹2.99 lakh crore and like I have been saying, it will be a momentous occasion when it crosses Maruti’s market cap and become the most valuable automobile company in India. The distance is hardly 15k crore, or less than 5% move in stock price.

So now finally coming back to my question of the third best stock idea- I guess it has to be HDFC AMC. And no prizes for discovering as it is a no brainier cash minting machine. Its operating profit is over 76% and net profit margin of over 61%! How is it even legal! The stock hasn’t done anything on a five year basis but I believe as the market grows, it will be one of the companies who’s shares will be worth their weights truly in gold over the next decade!