Is your Investment in Real Estate and Gold Safe?

Warm Greetings from PenguWIN:

            The crux of this article is about the volatility in asset classes, physical and financial with specific reference to Real Estate, Gold and Equity investing, more specifically Equity MFs

Investors who started investing in equity funds since 2017 and seen the value go up and up, will probably be a little impatient, experiencing the 2000+ points correction in Sensex in the recent past and the associated high level of volatility. I make sure that I tell this to all our clients (at times more than once), that Equity funds are long-term investment products and needs to be looked at only for 5+ years, more the better. There may be a few who are lucky to enter the market when it was low, make money and exited before the fall. Even these people will fail if they try to replicate it for the second time. But, accepting the reality is always difficult.

Let me take couple of my favourite examples.

Let’s assume that a person buys an apartment in Adyar/Besant Nagar area. A 1000 sqft 2 BHK (basic price of 16,000/Sq. Ft.) will set him back by 2 crores, including registration, car park, corpus fund, club fees, EB, water, sewer etc. Once he takes possession of the apartment and moves in, within a couple of months, let’s say there is a slump in the RE (Real Estate) market and basic price drops to 15,000/- per Sq. ft. The investor will feel bad as his Networth has gone down by 10 Lakhs. On the other side, if the price increases to 18,000/- sq. ft, he feels happy that he has got a good deal, saving 20 Lakhs. Whether it is a question of 10L loss or 20L gain, there will no action of purchase/sale of the house as its notional and he has to live in the house. The value matters when he moves to a different place within or outside the country and decides to sell it or when he bequeaths the property to his children and they decide to sell it.

The same holds good when people buy gold jewellery or even coins. Gold has lost about 35% of its value since 2012 (35% is the consumer price Inflation) and the current price in INR is lower than the Sep/Oct 2012 price which was Rs. 3000/- plus. Several people have asked me this question – Is it a good time to buy gold? No one has asked me if it was time to sell gold. The worst thing is if its close friends or relatives and you tell them the facts of Gold (inflation hedge, intrinsic value and so on) which may be negative at that particular time, they feel that this guy is keen to drive Goddess Lakshmi away from our house.

Though many of the investors I encounter, have significant allocation to RE and Gold, they don’t get perturbed due to changes in price while even minor changes to stock markets (going down) is something that makes them anxious as they can easily relate numbers. So, even if the investor buys a fund for 1 lakh, that turns out to 1.25L in a year, the subsequent fall to say 1.1L is apparent as the mind relates to only the 1.25L figure, forgetting that the original investment of 1L.

Equity investing is for the long term (may not be that long as in the case of RE) and our patience will be tested by the market similar to RE and Gold, more severe at times. Some are unable to digest the volatility, especially people who have invested for short term that is just 1/2/3 years, going by the healthy returns of 2017. They tend to think that if 2017 has given 30% returns, then our investment should be able to fetch atleast 24% or 12% per year, in 2 years (fair assumption from their perspective). There are others who get excited by the returns that their friends and family members have made and move huge money to equity funds (Big Bang Investing), in a matter of few days, trying to make up for opportunity loss.

Whether 2018 or 2019 turns out to be as rewarding like 2017 (I will also be delighted to see my portfolio go up further), a time horizon of more than 5 years, higher the better, will definitely reward us with good returns and will continue to be the asset class that will provide the best returns.

People who hold less than 100% equity portfolios – Balanced Funds, Equity Savings, MIP can expect stability of returns in less than 5 years, approx. 3 to 4 years

What is the basis for my confidence? Equity market growth is a reflection of how the economy (GDP) does in the country, growth of companies in revenue and profitability, increase in consumption, increase in per capita income. The scepticism that prevailed in the market for the past few quarters is attributed to some of these indicators, not in green, while the markets were scaling new peaks. However, the Dec 2017, Q3, results have been positive and analysts expect that this momentum will continue in the coming quarters. Excluding the troubled Banking and Financial Services sector, Net Profit of a sample of 2043 companies rose to a six-quarter high of 27.5%, Net Sales by 11.5% YoY. We practice what we preach and your money is in safe hands.

We will only do with your money what we do with our won – Warren Buffett

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