Monday, February 20, 2012

Perennial Pessimism---A paradox


I’m going to go out on a limb and be a contrarian. I think we are overdoing this pessimism business. By ‘we’ I mean all of us —investors, businessmen, the media et al. In fact, pretty much everyone whose voice you hear nowadays lamenting how the country is going to the dogs. The problem with this view is that this country has always been allegedly going to the dogs. I’m in my mid-forties and in my living memory (at least since I was old enough to read a newspaper), there has practically never been a time when this country was not going to the dogs.
And yet if you look around every few years and compare it to what has gone before, almost everyone’s lives are better than before. Sure, some people’s lives are not as much better as could be, and almost no one’s is as much better as they would want. However, the fact remains that when you step back and take a broad look at where we are going, there is more room for optimism than there is for pessimism.
Let’s apply the concept of rolling returns to the general economic conditions in the country. Take any 10-year period in the last forty years and compare the situation at its beginning with its end and you will see what I mean. Were things better in 1970 or in 1980? The answer is obviously in the latter. 1990 or 2000? 1984 or 1994? 2000 or 2010? It’s the same answer every time. When you stand back and take a 10-year perspective, the forward surge of Indian economy and businesses is always obvious. Certainly, some 10-year periods are better than others but the situation never regresses. Some might say that a 10-year period is too long, but that’s not much longer than what would qualify as an appropriate period for a long-term equity investment.
Now, it’s possible in theory that the next ten years will be different and the country will be much worse off in 2022 than it is now. But I wouldn’t give too much to the chances of this happening.
In investing, there’s a saying that a rising tide lifts all boats, meaning that in a booming market, even bad stocks go up. At Value Research, we firmly believe that the current situation is the reverse of that. A receding tide appears to be sinking all boats. For a long time now, equity markets have been so bad, that even good stocks have fallen precipitously. However, this is as misleading as the rising tide. In the general gloom and doom that surrounds us, there are a large number of stocks that are available at very attractive prices. And therein lies an opportunity that the value investor must not miss.
The essence of value investing is to buy good stocks at a price that is less than their intrinsic value. By this definition, an Indian equity investor is just about in value investing heaven right now. Stock prices have been largely static or falling for a long time while profits have been proportionately less under pressure. The result is that there are some great valuations available on many stocks that can be invested in for the long term.
Just about the worst thing that investors can do at this juncture is to get too focussed on the short-term volatility or the general gloom and doom mood. As I said, in theory the pessimists could turn out to be correct. But I wouldn’t bet on it and in your investments, neither should you.

(source:- www.valueresearchonline.com)

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