Welcoming New Year 2017-18

Dear Friends,

                  A very Happy New Year to you!

For the Finance world in India the New Year starts on 1^st April XXXX and ends on 31^st March XXX(X+1). However, this is not a standard practice across the globe and some companies use Calendar Year as the financial accounting period i.e. 1 Jan XXXX to 31 Dec XXXX. While these 2 are the predominant periods, companies do follow other timelines for financial accounting. Ex. Oracle follows 1 June XXXX to 31 May XXX(X+1) as the accounting period.

We should feel extremely happy at this juncture, when the returns from the Equity Markets (and Debt too) have been wonderful for the period ending 31 Mar 2017. Rewind it by 1 year, 31 Mar 2016, the portfolio of most of our investors were in Red. Though none of our customers exited in fear, I was definitely worried as most of them are first time equity investors and typical investor reaction is to salvage whatever they have and exit the market. Here, I must say that the level of Composure and Maturity demonstrated by our investors was really great.

Equity Returns are never linear and the risk of equity is the volatility and not that we will lose everything like the fund scams (Sharda, EMU birds, Ponzi schemes and Gold houses in Chennai). The volatility decreases over time and that is the reason why Equities are referred as long term growth products.

A simple approach that I follow for equity investing is

• Do not look at Equity for short term goals. It might happen that investors who started investing a year back would have made handsome returns in just 1 year, but I would say that luck was in their favour as predicting the market is impossible.

• Never lose your conviction on Equity to deliver. Whenever there is a blood bath in the markets, eroding significant value, people tend to question their conviction and negative thoughts arise as whether they made a mistake.

• Don’t invest in Lump-sum mode when the markets are highly valued and stagger the investments over a period of time. Valuation can be figured out through Price to Earnings Ratio (P/E) and Price to Book Value (P/BV) which is easily available.

• Leave the investment management part to experts through MFs (I would be publishing a separate note on this)

• The advantage of Equity investment is not just the returns that it can generate but also the taxation aspect of the instrument – currently not taxed if the investment duration crosses a year. Let’s make hay while the sun shines and before Finance Minister brings a twist.

I am enclosing some interesting data on the returns delivered by Equity in the last decade i.e. 31 Mar 2008 to 31 Mar 2017

I cannot predict if the year 2017-18 will continue to be a fantastic year for equity but the drivers are in position today, unlike the past. Investments from Domestic Institutions (DIIs), EPF, NPS and Mutual Funds have significantly improved countering the FII flows. Real Estate and Gold are not expected to improve which helps money flow into Equity

I propose to conduct year end portfolio reviews starting the week of 10^th April 2017 and will reach out to you.

<Blog # PenguWIN 1052 – Welcoming New Year 2017-18>