Saturday, March 24, 2018

Are We Heading To a 1929 Situation???

Over the last few days, I have heard / read a lot of doomsday and apocalypse forecasts that we are about to witness the next 1929 like situation. The basis for this forecast is the current volatility in the market.

As of now, there are no indications that we are going to enter a 1929 like situation. The odds are one in a million. Then the next question is are we going to witness a 2008 like situation. That is definitely possible though the odds are still one in a thousand.

First of all, let us understand that the current corrective trend in stocks be it India, Europe or US, was expected. Stocks were highly overbought and a profit booking and corrective trend was but natural. This correction was overdue in November/December but took longer. History suggests that the longer the delay in correction, the harder is the impact. That is exactly what has happened as of now IMHO.

The technical structure and quantitative analysis experts were keenly anticipating this fall. For Nifty and for DJIA, I expect stability around 9725 and 23200 levels respectively. All this is assuming status quo and no Black Swan events. Black Swan events cannot be priced in!

Whilst all this is true, some of you may ask why a 2008 like situation is possible yet again. First and foremost, we must understand that the financial markets are largely driven by bonds. The bond market goes into several multiples of all stock markets and commodity markets put together. Be it 1929, 2000 or 2008, the troubles always began with the bond/fixed income markets.

For the last 8 years, we have had unparalleled easy money policy with near zero interest rates and ample liquidity. This liquidity although was meant to revive the economy, all the large banks largely used this money to prop up the stock market rather than stabilize economies of common people.
Bond prices and bond yields have a negative correlation i.e. when the interest rates are low, the bonds command a higher price and vice versa. This is where a ticking time bomb is running right now with the large banking corporations. The large banks paid higher prices for the near zero rate yield bonds and are now staring at large losses on their portfolio. Every basis point (100 basis points = 1%) increase in interest rate means millions of dollars worth of losses for bond portfolios of large banks.

This has to be accounted for on a Mark To Market basis and reported to shareholders and competent authorities. The common man perhaps does not get access to this information. Nothing on this front has been reported anywhere as of now. Cumulative quantitative easing history estimates that at least 4 trillion dollars/euros/pounds were released to the banking system. Now imagine the loss that will cascade to the stock markets and common man if 25% of this amount is booked as losses on bond prices. Hence, I am very cautious in the current bull market conditions. Given the fundamental nature of the bonds, these bonds are still valuable. In case of Lehman Brothers and all the financial institutes that followed, the bonds were junk. The bonds were issued on the basis of imaginary future payments and a perpetual 15% increase in housing prices. This time, the case is different. We are looking at bonds issued by central banks; they are real. The bonds may definitely lose some value due to changes in the yield curve but that is fine. Given the rate hike forecast, the US securities (fixed income) will at best see a 30% markdown. This will trickle to the stock and commodity markets as well.

The manifestation of these drops could be attributed to Trumponomics, Brexit or whatever - the point is that people are alert and aware of such a situation coming up.

To summarize - there is NO FINANCIAL MELTDOWN in the near future.
Possibility 1: The markets will go through the cyclical correction in the structural bull market. This is the phase we are going through right now. Till the Nifty holds 9725 and till DJIA holds 23000 (given or take a couple of %s) I will still maintain this view.

My probabilistic estimate: 95%

Possibility 2: The bond market jitters trickle into stock markets with the 25% to 30% markdowns. Then the stock market will about 40% to 50% corrections from the all time highs.

My probabilistic estimate: 4%

Possibility 3: We actually see bad turns out of things like Trumponomics, Brexit, Eurozone instability etc etc etc and a severe recession. 90% correction from all time highs

My probabilistic estimate 1% (2018 - 1929 = 89 : A Fibonacci Number!) Hence I am giving this a 1% change instead of a few basis points

So the view is largely in favor of the bull case. Anything can happen in the market - so for the common man, it is important to build some insurance in the stock portfolio by buying some protective puts. This is extremely easy in developed  markets. In India, the options market is highly manipulated and do not perform very efficiently. I will be writing a separate post on how to make best out of the Indian options market to protect your portfolio to some degree (Note that the article will be for genuine long term investors and not the short term punters who buy/sell options)

Happy Investing and enjoy the Easter festivities coming forthwith.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Modinomics V2 and Market Perspectives - Part 1

Hello friends
The last couple of months have seen sharp moves in either direction. Here are some of my preliminary observations with Nifty vis a vis Modinomics and Nifty vis a vis global markets

Outlook vis a vis Modinomics
Let us recap to the time in 2013 when Nifty made a high of 6415, corrected downwards to 5120 and bounced back; I presume the same pattern will repeat itself. My humble opinion - buy the dips as far as equity investments are concerned. My preferred bets are

Nifty Bees, Bank Bees, Junior Bees, PSU Bank Bees
[Disclosure I have holdings in these scrips and have recommended the same to my friends and family]

You can check my previous post where I have highlighted some stocks that than beat the average market returns. All investments must be made with an SIP mode.

Expected Path: Peak in the 10700 zone followed by a correction to 9600 with interim peaks, troughs and sideways market conditions.

As far as A Group Stocks and Indices are concerned, I follow the advice of Nadeem Walayat - "Greater the downward deviation  from peaks, greater the incentive to buy

Political factors that will trigger trending moves on Nifty
Based on current outlook, it seems near certain that Modi will be back as PM again with a 300+ majority in the NDA alliance. Some of the states with impending elections will trigger short term spikes or falls in the market. From a Union Budget perspective, though the markets did not cheer the same but that is always expected when a party is going into the election phase. The budgets will be populist as the rural votes create the votebanks. My view is that as far as educated youth are concerned, they have understood the concept of JAM (JanDhan-Aadhar-Mobile) measures.
The negative response to LTCG was not expected. Mr Jaitley has this knack for not clearly speeling out the the plans and getting smooth implementation. Happened with Demonetization and deja vu for GST.

The steps towards digitizing the economy have shown good progress and the next steps seem encouraging. GST implementation and roll-outs have not been as streamlined but these are initial steps to the larger benefits.c[ So my vote is disclosed heads up!!]

To summarize, as far as stock investments are concerned, I'm in favor of "Buy The Dips" with NDA 2 as the winner.

From a global market perspective, Dow was also overbought and is now in a corrective mode. My take is that it is in the last phase of correction. Accoring to my analysis, it will form a base around 24000 levels and resume uptrends. This analysis when juxtaposed with my Modinomics analysis, comes pretty much in line with anticipated price moves.

Commodity Markets: In dollar terms, prices have come to the USD 65 dollars / barrel mark. If we analyse WTI Crude prices, the pivot point is USD 65 dollars a barrel. Though manias can take prices anywhere between 25 dollars and 100 dollars.

Gold will confirm its uptrend with 2 consectutive closes above USD 1400 per ounce for targets 1550-1600

Currency : I expect the rupee to be in the range of 63-66 vs dollar this year.

To wrap up up part 1 of this series, I sign off. The next part will be more illustrative with analytic graphs and tables to support my forecasts and better outcomes of the forecast. Stay tuned to my updates [Always free with disclosures on personal holdings]

Adios