The Incremental Investor

The ' Responsible Investor' is generally skeptical of investing in Mutual Funds, whether in India or elsewhere in the world. The aim of any diligent investor would be to outperform market averages over the long term. Mutual Funds are for want of a better term more like investment herds and usually track mass investor psychology and cannot consistently take decision independent of underlying market conditions. For instance in US it is common for more than 90% of the MF's to underperform the market average. While it can be argued that this is not the case with Indian MF's so far, it could be just a case of the law of averages not yet catching up with our MF's. It can be safely predicted that given adequate time, Indian MF's will equal or surpass US MF's in underperformance Most of the impressions about Indian MF's perfomance are based on recent history and the bull market of the last 5 years has a lot to do with that There is one aspect in which Indian...

I had come across a technical analysis site for Indian stocks a very long time ago. It's called buzzing stocks. The URL is http://www.buzzingstocks.com/in/index.pl It was not very notable at that time. But recently there was a chance to browse that site again. There appear to be some improvements. There is also a facility to email to yourself or another email the technical results of a stock review. Many features in this site are free, but they require registration for access these. Basic technical stock analysis does not require any registration Some understanding of technicalities could be of help to even buy-hold type and fundamentally oriented investors Any further review of this tool/site and comments are welcome

While stock picking or stock selection is not the easiest of tasks in investing, stock screening is one of the good starting points in this process. Internet and technology has made it very convenient to screen stocks, funds and ETF's for further study and analysis Finance sites such as Yahoo, MSN and IBD provide very helpful stock screeners For Indian stock buffs, there do not seem to be very many free options. ICICI Direct has good stock screeners, but I guess it is available only for members, unless there is a way to get around its Research section and jump to the screeners The free ones are : http://money.rediff.com/money/jsp/markets_home.jsp http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/stockmarket/industryclassification/23/17/marketstatistics/NSE/indcomp http://idbipaisabuilder.in/Market_Content/Secure_Css.aspx http://www.business-standard.com/india/markets/ IDBI paisabuilder is only one that can be considered a parametric screener. The others are more of classified stock lists with the...

BSE: 532659 NSE: IDFC CMP: Rs. 135.50 IDFC is an interesting play on the finance and infrastructure development. Being a huge DFI, it is turning out to be having a potential of a multi-bagger on the lines of ICICI bank and HDFC bank It has had a huge runup in price picking up from the lows of 44 to 147 last week. It has given up some gains in this week and is interestingly poised at 135 Based on the Mar 09 EPS of 5.68, it is sporting a P/E of >25, which from a fundamental view-point does not sound a bargain. It has shown promising EPS growth of > 25% yoy except for '09. Which is understandable given the slowing trend in the last year in lending. With immense potential in infrastructure funding, its exposure to Investment banking and mutual and lot of unlocked value in many subsidiaries, much of which is not fully captured in the price, its valuation has room to grow In spite of market correction in the last few days, IDFC's price march has been checked only a little. Even...

The Indian market (BSE sensex and Nifty) had one of the biggest falls of this year. The fall of the 435 points in the sensex was basically tracking the fall in US stock indices starting this week The US stock indices after averaging gains of almost 40% since the March 6 lows have been unable to resume the upward journey for the last 2 weeks. Rising oil prices and the fall in the US$ have again revived concerns in the financial media about whether the 'green shoots' recovery will continue. If one would look at the pattern of rise in the US markets during the last 3 weeks, the uptrend is quite feeble and not supported by rising volumes Looking at conspiracy theories, most of the US financial system's secondary offerings are complete or nearing completion. Goldman Sachs is perhaps the only major offering among the financial titans remaining. Market may not fall sharply till then. It is possible to conjecture that July and later, any artificial props for the US market may be pu...