The Intelligent Investor – 8 – The Investor and Market Fluctuations

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Jimit Zaveri under Bibliophile: The Intelligent Investor

When we have invested in the bonds then that will get little fluctuation to the market price. But when we have invested in the common stocks then it will have a wider fluctuation to the market price. So that we need to be ready financially and psychologically for upcoming fluctuation into our common stock investment. It is easy to advise for not doing a speculate but hard to follow it. Fluctuation and behavior of the market attract us to make a speculative decision. So, if we want to make a speculative decision then keep aside some amount of money as considering that we are going to lose it through speculation.

We need to take a benefit from the swing of the market pendulum rather than getting trapped into it. And we can take a benefit by way of timing to the market or through pricing.

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We cannot predict the direction of the market consistently and if we start predicting a direction then we end up as a speculator, not as an investor. People want to buy during the bear market where everyone else is selling and sell during the bull market where everyone else is buying. But people are tending to do the reverse, the majority of the people buy at high / during a bull market and sell at low / during a bear market.

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Similar has happened during the year 2017, people have seen a bull market from the year 2014 to 2017 and they started believing that this will never be going to end and stock prices keep on going higher and higher.

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1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd point has been explained to the previous articles of the same series.

One of the optical and data networking products company

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IPO of the company came at Rs.257 so that MCap was ~Rs.2367cr which was at the EV/EBITDA of 14.09x in FY17 and stock price rose to ~Rs.437 in FY18 which was at EV/EBITDA of ~26.33x. The company has incurred losses in a few years and came to profit since FY2016.

One of the publication company

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The IPO of the company came at P/E of 33x and EV/EBITDA of 16.59x.

Day-to-day or month-on-month fluctuation to the market does not make investors richer or poorer. But what will happen for a longer period that will impact the wealth of investors. We need to keep distance ourselves from the crowd rather than go with the crowd. Also, we need to focus on emotional stability over an investment journey which helps us a lot. The normal investor gets trapped with greed as the market starts advances, but at the same time, intelligent investors booked a position of overpriced issues and parked those funds to bond, he will re-balance his portfolio.

Owning a common stock means we are a part-owner of the business, but due to the advancement of the stock market operation, investor’s mind gets diverted and they are getting more engaged towards the stock prices. They forget that stock price fluctuation should not be focused but they have to focus on the value of the businesses, quality of the businesses and progress of the businesses. Stock prices bring distance between business and us. If a person is making an investment for a longer period, but getting fluctuated as stock prices get fluctuate then he does not know for the emotionally stable and matured investors. Matured and intelligent investors do not focus on the price quotation every second but they focus on the underlying business. As businesses show successes it becomes popular among the people and it will command more premium, its mood swings with the market, etc.

We need to focus on earning the power of the business with the asset value of the business. But we should avoid paying higher to the assets as well as to the earning, otherwise, we need to be stay affected through the market fluctuation.

One of the telecom company

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(Source – Thoughts on Thoughts blog)

The company looks very cheap based on the financial metrics and assets base, but if someone who does not have paid attention to the business of the company and earning the power of the business then—

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One of the gelatin company

The company has some uncertainty and raw material problems but having a stable business. The company was traded at ~Rs.66 cr of MCap with having investment + cash on the balance sheet was worth of ~Rs.70+ cr so that entire business was available at free due to uncertainty. The company has delivered a decent return with also deliver Rs.10/per share as a dividend.

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Few critics of value-based investing tell that such an approach does not work with the listed companies due to the ample amount of liquidity available. Such liquidity and stock market platform provide a daily opportunity to the participants to make changes to their holdings.

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Many a time, Mr. Market ready to pay overpriced for the business and sometimes, He is ignoring too few of the businesses. We need to stay away to getting trapped from the Mr. Market mood swings. Mr. Market also behaves like a human being because prices of it and the behavior of it direct through human involvement as a market participant. We need to control our emotions based on our experience and belief over a while. We should stop overpaying attention to the market.

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If we are doing a business then daily price fluctuations will not be going to disturb us and we do not make a change to our holdings. Price fluctuations only provide an opportunity to buy a business at a favorable price and sell when Mr. Market shows a higher price of the business.

The main distinction between speculators and investors is their attitude towards the market. A speculator is willing to make profits by way of market fluctuations whereas investors are willing to hold security at a suitable price and market fluctuations do not important for them. Market prices are just for our conviction so that taking benefits of it or to ignore it depends on us.

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Stocks or a bond, the Market price will remain to fluctuate over a longer-term period. Good company with good management gets recognition into the good market price and bad management will get bad market price recognition.

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Mr. Graham has explained the liquidity concepts which is suitable for the current scenario. The fund manager purchases few stocks for the portfolio, then the market starts moving upwards which attracts the investors to put more money. Now, due to the additional fund inflow, the fund manager has to buy a similar stock to the additional fund which brings stock prices to the dangerous level. Now, as the market falls, investors ask for the withdrawal of the fund and fund manager has sold out stocks to make the payment which leads to further fall to the stock prices. So here, they buy at high and sell at a low price. Our brain makes a pattern that similar has happened during the last time so it might be going to happens now also. And many times, our brain creates a pattern when there is not the availability of any pattern.

What we should need to do for the better than average return –

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Our behavior is most important to get an above-average return. By controlling ourselves, we can stop ourselves from becoming our enemy. When we have made any prediction and that proven right then we become addicted to own predictions.

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Disclosure – Companies mentioned in the article are just for an example & educational purpose. It is not a buy/sell/ hold recommendation.

Read for more detail: The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig

The Intelligent Investor – 6 – Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor: Negative Approach

Posted on September 1, 2019 by Jimit Zaveri under Bibliophile: The Intelligent Investor

We have seen the defensive investors in the last article of the same series. Now, Mr. Graham has explained what not to do for the defensive as well as aggressive investors.

Mr. Graham has explained what not to do for aggressive investors such as –

Aggressive investors also have to start with deciding an allocation between common stocks and bonds. Also, they have to be ready with more analytical work compared to defensive investors. When second-grade bonds are available at the substantial discount to the principal value and also, having a prospect then it will be more attractive compared to high-grade bonds. Aggressive investors have to compare a discount available to the high-grade bonds and the second-grade bonds. We need not forget the rule of the safety of principal while investing in the bonds. We need to check the adequate cover to the interest charge on pre-tax earnings. If such cover is not available then we should avoid bonds though they having a higher yield.

Mr. Graham has mentioned regarding foreign bonds that we do not properly know the future of foreign bonds. If any troublesome times come then we do not have a legal means of enforcing claims. So, we should avoid such opportunities though we get interested rate benefits.

Day trading – Mr. Graham has mentioned that day trading is a weapon invented for committing financial suicide. Buying and selling a stock for a few hours also bringing down your profit. The more we trade; we keep less with us which also affects our long-term profitability. Luck can provide us a benefit for a few times, but for getting consistent benefits from trading, we require great attention. Someone who can’t hold on to stocks for more than a few months at a time is doomed to end up not as a victor but as a victim.

New issues – we need to be very careful before purchasing a new issue because the majority of the times new issues comes during favorable market conditions for the seller of the new issues which means not purely favorable to the buyers of the new issues. Majority of the time, prices of new issues get collapsed. We have seen very few winners which have given a good return by investing in the IPOs such as Infosys, Wipro, Eicher Motors, etc. but there is a huge list of losers also.

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So that does not jump to the IPOs at higher valuations, lets company to work for justifying such a higher valuation.

Disclosure – Companies mentioned in the article is just for an example & educational purpose. It is not a buy/sell/ hold recommendation.

Read for more detail: The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig

BIBLIOPHILE: THE MOST IMPORTANT THING BY HOWARD MARKS “Combating Negative Influences”

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Jimit Zaveri under BIBLIOPHILE: THE MOST IMPORTANT THING BY HOWARD MARKS

In this article, I am going to discuss regarding the psychological factors which affect our decisions negatively.

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Market many times provide us an opportunities to earn superior performance through inefficiencies, mispricing, misperception, mistakes of other people.

But the question is why such opportunities come? What makes us different from other people? Why mistakes do occurs?

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We need to analyze data and reach the conclusion. In investing errors occurs not due to analytical factors but errors mainly come from psychological factors.

Let’s look at the few psychological elements which affecting the investment decisions.

First emotion is GREED – Desire for money.

Most of us are making an investment for making more money. If we don’t care about the making more money than we are not going to make an investment.
And also there is nothing wrong with trying to make money. The market and economy run because of our desire to make money. But we should remain careful with a transformation of desire towards greed.

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Real estate

Real estate sector in India in the year 2007-08 creates a bubble and huge jump in the optimism by everyone. Such situation resulted under the sharp fall in the value of the sector.

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Due to an impact of greed, people hope that their strategies help them to produce higher returns without taking higher risk for forever. And due to this hope, many times people hold highly priced securities with expectations of more appreciation can be possible. Many times such expectations went wrong and prove that expectations were unrealistic and people have ignored the risk.

Opposite of Greed is FEAR. As similar to the greed, excess fear is also harmful to the investors. Excess of fear stops us from taking a constructive decision while actually, we require taking such decisions. Due to fear, many a time we cannot able to make a good investment and also lose the opportunity.

The third factor is PEOPLE’S TENDENCY TO DISMISS LOGIC.
Generally, it happens that people stop using logical thinking and they start doing work with an irrational mindset. Many a time, we are not ready to accept logical reasoning for the situations and work as per unrealistic scenario. We do not apply what we have learned in the past but get easily deviate from those learning.

When market or a particular strategy starts generating higher returns for a while, then we started believing that it will continuously generate such returns without an involvement of risk.

Howard Marks called such situations as “Silver bullet”, the Holy Grail.

But is it really same strategy keeps on generating higher returns without risk?

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As Warren Buffett mentioned, when prices started rising then it affects to the reasoning power of the people. It led to mania and situations of mania results towards the bubble.

The fourth factor is THE TENDENCY TO CONFORM TO THE VIEW OF THE HERD RATHER THAN RESIST.

Many a time, we started Believing to the crowd and starts to take an action as per the crowd behavior. Though behavior of the crowd is harmful and dangerous to us.

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The fifth factor is ENVY. Envy comes into the picture when we are comparing ourselves with others. And envy works as a negative force which affects our decisions.

When we see that our investment is growing then we remain happy. But the time we start comparing our investment returns with investment returns of others then we become sad. Now, envy starts showing its color and we make decisions which we may not take or which may be harmful to the financial health.

It is very difficult to see the higher growth of other compared to our growth.

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The sixth factor is EGO. Ego gets satisfaction while we generated higher returns compared to others. And we are keeps on evaluating our return in the short term. While we should focus on the longer horizon returns rather than keeps on tracking returns in the short term and also try to get out of the trap of ego. Ego can be harmful to the financial health. We keep on demonstrates that how much we know much compared to others rather than focusing on how much we know and how much we do not know.

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The seventh factor is the CAPITULATION. It means investors give up towards the situations while economic and psychological pressure becomes irresistible.

Many a time, overpriced assets become more overpriced, and underpriced assets become more and cheaper. This scenario affects to the psychology of investors and repetitions of such situations inspired investors to give up towards the situations and make investment decisions without using logical reasoning.

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When few or all the factors combined then it affects to the investor’s decision making and that affects the market. This resulted in the mistakes and those can be expensive for our financial health.

Psychology in IPO is funny. When our friend is applying to IPO and we asked for the business then he doesn’t know about the business. But he is applying for getting good returns. And he continuously getting higher returns and such higher returns earned by our friend attracts us to make an investment into the IPO. And such situations keep on repeating & more people get involved into the IPOs.

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