Blog on Value Investing | Safal Niveshak

The Low-Priced Way to Lose Money in the Stock Market

February 7, 2019 | 8 Comments

Once upon a time, I used to recommend stocks. I did that for a living.

One of the most common questions I received when I recommended a stock priced in three or four digits was this – “What is the point of buying a stock this expensive? Recommend something under Rs 100, or better, Rs 10, or better, Rs 5.”

The reasoning was simple – “It’s easier for a Rs 10 stock to go Rs 100, than for a Rs 1,000 stock to go to Rs 10,000.”

At the start of my career, this reasoning sounded reasonable. But it turned out to be one of the biggest misconceptions I’ve ever had in my career as a stock analyst and investor. Thankfully, I got over that misconception early.

Of course, a car that sells at Rs 20 lac may be more expensive than one that sells at Rs 5 lac, even when you discount for better features etc. But a stock that sells for Rs 2,000 or even Rs 20,000 is “not” more expensive than a stock that sells for Rs 20 or Rs 200, just because of its price tag.

A Cheat Sheet To Avoid Stock Market Ruin

February 5, 2019 | 2 Comments

In his latest book, Skin in the Game, Nassim Taleb runs an interesting thought experiment where he talks about two cases of playing the casino.

Equate the first case with ‘stock market trading’ in general –

…one hundred people go to a casino to gamble a certain set amount each over a set period of time, and have complimentary gin and tonic. Some may lose, some may win, and we can infer at the end of the day what the “edge” is, that is, calculate the returns simply by counting the money left in the wallets of the people who return. We can thus figure out if the casino is properly pricing the odds.

Now assume that gambler number 28 goes bust. Will gambler number 29 be affected? No.

You can safely calculate, from your sample, that about 1 percent of the gamblers will go bust. And if you keep playing and playing, you will be expected to have about the same ratio, 1 percent of gamblers going bust, on average, over that same time window.

Ben Graham: Just Plain Lucky?

January 30, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Remember Ben Graham, the guy who wrote The Intelligent Investor? And who taught Warren Buffett to become Warren Buffett?

Well, if you really know who Graham was, you also know that he is associated with buying something cheap (one dollar worth at fifty cents) and then selling it when it reaches a value that reflects what it’s worth.

A very copybook, calculated approach, right? Like what a Rahul Dravid would do in cricket.

The Untold Story of A Self-Made Investing Millionaire

January 21, 2019 | 6 Comments

In a world dominated by men, here is a rare untold story of a woman who quietly made it big as a stock market investor.

Anne Scheiber was 51 years old when she retired from her job as a low-level auditor from the American Internal Revenue Service in 1944. She never earned a salary of more than $4,000 per year, and although she was an exemplary worker, she never received a promotion. Maybe, because she was a woman and a Jew, the lots that were discriminated against in the workforce in general in the west during that period.

As per the executor of her Will, Benjamin Clark, Scheiber, who was already investing her small savings in the stock market when she retired in 1944, started here post-retirement life with a portfolio of about $21,000. Adjusted for inflation, that was about $297,000 in today’s money. Not really a large sum to retire in the US.

Stress and Investing: A 20-Point Checklist

January 16, 2019 | 2 Comments

I was at my hometown recently and chanced upon a friend who works as an investment banker in Delhi. We had met almost after 15 years, and so I could notice a big contrast in his looks as compared to what it was in the early 2000s. He looked much older than his age, around 39, and so I enquired about his health.

To my utter shock, he said, “I had an angioplasty late last year, where they put a tiny tube in my blood vessel to restore blood flow through my arteries.”

In short, he meant, “I just survived a heart attack.”

“Stress is part of my job profile, you see,” he shrugged it off jokingly.

I had earlier read of a 35-year-old London-based hedge fund trader who died of a heart attack in 2013, and of the head of JP Morgan’s equity sales, aged 37, who had also died of heart failure in 2012. But my friend was, well, my friend, and thus the gravity of the situation weighed heavier this time.

“Is it worth it?” I asked my friend.