Senthil's Portfolio

[7msenthil]

Hello All!

I’ve been following this forum for a while and have learned a lot from everyone’s insights. While I feel like a newbie, I’m eager to share my experiences and hopefully contribute something to the community.

My investment journey began around June 2020. As I started to understand the underlying concepts, I was captivated by the idea of owning a piece of incredible companies. Till that point, people I looked upto would always it’s a gamble.

My initial investment strategy was, to put it bluntly, terrible. I’d pick stocks based solely on their historical price charts, completely ignoring fundamentals. It was a reckless approach, to say the least.

With a small capital of 5 lakhs, I blindly invested in companies like Maharashtra Scooters, KPIT Technologies, City Union Bank, Bata, Escorts, Bharti Airtel, Hero, MGL, Raymond, Ceat, ICICI Prudential, Amara Raja, Frontier Springs, PVR, VRL Logistics, M&M, Bajaj Auto, Astral Limited, Future Lifestyle, and Parle Industries (mistakenly thinking it was Parle Biscuits).

I had no idea about P/E ratios, market caps, or financial statements. I was simply drawn to stocks that had shown consistent upward trends.

The worst part was my inability to hold onto winners. As soon as a stock doubled, I’d sell out of fear or greed. This short-sightedness cost me dearly. For instance, I sold KPIT after a 100% gain, completely missing out on its subsequent multi-bagger run. Additionally, Future Lifestyle and few other companies was a constant disappointment, leading to averaging down, which turned out to be a poor decision. At this point, I had made no money, I would sell out seeing by even a 5% correction.

Feeling frustrated with my results, I decided to start over in 2022. I focused on understanding the companies I invested in and developed a more patient approach. This time, I built positions in ITC, KTK Bank, South Indian Bank, Wonderla, VGuard, Whirlpool, Tech Mahindra, Sun TV, Krsnaa, Kalyan, AB Capital, and Chamanlal.

While not perfect, this strategy yielded better returns. I sold most of those companies and invested in US Tech companies when I saw them crashing for no solid reasons. I found them to be better at that point and I also wanted to book some profits.

Here is the current portfolio. It was untouched from 2022 till last month. Sold some portions from Meta/Amzn and Googl profits and started a position in remaining companies.

Indice	Avg Price	US Folio Weight	Rationale
Meta	103.33	26.8	In my friends circle and family, I see atleast 2+ hours of scrolling in Insta/FB and Whatsapp is the goto chat tool.
Amzn	93.33	25.61	Prime user since 2021 and saw a lot of IT Customers using AWS. I enjoyed their products and services and prefer over other retail and cloud solutions.
Googl	92.85	23.72	Lot of essential tools. Maps, YT, Search, Android, etc., OpenAI is a new competition for Search but I don’t see it impacting Google anytime soon
Intc	25.06	13.02	Just from a pure value play. Can’t digest such a company at <100B valuation. Still reading about their growth/sustainability.
Vwagy	11.3	5.87	I liked their cars and was surprised to see it in multi year lows (around 4 PE). Still reading.
Nke	75.46	4.98	Liked their products and current valuation. I still see it growing in the coming years.

And below are the Indian stocks I am currently adding or have been adding recently, I will share the size, rationale and weightage of these in a few days.
My portfolio currently leans towards a mix of Indian financials and a few pharma bets. Here are the stocks: HDFC Bank, Shriram Properties, City Union Bank, Muthoot Microfin, RBL Bank, Manappuram, DR Reddy’s, Lux Ind, Dyenamic Products, Suryarosni, Stovekraft, KRBL, DCB Bank, Amarjothi, Lincon Pharma.

The whole point of this is to share some of the bad decisions I made over the years so that someone else reading this try and avoid it. But I am also thinking Investing a self thing, you don’t really learn until you burn your hands. So start somewhere and enjoy the process of owning your favorite companies.

Please feel free to through your judgements, thoughts and questions. Thanks.

[Cshar]

Do you still own kalyan jewellers or regret selling it? I bought around 110, still holding 75%, diluted 25% at average 530.

Reasons to be so bullish on financials? As economy will expend, NIM spread will reduce, its a crowded space and banking is just commodity now, growth will be in clouds only, Small finance banks, large pvt, public, too much noise.

What growth you forsee for meta, Google now? AI search will change business dynamics drastically.

[7msenthil]

I held Kalyan from 80s and sold at around 250. Now it’s in an overpriced range for me. But still like the business.
About financials, I do understand there are lot of players. But people always need more than what they have and I don’t see the future without lending business. So I believe there’s enough market for every player. Atleast for the next few years, I don’t see the growth slowing down unless some macro event occurs.

[7msenthil]

I have built up new positions into Lulu, Ulta and STLA in US Market. The first two companies are still growing and looks cheap compared to their historical pricing. And it looks like an industry wide correction not major problems around the companies.
As for the Indian market, I am trying to slowly form an investing process for me. What worked for me greatly in the US market is finding good companies at cheap valuations and building a sizable portfolio (concentrated). But I have always held more than 15 stocks in Indian portfolio at any point in time. Some of my new entries are already being appreciated (likes of shriram properties, muthoot microfin, etc.,), for these companies I didn’t rely much on analyst reports or other super investors interest. I just found them on screeners and ran a few checks, applied some common sense and assumptions about their growth potential and entered. I still could be wrong in the long term but so far that’s what worked for me. I am confident that atleast 6 out of 10 companies will get nice appreciation in the long term. I also should not look out for immediate exit after a good run up. I still should analyse if the cmp is priced in for the next three years growth, if there’s still growth I should hold on. That’s what I do with my US winners, I trim but I don’t exit out completely if there’s still growth.