Amit's Garage - Top-Down, Bottom-Up, No Filter

rupaniamit · July 2, 2026, 9:59pm

Markets are noisy. My head (my garage) is noisier. This space is my attempt to impose some order on both - working through ideas, connecting dots that may or may not connect, and sharing thoughts on anything and everything in the world of investing. No filters, no format. Just genuine curiosity. Expect thoughts on markets, businesses, macro, and the occasional rabbit hole I couldn’t resist going down.

Current Market Pulse

Markets don’t ring a bell at the top or the bottom. But they do leave clues — and one of the cleanest clues is the daily tally of stocks printing new 52-week highs versus new 52-week lows.

The chart below plots exactly that for the last two years across Indian markets.

Chart: NSE Daily New 52-Week Highs vs Lows — Jul 2024 to Jul 2026

July–August 2024: Clear Bull Market

Through July and August 2024, markets were consistently clocking 200+ new 52-week highs every single day. That’s not noise, that’s broad-based participation, sign of a healthy bull run. Stocks across sectors were hitting fresh peaks, and breadth was confirming what price action was suggesting.

September 27, 2024: Nifty Topped

And then, quietly, the breadth began to deteriorate. The crossover, the day when new 52-week lows first decisively eclipsed new 52-week high happened in early October 2024. That crossing is worth treating with respect. It doesn’t necessarily mean run for the exits, but it’s the market whispering that the easy money is behind you. Buying pullbacks aggressively after that signal is a different risk proposition than it was two months earlier.

Most technical indicators outside of 52 week high/low list would show us deteriorating breadth. The goal should be to be aware of the deteriorating breadth and not attempting to call the tops.

October 2024 to March 2026: The Long Grind

What followed was 17 months of painful churn — a slow, grinding decline punctuated by bear market rallies that sucked in optimists before resuming lower. Trump’s tariff tantrums and war with Iran just increased the panics in the market.

May 2026: The Snap-Back

Once the ceasefire was agreed, the reversal was violent and fast, exactly as snap-backs from fear extremes tend to be. By early May 2026, markets were clocking 200+ new 52-week highs again. Fear had flipped to relief, and the breadth confirmed it in real time.

The Framework

My working rule is simple: when either side, highs or lows, starts printing 200+, the barometer is tilting heavily into greed or fear territory. Those are the moments to pay attention to positioning.

More importantly, the crossover points, when highs flip to lows or lows flip to highs, are the transitions worth positioning around. From greed to fear. From fear to greed. You don’t need to be precise to the day. Being roughly right and reading the pulse of the market correctly is enough to determine whether you should be buying the dips aggressively or selling the rallies.

Where We Stand Today

The current setup (June–July 2026) looks constructive but not frothy. Highs are running in the 100–170 range with lows contained in the 20–60 range, positive breadth, but not the stretched 200+ consistent readings that signal excess. I believe there’s room to run.

What’s particularly encouraging is the quality of rotation in the 52-week high list. Textile stocks have recently joined the party, but leadership continues to come from Capital Goods, Aero-Defense, Engineering, Power, Pharma, and Lending. Q4FY26 year-on-year earnings growth for SMIDs came in north of 25%, even through a challenging macro backdrop. That’s a meaningful data point.

AI cycle in global markets is a key item on the radar. Global AI businesses charts do so signs of fatigue. So need to watch out how it pans out.

Techno-Funda Set-Up I Like: Mufin Green Finance

Background & Fundamentals

In 2022, APM Finvest was acquired by Mr. Kapil Garg, who took a 67.75% controlling stake and proceeded to rebuild it from the ground up. The company was renamed Mufin Green Finance, and the strategy pivoted entirely to ESG financing: electric vehicles (2-wheelers, 3-

Financial Year	AUM
FY2021–22	₹48 crore
FY2022–23	₹262 crore
FY2023–24	₹624 crore
FY2024–25	₹838 crore
FY2025–26	₹1,541 crore

Company Goal: Tech-First & Asset-Light

By FY26, Mufin Green has pivoted again, this time into a tech-first, asset-light model built around highly automated, digital-only products that require minimal manpower. Two products are worth highlighting:

Mediclaim Insurance Premium Financing already the largest segment at 39% of total AUM (₹608 crore as of March 2026). This is a sleek digital product: customers financing their health insurance premiums through a structured lending product. Sticky, recurring, and underwriting relatively lower risk than traditional lending.

Salary Saathi a government salary-backed lending product directly integrated with state government HRMS systems. The employer guarantee embedded in the structure de-risks the underwriting meaningfully.

Management is simultaneously reducing headcount from 499 to 300 while targeting a tripling of profitability a combination that, if executed, would dramatically improve operating leverage. The stated long-term ambition is ₹500 crore+ in profitability within three to four years.

A Word of Caution

Before getting carried away with the growth trajectory, it’s worth reading the ValuePickr thread by @24comlb, which forensically examines the promoter group’s history with Hindon Mercantile and raises legitimate questions worth sitting with. I’d call it required reading before forming a strong view either way: link

The latest concall transcript is also a must-read for anyone interested in the business.

Execution is the biggest risk in this story.

Technical Side

The weekly chart tells an interesting story. The stock spent over two years in a Stage 1-type base which was long, grinding, largely ignored consolidation. In early April 2026, it broke out in what appears to be a cup-and-handle pattern, with encouraging volume accompanying the move. The stock now looks to be attempting a transition into Stage 2 — the markup phase — though it’s still early days and confirmation is needed.

Posting a weekly chart of Mufin Green which doesn’t have last 3 months of data. @Satishwe pls let me know if you find anything wrong, and I will be happy to remove the chart.

Disc: invested in the business discussed. Sharing examples for education purpose and not an investment recommendation. Please do your own due diligence.

shyamutty · July 4, 2026, 6:56am

hi Amit, regarding the current Market Pulse chart, which website can we access this? this is good to know the market mood, whether to be aggressive or wait. good learning.

rupaniamit · July 6, 2026, 12:49pm

Hi @shyamutty,

I capture 52week high and low data manually. Attached please find last 2 years of data.

Thanks!

52W High List_AR.xlsx (1013.2 KB)

rupaniamit · August 4, 2026, 12:56am

Old Lessons, Re-learned in June and July

Rate hikes, or even the indication of rate hikes, have always broken something.

Kevin Warsh’s first policy meeting on 17th June carried a blunt message: we will not tolerate inflation above 2% at any cost.

That took out the most crowded and most fragile trade in the world. Kospi topped on 19th June and has fallen roughly 40% since.

The Nasdaq Composite made its high of 26,511 on 17th June and has not revisited that level. Never fight the Fed; a decades-old adage that continues to earn its keep.

To be fair, there was a googly on the same day. The US-Iran MoU was signed on 17th June as well, raising hopes of easing inflation and muddying the read. All of this is clear in hindsight. What is certain is that equity markets eventually take a breather, and it is difficult for them to keep climbing the wall of worry against the Fed when they are in mood for tightening.

The Fed does not have much room to keep rates elevated for long, given the debt levels. My point is not to predict policy. It is that every investor should keep an eye on what the Fed is doing, so that at least you know whether you are walking into a headwind or riding a tailwind.

30,000 feet view

The chart above covers four bull markets and four bear or large-drawdown phases. On the bull side, consistently printing 200+ new 52-week highs becomes unsustainable. And roughly two years of bear market if ends with a flush-out event like Covid in 2020 or the Iran-US war in 2026 gives path to a reversal in the downtrend.

3,000 feet view

July put a dent in an otherwise good rally, after the MoU and ceasefire between the US and Iran broke down. On 7th July, Iran allegedly attacked three vessels and the US revoked Iran’s oil-export licence. On 8th July, Trump publicly said the ceasefire was “over,” while leaving the door open to further talks. Brent went back to $90. Kospi collapsed 40% and AI trades in US markets fizzled, Indian markets, notably, did not crack; a sign of underlying strength worth paying attention to.

Who is leading the current “possible bull market”?

We are in the very early days of what may be a new bull market. Pharma and Hospitals; the defensives, have been the clear leaders since the rally resumed in April. Pharma was also leading in March, when only a handful of names held up while the rest of the market was flushing out. Before that it went through a dull year from March 2025, when Banks and NBFCs did the heavy lifting.

The current rally has been broad-based. Pharma is well supported by Textiles, Metals and other cyclicals, and Capital Goods, Power, with decent contribution from Consumption/Retail and Banks/NBFCs. The fact that every sector has participated in the recovery gives some confidence that we are in the early phase of a new bull market rather than a bounce.

A change in leadership from one sector to another every two or three months, with a few stocks doing remarkably well, would be a healthy sign of a long bull market.

Techno-Funda Set-Up I Like: Creative Newtech

At face value, Creative Newtech looks like a traditional, old-school distribution business. Look under the hood and almost all of its profit comes from a small licensed-brand business.

Covering this company properly would take far more space than one post. My goal here is to lay out the meat of the story, enough for you to see what is interesting, and leave you to go deeper on the moving parts.

It is a 34-year-old distributor earning roughly 2.5% PAT margin on a consolidated basis. Two-thirds of that profit comes from a small brand-licensing business housed in Hong Kong, which earns around 55% ROE and pays no tax. Distribution accounts for 86% of revenue and earns almost nothing on it; the branded business is 14% of revenue and produces two-thirds of the profit, on roughly a sixth of the assets and with no debt against it.

The legacy distribution business is well covered in the annual report and the VP thread. I want to focus on the branded business, because that is what is changing the complexion of the company.

What the branded business actually is

The branded business is a high-margin strategic pillar built on owned, joint-venture and licensed global brands. Moving away from volume-led distribution, the company acts as a “brand enabler,” managing the entire product lifecycle, intellectual property, industrial design and contract manufacturing. Four things define the segment:

Honeywell partnership: as exclusive trademark licensee across 38+ countries in APAC, the Middle East and Africa, Creative Newtech develops a wide suite of electronic essentials, air purifiers and audio products.
High profitability: branded products command gross margins of 35% to 50%, against low single digits in the core distribution business.
Diverse portfolio: beyond Honeywell, the segment includes a joint venture with CyberPowerPC for gaming systems and the recent launch of the company’s own brand, Wozoyo, in India and international markets.
Vision 2029: the long-term goal is a 50-50 revenue split between the branded business and the distribution backbone, in order to lift net profit margin.

Management has guided the branded business to reach Rs 1,000 cr at 18-19% EBIT.

How the SKU portfolio has grown

The SKU count shows how deliberately this was built.

FY21 - 200 SKUs
FY22 - 290 SKUs (first serious push into audio and the initial air purifier variants)
FY23 - 300 SKUs
FY24 - 400+ SKUs
FY25 - 400+ SKUs (management identified a core subset of 225 high-velocity consumer SKUs, the ones that actually move like air purifiers, premium audio under the Aviator line, bluetooth speakers, soundbars, mobile accessories)

Read together, the pattern is a company that spent four years widening the shelf and is now working out which parts of it deserve the inventory. Their Amazon storefront is worth a browse to see the actual range: https://www.amazon.in/stores/HoneywellConnection

The product range

How the branded business has grown

The trajectory is not smooth. FY24 grew 30%, FY25 stalled at 5.5%, and FY26 rebounded to 40.7%. That FY25 pause matters, because it coincided with the Indian distribution business going flat as well. What FY26 shows is that the branded engine can move quickly when pushed but 40.7% is still short of the 50-60% management guides to, and getting from Rs 381 cr to Rs 1,000 cr needs roughly 38% compounded for three straight years.

Optionality

Surveillance is the most interesting of the optionalities, and it exists because of regulation rather than competition. From 1st April 2026 it became illegal to sell an internet-connected CCTV camera in India without STQC certification, which tests where the chipset originated and whose firmware is running on it. Hikvision, Dahua and TP-Link currently have zero certified models. Only about seven vendors have cleared the bar, and Creative Newtech distributes three of them — Sparsh, Matrix and Honeywell.

In July, the board approved the acquisition of 100% of Infinova India for under $4 million. That brings a Pune assembly facility, exclusive India brand rights, and fifteen years of reference deployments including Mumbai Safe City, Nagpur Smart City and 61+ airports. My reading is that the real asset here is bid eligibility rather than the factory: a Chinese-parented entity cannot win Indian government surveillance tenders, whereas an Indian-owned entity can. The open question is whether the firmware and board design transfer with the deal or remain in Shenzhen under a technical-assistance arrangement, because certification tests the code rather than the assembly. Until an Infinova model appears on the STQC portal, what has been bought is a factory, a team and a customer list, not yet a sellable certified product.

Wozoyo, the company’s own brand, launched in June 2026 for India and the US. It is too early to draw any conclusions but shows that company doesn’t want to rely alone on the Honeywell licensing business. Its been 4-5 years that management has learned the ropes of how to run the business on various online platforms and can use those learnings to create its on brand.

Valuation

P/E on its own is not a sufficient yardstick, but I will use it here to keep things simple and gauge what one is paying for the business as it stands today.

Branded (global) PAT FY26: ~Rs 38 cr

Market Entry / legacy PAT FY26: ~Rs 25 cr

Applying 30x to the branded business gives Rs 1,140 cr, and 15x to Market Entry gives Rs 375 cr a combined Rs 1,515 cr against a current market cap of roughly Rs 1,526 cr. On that basis, one is paying nothing for Wozoyo, the US business, or surveillance.

One caveat on the arithmetic above. The Rs 70 cr consolidated PAT that most screeners use is stated before minority interest. Creative Newtech owns only 77.5% of the Hong Kong entity, so Rs 8.4 cr of that profit belongs to someone else. Attributable PAT is Rs 61.75 cr and reported EPS is Rs 41.04, which puts the trailing multiple closer to 22x than the ~16x shown on screeners.

Technicals

Stock has climbed back to make new ATH last week on strong volume. Majority of the last move has happened in June and July when the markets went slow and choppy given AI trade washouts. It was during these choppy days that stock was consistently hitting new 52week highs which shows clear sign of accumulation and great relative strength. Stock rallied strongly on announcement of winning Bharatnet project and acquisition of Infinova India. Market has kind of recognized its branded business and that its no longer only a low margin distributor.

Risks

The legacy business is a gas guzzler that demands a great deal of working capital. Growth here is being bought with working capital rather than earned, so some dilution along the way is a reasonable assumption.
The Honeywell licence comes up for renewal in March 2027. This is the single biggest risk. Management sounds confident, but confidence is not a contract.
Creative Newtech has been awarded the BharatNet Odisha B2G project with an advance work order of Rs 3,195 cr. This sits well outside the core business and will consume both working capital and management bandwidth.
As with every story, the biggest risk is the execution. The bet here can go wrong if the branded business is not scaled up in coming years.

Disc: invested in the business discussed. Sharing examples for education purpose and not an investment recommendation. Please do your own due diligence.

rupaniamit · August 18, 2026, 5:32am

Technology Enabler in Surveillance Industry is a long-shot optionality within Creative Newtech (CNL).

CNL acquired 100% of Infinova India for under $4mn in July 2026. Let’s try to understand why Creative Newtech is trying to break into Surveillance industry and what are its chances.

Industry Overview:

The India CCTV market was valued at USD 4.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 12.25 billion by 2030, representing a 20.60% CAGR. Surveillance is moving beyond simple video capture toward AI-driven visibility, analytics, and action, where cameras act as data collection devices for health, safety, and audit monitoring.

STQC - A game changer for the industry!

STQC (Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification) is a certification framework under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) that validates whether electronic products meet the cybersecurity and technical requirements defined by the government.

For CCTV cameras, STQC certification confirms that the device complies with the notified Essential Requirements (ER), ensuring secure firmware, encrypted communication, and protection against tampering.

From 01 April 2026, CCTV cameras not having STQC certification, BIS certification, or not pertaining to the ER norms, cannot be sold, even if they were previously permitted under transition provisions.

The Essential Requirements require evidence on product and supply-chain security: secure firmware, protection against backdoors, secure communications, cryptographic controls, component-source and supply-chain risk review, and source-code/security documentation. Those requirements can be difficult for any offshore OEM to satisfy, especially where critical chips, firmware, cloud services, or code are controlled outside India.

CNL management identifies STQC certification as the “biggest hurdle” in the camera business because it requires that coding software and PCB designing be indigenously made in India, effectively barring Chinese products from government-sensitive projects. By partnering with certified brands, Creative Newtech gains a “right to win” in protected categories like national security and defense.

STQC Certified Brands/Owners:

All brands holding STQC certification can be viewed from this government link. Roughly 50+ certified network-camera entries in total as of mid-June 2026, a count that drifts monthly.

Below are the main players in Indian CCTV markets with STQC certification and their ownership structure:

CP Plus - Aditya Infotech. 100% Indian owned with ~45-50% market share leader
Prama India - Prama Hikvision India Pvt. Ltd., an India joint venture linked to Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. and the Prama business
Matrix Comsec - 100% Indian owned private company
Sparsh CCTV - Samriddhi Automations Pvt. Ltd., the parent company behind the Sparsh brand 100% Indian owned
Vicon Security Tech - Vicon Industries, Inc. / its Indian operating entity Vicon Security Tech Pvt. Ltd.; global company founded in the United States.
Honeywell - USA owned
Equus - Indian owned private player

So you have four fully Indian owned brands who hold STQC certficates; CP Plus, Matrix, Sparsh, and Equus. Co-incidentally, CNL is pan-India exclusive distribution and supply chain partner of both Matrix and Sparsh. These exclusive alliances complement CNL’s existing relationships with Honeywell (specifically structured cabling) to provide end-to-end infrastructure solutions**.**

Prama Hikvision India is still Hikvision-linked, Hongli He and Peisheng Du sit as directors alongside MD Ashish Dhakan, with 1,569 employees and a balance sheet filed to March 2025, operating revenue above ₹500 crore for FY2024, and it holds the largest certified model count in the country. Chinese parentage is therefore not an absolute bar to STQC certification if you migrate to Taiwanese chipsets and localise firmware, which is precisely what CP Plus, Qubo, Prama, Matrix and Sparsh all did to absorb the vacated share. Source link

Below is a screenshot from June 2026 Aditya Infotech’s concall where management explained the current market competitive landscape:

Why did the government mandate ER 01 and STQC certification for CCTV cameras?

The government initiated these mandates as a proactive shield for national security, designed to prevent the very vulnerabilities that hostile actors look to exploit. Although it was initiated much earlier, the critical need for such a framework was starkly illustrated in March 2026, when police in Ghaziabad and Hapur uncovered espionage networks where operatives had installed standalone solar-powered Chinese CCTV cameras at sensitive locations, including areas near railway stations and defence installations. These cameras used 4G SIM cards to transmit live feeds that were accessible from anywhere, including from servers based in China. The investigation linked the network to Pakistan’s ISI and the banned terror group Babbar Khalsa International, resulting in 32 arrests across Ghaziabad and Delhi.

The fallout was immediate. Maharashtra’s Chief Minister ordered a complete ban on procuring CCTV equipment from Chinese companies and directed a security audit of existing surveillance systems across the state. The central government tightened enforcement of the April 2026 deadline. BIS started warehouse raids. Source link

Why did CNL acquire Infinova India?

Infinova (India) Pvt. Ltd. was legally classified as a private subsidiary of a foreign company. Its directors include Jeffrey Zhaohuai Liu and Li Haoling, and the broader group is associated with Shenzhen Infinova, a China-based, Shenzhen-listed surveillance company.

Infinova India partnered with L&T Smart World & Communication on Mumbai’s city-surveillance expansion, involving more than 12,000 CCTV cameras across 1,800 locations in 2023. The system was intended to improve public safety, traffic enforcement, crime detection, coastal monitoring, and disaster response. Source link

Infinova reported deployments at more than 70 Indian airports; a separate case-study source identifies IP cameras with analytics installed at 22 airports. These are company/publicity claims rather than independently audited deployment counts. Source link

Some of the notable project references include Mumbai Safe City, Nagpur Smart City, more than 61 airports across India, Bangalore Metro, Dhaka Metro, IOCL, BPCL, HPCL, ONGC, NTPC, RCF, Bihar and Gujarat Jails and District Courts, Navy installations, SHAR, and several other deployments executed through Indian system integration partners. Source link

With this proposed acquisition, Creative Newtech shall take a decisive step towards building its own surveillance technology platform and brand presence in the electronic surveillance space. The proposed addition of Infinova India will provide Creative Newtech with local assembly and manufacturing capability product ownership, brand rights, domain expertise, and an established customer and project base. This will allow Creative Newtech to move beyond a primarily distribution-led model into a more integrated, technology-led and value-driven business platform. Creative Newtech is also in the process of developing a comprehensive bouquet of surveillance products that are intended to be BIS and STQC complaint and aligned with the broader objectives of Make in India and Sell Global. The proposed acquisition of Infinova India is expected to provide a strong foundation for Creative Newtech to progressively build a trusted Make in India surveillance technology platform with enhanced product control, stronger service capability, and improved market positioning. Source link

What a 100% buyout of Infinova India actually solves is procurement eligibility: land-border public-procurement restrictions, plus Maharashtra’s Chief Minister ordering a complete ban on procuring CCTV equipment from Chinese companies and a security audit of existing state systems. CNL just won two Maharashtra government orders. An Indian-listed 100% owner is what makes Infinova India bid-eligible. That, plus a fifteen-year installed base to service and refresh, is the asset. And opportunity to build on top of existing foundation of Infinova India and launch STQC and BIS certified CCTV cameras and a right to earn manufacturer’s margin and not the distributor’s.

Aditya Infotech: humble distribution beginnings

Incorporated in 1995 as Perfect Lucky Goldstar International Limited, the company changed its name to Aditya Infotech in 1997. In its early years, it operated primarily as a distributor of leading global IT brands. For over 16 years Aditya was Dahua Technology’s exclusive distributor in India, leveraging the Chinese vendor’s technology to build out CP Plus’s range and all the product knowledge.

In 2007, the company entered the security and surveillance segment with the launch of its flagship brand, CP PLUS. Between 2010 and 2017, the company’s business model was primarily centered on trading security surveillance products. A critical shift occurred in 2017 when the company began manufacturing surveillance products indigenously in Tirupati under the “Make in India” initiative. To accelerate localization, the company formed a 50:50 joint venture with Dixon Technologies (AIL Dixon) to manufacture electronic components. The company inaugurated a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh during 2022-2023. By 2025, this facility became the third-largest CCTV manufacturing plant in the world by volume. In September 2024, Aditya Infotech acquired the remaining 50% stake in AIL Dixon, making it a 100% subsidiary and bringing its entire electronics manufacturing process completely in-house.

Big Question on Infinova India Acquisition:

CNL just like Aditya is trying to move from distributor to manufacturer of CCTVs. CNL is at a point today where Aditya was in 2017. And it took Aditya 9 years, Dixon JV, a big government shift (STQC certification and Chinese CCTV bans) to earn manufacturer’s EBITDA levels of 15%.

However, CNL is buying a Pune facility of undisclosed capacity for under $4m all-in, with no disclosed R&D headcount and no disclosed design ownership. If CNL acquires Infinova and the firmware still comes from Shenzhen under a “technical assistance” arrangement, it has bought the plaque and is starting the seven-year walk, not finishing it. The question for the management: how many hardware and firmware engineers transfer with Infinova India, and do they design or do they integrate?