ValuePickr - Chintan Baithak 2019

This was my 2nd VP Chintan Baithak and it keeps getting better and better. Was down with health issues and glad that I did not miss it else would not have been able to imagine what I missed :slight_smile:. Few things which I noted:

  1. There are guys who always go out of their comfort zone to learn something new and do not confine themselves to one theory, one framework but try to learn, experiment and analyze before concluding what works and what does not work. @basumallick Dada’s journey from fundamental stock picker to last year presentation on quantitative investing to this year presentation on technical analysis is a perfect example. @spatel presentation on a theme out of his comfort zone is another one

  2. Amazed by the amount of effort some of folks like @ankitgupta put attending so many AGMs, tracking so many sectors and putting so much effort to find next best opportunities and to get better sense of management. In fact, during Hiren sessions, was surprised by the number of company managements he meets over a year. Reflects the hard work to find things which one cant find in secondary research materials.

  3. One needs to find his own objective, process and what fits best in a customized personal circumstance. Really liked the approach @rupaniamit has taken given his aspirations, strengths and opportunities life has thrown at him. Really proves we first need to look inside, do, our own SWOT and find what framework suits us rather than following some common framework

  4. Also, was amazed by the sense of humor @narendra @rupaniamit brought during their presentations, it tells a lot about different styles of presentation, specially on complex topics like investment

  5. We must leverage the ground level experience we have in a sector by virtue of running a business or professionally working in an industry. kedar’s presentation on AMC sector was a true reflection of that. By the time presentation ended, each n every minute doubt was addressed , such was beauty of his presentation built leveraging tremendous work experience he has in this industry

There were few companies which I was always interested in and could not study and some of them got covered including motherson sumi, ion exchange etc. Thanks to the presenters for putting extra effort to give very informative capsule dose in 30 minutes. In fact, 3rd day, we had 17 presentations back to back :slight_smile: full of rich content and it was possible only due to our strict disciplinarian @hitesh2710 bhai who ensured that we stick to timelines with a balance between exploration and respecting time.

The best part was session with Hiren. What I liked the most was it was very less of PPT and more of free flow interactive discussion where he shared his journey, his intangible learning, the softer aspects of understanding management, news items etc. which comes only out of such rich experience which he possess. Also, being an analytics guy, i was always curious on how he uses it (as mentioned in one of latest book which has a chapter dedicated to him) and it was quite fascinating how he is also adopting to technology. Simple message again, be open to learn, be humble, there is always more to learn.

Shared room with @spatel bhai n used some of free time to benefit from his knowledge of chemical, API, pharma and CRAMs industry. Will surely benefit me when I take a shot on these industries again.

All in all, great 3 days full of learning, thinking and fun in between. Made a return trip by car to Bangalore with @phreakv6 and must say, life is better when you have few friends who can play the role of a good critique you need in your friend circle from investment angle. I am blessed to have few of them through VP group.

The last but most important was the session done by @manish962 bhai regarding our VP forum and the vision with which @Donald and @ayushmit started it. We must preserve, nurture and respect their vision and before putting every single post, we must ask ourselves - “Are we adding value to the forum by putting this post”

I made a presentation on Tata Elxsi and the presentation is attached. Please ask questions related to ppt or company in respective stock thread and not here.
Tata Elxsi.pdf (2.4 MB)

Notes: I have made by notes out of various sessions and will post in few days no

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Hi All

As usual I was humbled by the sheer passion of all the participants. For me personally these few days is like an avalanche of information.

On our guest Hiren Ved’s presentation Harshit has captured almost everything. I took down the following 10 overall points:

  1. Look for large opportunity which is growing
  2. You have a competitive edge in the domain you work
  3. Scalability is essential for a business
  4. Market gives valuation to a) Growth and b) Return on capital
  5. Work on a ~ 1:3 risk reward
  6. PEG ratio focus. Don’t look at say a Bajfin not just on PB but PE also.
  7. Doesn’t set target price or multiples
  8. When confidence is there in the thesis then its fine to buy at a higher price
  9. Don’t take things at face value, go experience it for yourself
  10. Management Evaluation most important criteria are a) Capital Allocation and, b) Leverage. These two are the quantitative ways of concluding the same.

Apart from this there were excellent presentations on Capital Goods, Chemical Sector and AMC business. I think time was very limited for them unfortunately.

Narendra covered humorously how he manages to listen to concalls and how he does scuttlebutt. Rahul talked about his factor based investing model which I use in a very different way in my own momentum portfolio. Rupesh as usual was detailed in his analysis on Laurus Lab and HDFC Life (last year Rupesh and Anant had taken us through the insurance business which I still dont understand, my fault). Harshit talked about Parag Milk and it reminded me of last year’s discussion too. Amit Rupani covered his journey from a professional cricketer to a professional investor! He shared his detailed analysis on KRBL. I loved @phreakv6 's deck. So many things resonated with my thought process personally. Vivek shared his analysis on Mold Tek Pkg. Sandeep Patel talked about the opportunity on Ion Exchange. @basumallick da shared his ideas on rites. I loved the technical session by @hitesh2710 and dada. I use statistical methods in my momentum portfolio and liked this talk. @zygo23554 is always brilliant with his analysis. He took us through AMC businesses and Minda Industries. @dd1474 bhai shared his analysis on BSE which was quite nice. @ayushmit alked about Sandur Manganese and Pratyush on GNA Axles. Manish bhai spoke on DFM foods.

Sandeep K shared his personal experiences on meeting with Charlie Munger this year. He also took a session on meditations. I always listen very attentively when he speaks.

Whenever I see @desaidhwanil and @ankitgupta 's level of discussion and passion I feel humbled. I think they put back breaking effort in their investment journeys. @suru27 as usual has data as his superpower.

Last but not the least @jitenp bhai shared his views on the auto industry. He is a treasure trove of investing knowledge. I always listen carefully whenever he speaks.

I shared my views on the consumer business of Borosil. Attached is the presentation.

Thanks to all the organizers.

Looking forward to sharing and learning more on the forum.

Thanks & Regards

VP Goa (2019)_Stock Idea_Deepak Venkatesh.pptx (2.3 MB)

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Find enclosed my notes on Hiren Ved’s session at VP.

Hiren Ved’s Pearl:

Background:

Born and brought up in Mumbai, Graduated from Commerce and Qualified Cost accountant.

1990-95, Worked under KR Choksey. Focus was attending AGM, reading annual reports and understanding business:

1995-99: Worked with Prime Securities. Worked with smart investors which contributed in shaping of his mental framework in investment joinery

2000- Started Alchemy for providing PMS services.

Difference between PE and public investing:

In late nighties, he also benefited from significant increase wealth from TMT boom. As success follow, He decided that he understand IT sector very well and prepared from investment in PE in early investment in 2000. After difficult time, there was learning that there is fundamental difference between PE investment and Public investment. PE requires lot of understanding of business and at times, also running business.

Key changes in Markets:

Indian GDP in nominal terms growing at 10% now as against 15% during 2000 first decade

Demonitisation/GST/IBC are also related changes are slowing moving India where doing business in Old way of “managing environment” would be increasing difficult, while clean management with higher operating efficiency would be benefitting from this shift. He cited example of Titan. The new generations have no trust in traditional family Jewelers. Also, past ways to fund inventories and buying in Cash is also becoming difficult. This is one of factor which may benefit Titan in medium term. His disclaimer at this stage and onwards was that all example cited are more for business understanding and valuation perspective then recommendation. Same shall apply for all names mentioned in the discussion.

Controlling behavior is more important than identify a correct company for investment:

While he has success in identify Bajaj Finance very early (2010), he said that it was just 20% share in wealth creation. Holding Bajaj Finance over a longer period of time, through various phases, contributed in 80% of wealth creation. Also, Management of Bajaj finance was reasonably vigilant and risk averse, which was shown in action by closing very early Infrastructure lending book and LAP book as compared with other peers. That also improves confidence in the management ability to see emerging trends and benefit from same.

Worst of error in portfolio are committed in best of time. After very good performance, become very critical of own performance. Look at the company which is mediocre quality, which generally enter portfolio, as their relative valuation are good. KEEP CLEANING EGO. KEEP LEARNING.

How to identify a Good Business to invest:

Large external opportunity which is growing

Competitive advantage of player

Scalable, this is major issue with many management. While they can run current business very well, not able to scale due to limited delegation and lack of good manpower. He shared Example of Mr. Sunil Mittal, who started as Managing Director, took right team members, Identify segment to penetrate and grow and identify right member to lead the business. He, in turn evolves as a leader who then more focus on long term growth initiative with limited time being spent on day to day affairs.

Quality of Management and Governance: Past actions of Management, in case on active history and business appear interesting, Invest by way of “Foot in the Door” approach. Have a small tracking position and see how business is developing. Evaluate decision in the process, built conviction and take action (either increase/ exit the position).

Quantitative measures: ROCE, Leverage, Capital Allocation and Dilution. In case business has done dilution, whether all dilution has been value creating for a new investor in medium terms. In case dilution has not created value, the investor population as well as sentiment to new dilution would not be good. Give example of Bajaj Finance and Dhirubhai about successful dilution while Infrastructure/Power player’s dilution during boom period. These management could not get investor support due to loss suffered by investors in past dilutions.

Investment in Company like hiring a new employee:

Annual report of the company is like CV of prospective candidate for hiring

Management meet/Con Call/AGM are comparable to Interview

Check with competitor, Vendors, dealers is comparable to reference check.

Final decision would be to invest or hire the employee.

However, true character of business or employee is known only after we have invested/hired. So after 1-2 years’ experience, we may decide and increase/reduce our position in the company.

Growth at Reasonable Price (GARP):

He is believer in GARP investing as against Value investing. Value investing find difficult to work in Indian environment till now, as there was no mechanism in past to change the bad management. While IBC is trying to attempt same, still success of same would be known only in time to come. Hence, he has focus more on growth companies with good management then look at low P/E stocks.

While evaluating growth, it not only absolute growth, but also rate of change in growth (derivative of growth) is also important. Whenever derivative of growth moves in de-acceleration, the P/E gets de-rated quickly. Eicher was example of same.

Secondly, one also needs to look at what market expect from the company. When company consistently performs better/lesser then market consensus, after 2-3 quarters, PE would also be changed to reflect the realities in number.

View on current Bipolar Market

Currently in market, handful companies are showing new highs while more than 95% companies are not showing any change in price. This situation is reflection of market mood were growth has either become uncertain/negative. The companies with certainty of growth and good trustworthy management are getting very high valuation as that class is rare. Once overall economy improves and growth resume and trust in management restored, then the extra premium valuation for these companies would be spread over other players.

Quant Perspective

They have small team which also looks at quant as tool to identify potential investment approach. While he is not doing currently, they are thinking over idea to Rank their investment. Intending to develop a ranking model, which may result in reallocation with portfolio companies based on ranking.

There quant study on global companies indicate that market provide enough opportunity before major change in valuation. We are not able to grasp market signals. Wall mart was available at PE of 10 times for a very long period before market recognizes its business potential.

One more perspective was about using 200 Moving average, a technical analysis tool to fundamental. As per their study, more than 90% of the companies, which moved below 200 days moving average, continue to show longer period of decline. So if past is any indication, then it could be very good tool to evaluate exit decision in growth companies.

Benefit of equity investing

Equity investing has many advantages. One can gain from other people ability and benefit from same. Secondly, as against starting business, one can start business of equity investing without any physical infrastructure like office at a minimal cost. Equity investor is also saved from handling all the business stakeholders like Labour, Government, Lenders, and Vendors. By quick entry and exit, equity investor can enter/exit business within seconds, which take months for entrepreneurs. Thirdly, legitimate way to make money with limited tax. Dividend on equity is tax free (till Rs 10 Lakhs) while short term and long term capital gain (at 15% and 10% respectively) are also lower business income tax.

Economy cycle and market cycle

While both cycles generally move in tandem, market cycle is moving ahead of economy cycle. Valuation of company peak much in advance, when performance of the company is still improving and best of the numbers are yet to reach. Over a long term they merge, but in short term relationship may be divergent with market cycle is generally leading the economy cycle.

New Industry cycle: Version 1.0/2.0

In a new industry (like IT in late 1990s, Infra/Real Estate in 2004s), when the growth is high, return are disproptionate and every player/investor gain. However, this phase last for small period. Once the growth rate stabilizes and followed with dull period of long period of low growth, many players/investors gets weeded out. The surviving few develop competitive strength, newer products/market and scale advantage which give rise to Version 2.0 of industry growth. This growth is slower in pace then version 1.0, with fewer players but longer duration. The sustainable wealth can be made in version 2.0 industry growth, if one carefully identifies correct players. Real Estate/Retailing are now appearing to migrated from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0 in his opinion.

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VP 2019 was super amazing. Sharing my notes:

Concept of Trust (Exponential results) - "Accumulated Karma"

People and companies go a long long way by building trust.

There are companies which try to squeeze their customers, suppliers, bankers or even investors. Then their are companies which let their suppliers make profits, which let all their investors make money, which earn the trust of their customers. These get exponential results.

Concept of Yeh-ho-gaya-top / yeh-ho-gaya-bottom

There is no such as as “Yeh hogaya top” or “Yeh ho gaya bottom”. Even greatest investors made mistakes of thinking ki “ye ho gaya bottom” and valuations fell another 50%. Understanding macros is helpful. Stop-losses are important. Self-introspection is most important as to why something happened.

Concept of fighting the markets / accepting realities

“Market cuts everyone to the size” - when the stock falls to 20-30% from top, we book the stop losses and re-evaluate. We redo the homework - check everything again - and then re-invest if needed.

Power of Reflection

Keep asking and evaluating that why did I make money or why did I lose money in any idea?

Understanding what stocks made money for someone and why didn’t I look at those ideas?

Self improvement and reflection is most important for evolution.

We must have a clarity as to why we are holding something.

Analogy of Investing and Hiring

Investing is very much like hiring. We look at CV, do interviews, do background checks and ask for referrals. We develop trust overtime. We are willing to pay higher because we are surer.

“Foot in the door” is a very good approach. Go and experience it. If you believe it is expensive or don’t know if I am at top of the cycle - then put a stop loss.

Managing losses

Be ruthless to cut losses. No emotions.

Don’t try to rationalise when cutting losses.

You cannot carry too much dead-weight. Force yourself to rethink and re-evaluate to cut the laggards in optimum way.

In India, Growth with Quality works

Market is willing to pay very high for quality growth.

Graham’s “value-unlocking” method is not-very efficient in India. No bankruptcy code and the long legal process makes value-unlocking hard.

India has a very huge market. There is a customer at every price and at every quality. There can be shifts happening between these different markets.

As long as you keep surprising, the PE multiples can keep rising. PEG is a good metric.

Doing lots of company visits and ground work

Hiren visits 150 plants and companies a year. Every alternate week, he is travelling and visiting. They have hired a person who just stays on ground and visits stores.

Visiting lots of plants repeatedly gives you a sense about the qualitative differences.

Seeing how inventories are handled, the cleanliness, the controls and procedures tells a lot. To hold a stock, you need to be aware about the things. You should keep visiting.

“Hunting in pairs” - go on visits with someone.

How to Measure the Management

Evaluate management on their Capital Allocations and Leverage

What has the company done with money over the years. How has debt moved over the years.

These two will tell more about the management than many other things.

Focus on ROCEs, Cash Flows and Capital allocations.

Talking to management can be deceptive. It should be competitors who should appreciate.

Importance of Capex

We see capex and then expect the company to immediately put it to full utilisation.

Chances of growth from capex is 50:50. Put up your guards when you see capex. Observe the ROCEs.

Concept of ONE

High quality companies are very very unique. They are formed at a right time by a set of people and circumstances all played together. Thus there is only one HDFC Bank, one Pidilite, one Bajaj Finance, one Titan. There is only one Aishwarya, there can be a Deepika, but only one Aishwarya. We should not look for another HDFC Bank [i.e. not compare another bank with HDFC and invest based on comparative valuations].

"If we don’t disrupt ourselves, someone else will"

Alchemy has a quant team just to disrupt themselves. It is interesting to get their insights:

  • When Stocks fall by a third, their long term trend is broken
  • All great companies gave chances even after posting numbers

Investing is an open card game - you can play seen and still win

There is always a good business available that will become great. They always give chances to invest in. We are usually blinded by our own biases - eg not even looking at companies with high multiples. They are unique and can’t be recreated - “HDFC ek hi hai”. Great companies keep surprising and they are re-rated for that.

High multiples are risky because growth can get disrupted for various reasons. How many circumstances can hit and snowball is not knowable.

There are always first clear signs of stress - the first chink in the armour (keep materiality in mind).

When the company has done well then markets are willing to give them a benefit of doubt. They also give you a time to de-board.

RJ’s Framework

  1. Large external opportunity: “Ganga wahin se behati hai”

  2. Competitive edge to exploit it

  3. Scalable: Can it be scaled to 500 Cr - 5000 Cr - 25000 Cr

  4. Quality and Governance

    a. Quantitative aspects: did investors make money at each dilution

    b. Softer aspects:

  5. Valuation

On how to do experts pay high multiples

Valuations are given to the best. Look at the sizes of the bigger companies. Look at the scale and the best PE multiples in comparative industries.

Concept of V1 and V2

Most new industries go through an initial phase where there is a huge boom. Wild-west everywhere - everyone makes money.

Since the industry is new with few listed peers, there is no known way to value it.

There there is destruction and deep correction.

Very few survive the destruction and then they grow with durability in V2.

Handling Success - Killing our Egos

It is very easy to become complacent in wealth industry.

After a great year, take deep breath and look at everything.

Keep whipping your mind.

Be at your highest alert after great picks. You will often try to out-smart yourself.

Others

  • Investors can’t add value to the business. They are meant for thinking. They cannot grow or drive the businesses. That needs to be done by the entrepreneur running the business.
  • We are mostly running after the “new” companies - “Navu Su”. This often makes us blind to old understood stories or obvious mis-pricing in well-known businesses.
  • Understanding macros provides the context as to why a certain thing is happening.
  • Quality of capital put the the industry determines the outcome of the industry
  • The top person is even more important in service industries especially banks and finance as these are levered businesses. The top guy sets the overall culture.
  • Financing is easy to scale. You can also do wholesale lending with high growth. Retail lending is harder and slower and built over years.

Concept of Winning Losers Game

While 1% of the players are experts, most others lose most of their points in trying to hit shots and smashes. Most of the points are lost in doing smart things.

We can do very well by just getting the ball to other side.

In investing or business too, we can do very well by just avoiding mistakes and doing right things.

Trying to outsmart ourselves - timing markets - taking leveraged positions - is often injurious.

Keep doing RIGHT things and the markets will reward you.

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Hi Everyone,

Its been a privilege to be part of such an exceptional group. I’m amazed with the dedication, hard work and passion of the members…time just flew away during those 4 days. Many of the members are young in age, in job, with small kids yet they have been doing lot of hard work and making notable contribution for the benefit of everyone. The discussions, interactions used to go on from early morning till midnight.

This year we focussed more on specific stock discussions given the state of markets. The idea was to focus more on the thought process and see how people think about the idea and learn from each other’s methods, thoughts and insights.

This year we had 5 new members on the table - @lingalarahul7 @phreakv6 @rupaniamit (all the way from US) @narendra @harshitgoel. It was good to see the journey of each of them and the unique skill set they posses.

The highlight of these 4 days was open interaction with Hiren Ved. He was super kind and shared his journey, learning and wisdom very openly…the session went on for 5-6 hours!! :slight_smile: (many of the learnings have been shared by members above).

I’m happy that this time we could also play a bit of sports along with the regular beachwalks and swimming sessions we have.

Regards,
Ayush
PS: Many people have been asking - how can they particate in VP conference going forward? answer is simple - just contribute on the platform. If you are contribution is high quality and you are able to benefit masses, team will take a note :slight_smile:



Left to Right - Amit Rupani, Hitesh Patel, Harshit Goel, Dhwanil Desai, Vivek Mashrani, Kumar Saurabh, Ankit Gupta, Jiten Parmar, Manish Vacchani, Dhiraj Dhave, Sandeep Kapadia, Sandeep Patel, Abhishek Basumallick, Narendra, Rupesh, Deepak Venkatesh, Rahul Lingla, Ayush Mittal

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It was an insightful and action packed 4 days. This time I consciously chose not to make notes and to just mentally take in every word of what was said or spoken, then summarize the top of the mind recall points. Following are those points, irrespective of whether who said them or whether they were never said explicitly and had to be read between the lines -

  • This is a collection of some exceptional individuals where the objective trumps everything else. It is not easy to travel to Goa and spend < 30 mins everyday in the pool/on the beach etc and instead sit in a conference room from 9:30 AM till almost midnight daily. What gets very underrated is the mental & emotional discipline and the unwavering focus on the objective, it is not easy

  • Every investment journey has some unique aspects but is not all that unique! Every investor starts with an obsession for micro caps and multibaggers and takes time to warm up to the concept of steady compounders which may not give the intellectual of discovering an idea much before everyone else. Hiren Ved started this way too and eventually settled on a GARP approach without losing sight of what made him a good investor in the first place

  • Knowledge and learning are cumulative and provide disproportionate returns to effort, both as a beginner and as someone who knows what he is doing. For a long time I was focused on depth while compromising on breadth, now I can appreciate specialty chemicals far better since I have a basic understanding of Pharma. It took me 3-4 months to get a grip on the basics of Pharma sector, but specialty chemicals I am able to make sense of within a month of reading. Key takeaway being one needs to be clear on what adds more value to oneself give the stage he is at - for me it is breadth while for others it may be technicals

  • Management meetings follow a similar trend too. To be able to identify good managements, one needs to know what bad/average managements look like and communicate like. Time series data in addition to making the effort to meet a basic min number of managements is important. There is no substitute for this and one needs to run the numbers to derive insights from this aspect. My mental note to self was to get started ASAP but give minimal weightage to this till I have met 30 managements or so.

  • Experience in managing P&L and running operations in any industry can be a huge positive for an investor. I have seen entrepreneurs become good investors but not the other way around. Also by extension it is not a great idea to become a full time investor too early on unless it is a clear lifestyle choice. There is no substitute to getting real world experience, understanding why and how people make deals and how the world in general calibrates their actions to the operating environment. Once can easily see the difference between someone like Hiren and someone who has been an analyst/fund manager all his life and never managed P&L

  • Divergent markets/Bipolar markets occur for a reason and can persist for some time. It is very important to have some hard rules that can save you a lot of capital when something that has been working for 3-4 years suddenly stops working. The discipline of stop loss (assuming one has spent time devising an approach that is suitable to his style) can be very important for long only and long term investors too. A complementary skill like technicals, options etc can come very handy since it presents a fresh perspective to the same problem at hand. As has been the case in the past, markets eventually mean revert/converge, only thing that matters is whether one has the nerve/staying power to wait for this.

  • Pure value investing in India has not worked since the regulatory and legal framework does not permit investors from taking control of a company, sending managements home and getting the salvage value out. What has worked in India is plain old GARP where one identifies a business that has decent economics, has the ability to scale over a 10-15 year period and has decent management at the helm. The more you keep things simple in India, better and easier the results.

We had some high quality presentations this time too, I think all the sector presentations reflect the hard work put in by each member and should work as a ready reckoner for the best stories in each such sector.

I will be uploading my sector presentation on Asset Management & Wealth Management in a separate thread

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Let me take the onus to put the names:

http://forum.valuepickr.com/uploads/default/original/3X/7/a/7af5740c52e3b7deb7ec8a70e71b8cac0d1676fc.jpeg

In the 2nd picture at the beach >> from the left:

Amit Rupani (in yellow shirt), Hitesh bhai, Harshit, Dhwanil Desai, Vivek Mashrani (myself), Saurabh, Ankit Gupta, Dhiraj (at back), Manish bhai (strip T-shirt), Sandeep Patel (with cap), Sandeep Kapadia (black T-shirt), Abhishek Dada, Narendra, Jiten Parmar, Rupesh, Deepak, Rahul (to the extreme right)

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There are only handful of events in one’s life that one looks forward to keenly. VP meet was one such event on my wishlist once I joined forum few years back. I first attended VP meet four years ago and this was my fourth VP meet. I still get the same goosebumps when I land in Goa as I did four years ago…the feel and the charm of this meet is amazing…mainly because it represents some of the most passionate and yet under the radar investors who are hell bent of sharing their journey/mistakes/learning freely and equally keen to learn the art of investing from others. Every time on the last day, we all feel the pangs of pain for getting it over.

This year was no different. We have been extremely lucky to have guests who are equally keen on openly sharing their journey and accumulated knowledge/experience. In earlier years,I have learnt so much from Gurus like Vinay Parikh, Prof.Bakshi, Sumeet, Kenneth. This year again we were plain lucky to have Hiren as guest speaker. He was fantastic to say the least be it content of the talk or the humility that he showed. Most of the points/learning from his talks are already penned down here so I will not repeat. However what has stuck with me is his sentence " There are only three facts of life in investing- RoCE, cash flow and growth, everything else is noise". I think that was the most impactful statement from me. It was also amazing to hear how he evolved as investor over last 20 years…he spoke from heart and everyone enjoyed every momemnt of it.

This year we had given more weigthage to actioable insights and hence each one of us made a presentation on one stock idea. I again felt that the sheer amount of effort put in by each participants to bring in the differential insights for their own stock idea was a key highlight. Throughly enjoyed these sessions and now have repository of 20 ideas to reflect upon!!

Group presentation were equally engaging. @zygo23554’s presentation on wealth management and AMC was truly enlightening. He clearly demonstrated why AMC is much better and durable business model than wealth management given current context. He highlighted number of nuances/data point of the industry that I was completely anaware of inspite of studying this industry in the past.

Another take away for me was to be always open to experiment new styles and learn new things in investing. Investing journey should never be static and we as investor shall evolve and get better at what we do. This year I am determined to learn more about Technicals as I feel (courtsey detailed discussions with @basumallick and @hitesh2710 and their presentations) even for a purist fundamental investors like many of us technical analysis as a tool can be very effectively leveraged to our advantage.

Last but not the least, I am simply amazed at the amount of hard work and effort some of the participants put in despite being in full time job and having young kids around them. The time management and passion of these guys is truly exceptional…kudos to all of them for the same.

I did a presentation on Saregama this year and will put in link on the stock idea thread

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Learnings are endless and its bliss to have such platform for that, may we can contribute
someday rather kept exploiting the wisdom cow like this. truly priceless

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Please explain this line.
Thanks for this wonderful concise gift of knowledge. In few lines you have given “saransh” of the Baithak. Thanks again

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We need to continuously keep learning. The world of investing is ever-changing, so we need to continuously adapt.

I am personally of the firm belief that we need to learn different tools and then adapt them to our style.

I am getting more and more fascinated by technical and quantitative methods. I have been studying these for the last 2 years. But it is important to understand that it is an overlay on fundamental investing. So, I still believe, we cannot shy away from understanding a business as well as possible.

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Hi abhishek
any suggestion on how to get started ? books or any other resources ?

thanks in advance

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Thank you and a deep sense of gratitude to everyone who shared their work and experience.

As Ben Franklin said, an investment in knowledge pays the best dividends!

Keep it going!

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I think he meant that there are industries which are chased by bad money, such as real-estate. The outcome is bad in such cases.

Then he also talked that in few industries it is very easy to raise capital, such as financing businesses. Finance businesses can either do retail lending which is slow and takes years, or they can do wholesale lending which will provide quick high growth. Companies often tilt to wholesale lending because of the ease of raising capital.

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@rohitc99

Technical analysis of stock trends by Edwards and Mcgee is one of the best books on TA. You can start with it. Once you start it you will find that its a vast subject. I would broadly divide the stuff into two useful segments. Patterns which include flag, double bottom, cup and handle, inverted head and shoulders etc. And indicators and parameters which include momentum indicators and moving averages. I use the patterns mostly and sometimes try to superimpose the indicators and parameters sometimes.

Try to figure out which stuff appeals to you and take it forward.

rgds
hitesh.

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i agree with @pratyushmittal i love story and story telling apart from investing i share an story

The BAD Money sectors are like sponges They absorb the money without affecting the structure. Most of us had either made land purchase or planned to made one .we are converting hard earned white money in to black money .the price we pay is much higher than the stamp paper price . Just to save few bucks we get registry on the govt price . Each one knows this but no one dare to unearthed it .

https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/the-grey-in-the-black-estimates-of-black-money-vary-from-7-120-of-official-gdp/1620224/
to arrive at this one must be humble and years of experience

i add a small that Base for this tripod should be management quality.
thanks seniors and VP’s for sharing your learning

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Also attaching my Investment Journey PPT. Still in the process of building a sensible portfolio. Will start a thread once I have one.

Rahul Lingala’s Investment Journey.pdf (104.6 KB)

Please note that there are a few typos in the numbers as pointed out during my PPT. But the core message I wanted to bring up should be the same.

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Following sectoral presentations were made at VP Goa Meet

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My Investment Journey presentation.
investment journey.pdf (35.8 KB)

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