The Story Drives the Stock

Stocks and markets move on three things:

1) Earnings

2) Liquidity

3) Narrative

You get a multibagger when all three are in alignment and in your favour.

Most fundamental investors focus on the earnings. Most technical analysts focus on the liquidity (price, volume). Very few focus on the narrative. 

If you look back, markets and individual stocks are always built around "stories". The dotcom boom was based on the story of the rise of ecommerce. Then in India we had the infrastructure story, the "Indian decade" story, the BRICS story, "the Modi rally". And the list goes on. Same thing has happened in individual stocks and sectors. 

The IT story, the consumption story, the Pharma story, the Chemicals story, the agri story, the intelligent fanatic story. People call it by difficult names - "megatrends" or "long cycles". But at the end of the day, it is nothing but a story we tell ourselves. 

If the earnings and liquidity fits the story line, you get a self-perpetuating story!! Then mediocre or poor managements start look visionary. Valuations reach the sky. Corporate governance is swept under the carpet. Promoter shenanigans are spoken of in hushed tones.  Believers are heralded and disbelievers are trolled.

These three are inter-related. Most of the time, you start with one and the other two follow. Sometimes, earnings come first, and at other times liquidity. Rarely does the story come first.  Usually, the story gets built on the prevalence of the first two. But for the long term returns, the story is as important as the other two.

Bottomline - Be aware of the story in the stocks you buy or the sectors you invest in. Be tuned in to any changes in the story.

Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. The blog posts should not be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.

Weekend Reading

Reading across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week.

I especially try to not post Corona related articles as that is all one gets to read in all traditional media.

 

If you like the collection this consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate.

The Nespresso coffee revolution

The idea of a portioned coffee system had been around since the 50s, but no one had seriously pursued it. Favre’s aim was to build a world in which espresso was available at home. Customers would own a machine, into which they would place a sealed pod filled with ground coffee. The pod would keep the coffee fresh. (Although roast coffee can stay fresh for weeks, ground coffee loses its freshness after about half an hour.) The capsule design would also ensure greater aeration, mimicking the repeat oxidisations at the Sant’Eustachio. After the pod was inserted, a needle-like spout would pierce one end. Hot water would be pumped through this needle at high pressure. As the capsule became pressurised with water, the foil would be forced against a spiked plate, bursting it inwards, and out through the spout would run an espresso.

Today, some 14bn Nespresso capsules are sold every year, both online and from 810 brightly lit boutiques in 84 countries. More than 400 Nespressos are drunk every second. Hundreds of rivals and imitators have emerged, some making capsules for Nespresso machines, others pushing competitor systems.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jul/14/nespresso-coffee-capsule-pods-branding-clooney-nestle-recycling-environment

 

One line summary of investment classics

The author has gone through all the classic finance books and distilled the message into a single sentence or phrase.

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/07/tldr-the-best-finance-books-in-one-sentence-2/

 

A short history of money (with a US bias)

In his expansive and excellent book A History of Money, author Glyn Davies lists six functions of money:

• Unit of Account
• Common measure of value
• Medium of exchange
• Means of payment
• Standard for deferred payments
• Store of Value

Modern paper currencies don’t meet the sixth function—un-invested dollars (or euros, or yen) dwindle in value over time. The modern dollar is an abstraction, created out of thin air. It can no longer be converted into anything at a fixed price. Yet, for most of its history money was tied to some underlying commodity.

http://www.millennialinvest.com/history-of-money/

 

The origin story of the Tupperware party

The story of the ubiquitous plastic container is a story of innovation and reinvention: how a new kind of plastic, made from an industrial waste material, ended up a symbol of female empowerment. The product ushered women into the workforce, encouraging them to make their own money, better their families, and win accolades and prizes without fear of being branded that 1950s anathema, “the career woman.”

The most amazing thing about Tupperware wasn’t that it extended the life of leftovers and a family’s budget, although it did both remarkably well. It was, above all, a career maker. When women came to one of Wise’s parties, they were more than just convinced to buy the product— Wise was such a charming host that she persuaded many buyers to also become Tupperware salespeople. Putting people on waiting lists, for instance, made them more eager to buy, so she signed them up regardless of whether the product was available. She also discovered that throwing containers full of liquid across the room made customers reach straight for their chequebooks. Amassing more and more saleswomen, Wise encouraged her followers to do the same. Driven by the idea of making money simply by throwing parties for friends and neighbours, the women in Wise’s workforce ballooned in number. Wise’s team in Detroit was selling more Tupperware than most department stores.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/59687/how-single-mom-created-plastic-food-storage-empire

 

The evolution of emojis

This elasticity of meaning is a large part of the appeal and, perhaps, the genius of emoji. They have proved to be well suited to the kind of emotional heavy lifting for which written language is often clumsy or awkward or problematic, especially when it’s relayed on tiny screens, tapped out in real time, using our thumbs. These seemingly infantile cartoons are instantly recognizable, which makes them understandable even across linguistic barriers. Decoding pictures as part of communication has been at the root of written language since there was such a thing as written language.

Pictograms—i.e., pictures of actual things, like a drawing of the sun—were the very first elements of written communication, found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. From pictograms, which are literal representations, we moved to logograms, which are symbols that stand-in for a word ($, for example) and ideograms, which are pictures or symbols that represent an idea or abstract concept. Modern examples of ideograms include the person-in-a-wheelchair symbol that universally communicates accessibility and the red-hand symbol at a pedestrian crossing that signals not “red hand” but “stop.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/11/emojis-rapid-evolution.html

Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. The blog posts should not be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.

Weekend Reading

Reading across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week.

I especially try to not post Corona related articles as that is all one gets to read in all traditional media.

 

If you like the collection this consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate.

The Unsung Hero

Please read this. It is the story of an unsung hero who has left an indelible mark in the world with his contributions.

https://12mv2.com/2020/07/13/transcript-peter-kaufman-speech-at-the-redlands-forum/amp/

 

Meditation changes your brain

As science begins to dig into the long-term impacts meditation has on the brain, researchers are turning to the minds “Olympic-level” meditators for answers—people who have done up to 62,000 hours of meditation in their lifetime.

Davidson found their brainwaves showed never-before-seen levels of gamma, one of the strongest types of brain waves,  theorized to appear when the different regions of the brain harmonize.

The typical person will have a gamma wave very briefly, for example when we’ve solved a problem we’ve been grappling with, and for a second all of our sensory inputs come together in harmony. The brainwaves of long-term meditators, however, show gamma all the time as a lasting trait, no matter what they are doing. “It’s their everyday state of mind,” says Goleman. “Science has never seen this before.”

https://www.mindful.org/the-remarkable-brains-of-high-level-meditators/

 

China's ballooning debt problem

An Institute of International Finance report published in May 2020 suggested that China is now the world’s largest creditor to low income countries, with China’s outstanding debt claims on the rest of the world having risen from US$875 billion in 2004 to over US$5.5 trillion in 2019 – more than 6 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP). The Institute of International Finance (IFF) estimated that China’s total domestic debt hit 317 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2020, up from 300 per cent in the last quarter of 2019 – the largest quarterly increase on record. China’s consumer debt is the fastest growing segment of overall debt, particularly in the form of mortgage and consumer loans. Household debt rose to 54.3 per cent of China’s GDP in the last quarter of 2019 compared to 51.4 per cent in the last quarter of 2018.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3084979/china-debt-how-big-it-who-owns-it-and-what-next

 

From Rags to Riches

Few consumers, anywhere, have heard of the wiping-rag industry. But it bails out everyone. Approximately 30% of the textiles recovered for recycling in the U.S. are converted to wiping rags. And that’s probably an undercount. The 45% of recycled textiles that are reused as apparel eventually wear out, too. When they do, they’re also bound for the wiping-rag companies. Nobody counts the number of wiping rags manufactured in the U.S. and elsewhere every year. But anyone who knows the industry acknowledges that the numbers are in the many billions—and growing. The oil and gas industry, with its network of pipes and valves, requires hundreds of millions of rags per year to wipe leaks, lubricants, and hands. Hotels, bars, and restaurants need billions of rags to clean glasses, tabletops, and railings. Painters need them for spills and drips. If these businesses can’t reuse clothes and sheets, they’ll opt for disposable paper towels, synthetic wipes, and new cloth rags, complete with all their environmental and financial costs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-wiping-rags/

 

An Introduction to Booneisms

From walking off my first job to start my first company to closing down Mesa Petroleum and to opening up my own hedge fund at 68, it’s three quarters of my life laid bare.

The book is built around little bits of advice I’ve been known to give over the years. At some point, family, friends and staff began writing them down and they became their own genre, now known as “Booneisms.” Many of them are about life and leadership, and other lessons I’ve learned through my ups and downs over 90 years.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tboonepickens/2018/05/11/ninety-years-of-lessons-learned-t-boone-pickens-letter-to-the-class-of-2018/#6f26bf18e3c6

Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. The blog posts should not be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.

Weekend Reading

Reading across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week. 

I especially try to not post Corona related articles as that is all one gets to read in all traditional media.

The great investors who no one knows about

Two secretive brothers from New Zealand have perhaps THE best long-term track record in the investing world. Starting in 1986, the two turned $10 million of family money into over $5 billion just 20-years later. That’s an astounding 36% CAGR. The two brothers have gone to great lengths over the years to maintain a low profile and keep their faces out of the news. They were amongst the first investors to plunge into emerging markets like Russia, Brazil, and the Czech Republic. They are the Chandler brothers: Richard and Christopher. They ran the Sovereign Global Fund for 20-years (the two have since split off to manage their own money with Legatum and Clermont Capital).

https://macro-ops.com/the-chandler-brothers-the-greatest-investors-youve-never-heard-of/

 

The unknown Pharma billionaire investor

If discovering blockbuster drugs is the pinnacle of pharmaceutical industry success, then the next best thing is getting rich by earning pennies from every pill sold. For 24 years, that is exactly what a little known Wall Street investor named Pablo Legorreta has been doing. Few have heard of him, but millions have benefited from the top selling drugs his company Royalty Pharma draws income from. Names like Humira for sufferers of Crohn’s disease, Lyrica, the most successful anti-epileptic remedy and blood cancer treatment Imbruvica. The giant companies behind these drugs, names like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AbbVie, do all the heavy lifting— producing and marketing the drugs while Legorreta sits back and collects his mailbox money.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2020/06/12/meet-the-secretive-wall-street-investor-with-the-billion-dollar-medicine-cabinet/#10051c92c361

 

How to reduce imports from China?

The larger structural question is whether we can permanently reduce the share of Chinese imports. This must be seen in context. India typically incurs a current account deficit, which means that we typically import more goods and services then we export. There are two reasons for this. We export when the price and quality of what we sell is attractive to foreigners. We import because the same is attractive to us. This, in essence, is the theory of comparative advantage and a current account deficit simply means that our overall comparative advantage is lower than that of our trading partners. However, as an economy evolves, there is another reason why this may happen, which is that our pattern of consumption becomes more import-intensive.

https://www.nipfp.org.in/blog/2020/07/03/myth-indias-import-dependence/

 

A gift of love from father to daughter made her a multimillionaire

When Hiroe Tanaka’s father died, he left behind something that would change her life: a recipe for fried meat on a stick. It was an act of love. His daughter adored the Japanese street food known as kushikatsu, and he’d spent endless hours working out how to make it just right.

The handwritten memo, which detailed how to cook the seemingly simple dish, helped save a restaurant business from bankruptcy in 2008, elevated Tanaka from part-time employee to vice president of a company named after her, and made her a multimillionaire. The university dropout who once worked as an office lady now sets strategy for the $82 million Kushikatsu Tanaka Co.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2017/05/13/food/kushikatsu-hiroe-tanaka-millionaire/

 

A therapy for permanently reducing LDL & Triglycerides

A novel gene-editing experiment seems to have permanently reduced LDL and triglyceride levels in monkeys. In the first gene-editing experiment of its kind, scientists have disabled two genes in monkeys that raise the risk for heart disease. Humans carry the genes as well, and the experiment has raised hopes that a leading killer may one day be tamed. But it will be years before human trials can begin, and gene-editing technology so far has a mixed tracked record. It is much too early to know whether the strategy will be safe and effective in humans; even the monkeys must be monitored for side effects or other treatment failures for some time to come.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/health/heart-disease-gene-editing.html

Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. The blog posts should not be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.

Using a Regime Filter

A regime filter or a market regime filter is a tool to help us conceptually understand the kind of market we are in. As a systematic investor, we can increase our odds of success by adding a regime filter to our arsenal. It tells us, based on how we have defined it if we are in a bull market or a bear market. We would think differently about market risk in different market scenarios.

A simple example of a regime filter is using the 200 day moving average. If the index of your choice is above the 200 day moving average, then you define it as a bull market and below it as a bear market. You can design your portfolio strategy to hold full allocations in stocks if you are in a bull market and 50% allocated in a bear market.
So, with that basic logic you can start constructing a slightly more realistic and slightly more nuanced regime filter.

First, define the market conditions you want to address – superbull, bull, bear, superbear. The reason for doing that is you want to be cautious in the market extremes of superbear and superbull conditions and aggressive in the bear and bull conditions (for long-short strategies). Then use a combination of indicators like RSI and 50 & 200 day moving average to define the selected conditions. For example, above 200 dma and 70 RSI you define as superbull and above 200 dma and above 50 RSI as bull phase.

Another trick that can be used is to use multiple indices. For example, you can use the average of Nifty, Nifty Next 50 and Nifty 500 in equal proportions to define your market. For a long-only investor, it may increase the odds of success to be buyer only when the regime filter is indicating a bull market.

Note: For exploring quantitative systems, check out www.quantamental.in, a quant-based newsletter. 

Asking the Right Questions

I am a continuous learner. One reason I gravitated towards the stock market was because it gave me a platform to use the learning that I continuously absorbed from all around me a productive and remunerative outcome. It has also helped me in being humble because I keep making mistakes. This is a big difference from academic learning where people tend to learn to get a degree and prove their competence.

Unfortunately, the world is probabilistic and most often than not, we have to face up to the fact that we may not know as much as we thought we did. The markets keep reminding us that our knowledge is never complete and we need to question our learning and inferences all the time.

When we start to learn, most follow a standard process progressive elaboration - of understanding the basics and then going deeper into individual facets. That is what I used to do for the most part of my life. That is how we have been taught in school. But I am following a system that has started working much better for me.

When I start to learn something new, I jot down the questions I want to answer once I go through the topic. I typically take notes in OneNote. I have a box marked “Questions” on the top of the topic page. As I go through the learning process, I keep adding more questions that keep cropping up. Below the “Questions” box, I have my “Notes” box where I keep running notes, usually in bullet points. When I think I have understood the topic, I will revisit my questions and see if I can answer all of them. If not, go back to the learning process. Depending on the topic, it takes weeks or months to go through a topic.

After having followed this process for some time, **I have now come to realize that the learning is not dependent on the notes that I am taking from the material I study.** It is more from the questions I seek the answers to. Because subconsciously I am directing my learning to answer those questions. And therein lies the answer to a better system. **Trying to constantly improve the questions. Asking the more difficult questions. Questioning the questions.**

Just to give an example of a mini-project I am doing now (more on them later) on valuations.

Questions related to business valuation

* What are the most common ways to value businesses beyond DCF and Earnings multiples?

* Can one method be used to value or are multiple methods necessary to be used at the same time?

* Can businesses be valued accurately (even within a range)?

* Why does Buffett not use a spreadsheet? Does he do a DCF in his head? Or is DCF not that important as long as you have a good understanding of the business?

* How good are simple heuristics like PE, PEG, EV/EBIDTA in valuations?

* Can a multi-factor model work for valuations?

* What does history tell us about the correlation between valuations and stock price performance?

* What are the most common assumptions about valuations?

* How to know when my valuation is wrong?

* How are intangibles, corporate governance, management competence etc valued consistently?

* Is buying companies with low valuations better than buying companies with high valuations?

* Does market cycle determine valuation?

* Stan Druckenmiller says interest rate and currency influence valuations more than earnings. Is he right? Is it supported over time and across markets?

* Is narrative more powerful in the short run than valuation?

* Why is there such disconnect between private and public market valuations? Startups with no discernible earnings are being valued astronomically.

* Is there a model to accommodate systemic liquidity into valuation models

* Can valuation be disregarded altogether? How does a coffee-can portfolio generate above-average returns over time? Or a momentum portfolio for that matter.

Standard Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. Nothing in the article should be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.

Weekend Reading

Reading across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week.

I especially try to not post Corona related articles as that is all one gets to read in all traditional media.

 

If you like the collection this consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate.

The story of Parle-G

This is one article which I found fascinating at many levels. Deals with the history of Parle-G and also touches on the complexity of manufacturing and distribution in a constrained time like the Covid lockdown.

Across the country’s varied culinary landscape—where what one eats can signal class, caste, religion, ethnicity, and income—Parle-G biscuits are neutral. Wealthier Indians dip them in milky tea, poorer ones in water. Beyond the product itself, the people who make it illustrate the complexity and interdependent nature of the Indian economy, reliant at once on full-time workers and day labourers, not simply across the supply chain but often at the same company, even on the same factory floor. The Parle-G biscuit is, in many ways, bound up in multiple Indias—that of the formal and informal economy; that of big retail chains with their advanced supply chains and online stores, and mom-and-pop stores that have neighborhood credit systems; that of the rich, and the poor.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/india-biscuits-coronavirus-pandemic-migrant-workers/612619/

 

Deepfakes can be useful - if they don't become a menace

Synthetic media technologies—popularly known as deepfakes—have real potential for positive impact. Voice synthesis, for example, will allow us to speak in hundreds of languages in our own voice. Video synthesis may help us simulate self-driving-car accidents to avoid mistakes in the future. And text synthesis can accelerate our ability to write both programs and prose.

But these advances can come at a gargantuan cost if we aren’t careful: the same underlying technologies can also enable deception with global ramifications.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/12/12/131605/ethical-deepfake-tools-a-manifesto/

 

Negative news is bad for your health

Research shows us that even in normal times, constant exposure to negative news can have a heavy impact on our mental health. Among other things, negative news increases the level of cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone. Continuous exposure to cortisol has been shown to cause severe side effects, including being unable to naturally regulate blood pressure. Furthermore, negative news stories have been shown to significantly change an individual’s mood and mindset — particularly if there is a tendency to emphasize suffering, death, and other emotional components of the story.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-sharing-good-news-matters/

 

Market timing is not possible

Markets are second-order systems. What this means is that in order to successfully implement such market timing strategies you not only have to be able to predict events — interest rate rises, wars, oil price shocks, the impact of the coronavirus, the outcome of elections and referendums — you also need to know what the market was expecting and how it will react and get your timing right. Tricky. When it comes to so-called market timing there are only two sorts of people: those who can’t do it, and those who know they can’t do it. It’s safer and more profitable to be in the latter camp.

https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/news/article/2020/07/02/financial-times---there-are-only-two-types-of-investors

 

Augmented reality used for the first time in spine surgery

Augmedics, a pioneer in augmented reality, surgical image guidance has announced its groundbreaking xvision Spine System has been successfully used for the first time in a spinal fusion surgery in the United States.  The system was used in a spinal surgery procedure by Johns Hopkins University surgeons. xvision, the first Augmented Reality Guidance system for surgery, allows surgeons to visualize the 3D spinal anatomy of a patient during surgery as if they had “x-ray vision,” and to accurately navigate instruments and implants while looking directly at the patient, rather than a remote screen. The xvision Spine System takes the best of surgical navigation systems and improves upon them to meet the needs of surgeons and provide technical confidence in the operating room.

https://orthospinenews.com/2020/06/11/first-augmented-reality-spine-surgery-using-fda-cleared-augmedics-xvision-spine-system-completed-in-u-s/

Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. The blog posts should not be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.