"There is only
one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the
sweets come last."
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish, 1850-1894)
Word
for the day
Anathema (n)
A person or thing detested or loathed.
A person or thing accursed or consigned to damnation or destruction.
Malice
towards none
Pak army claiming
causalities and transgression on their sides and India rubbishing the claims
with contempt.
The life comes full circle.
First random
thought this morning
It is unfortunate that the government has to restore to
"Marking" the people who have availed the one time facility of
currency exchange.
This highlights the existence of wide trust deficit and continuing
game of cat & mice between the establishment and the public.
The worst part - it is again the poor who is being used to further
the interest of the non-compliant, to the detriment of the cause of poor in
general.
The consolation is that this time the poor have (so far) not
played the game with opposition parties which are trying to engineer riots by
inciting the poor to advance their vested interests.
Worrisome & encouraging
Mistry, Modi and Trump have hit
the Indian equity markets hard. The erosion in equity prices has been swift and
material. Inarguably, there is a sense of disbelief and bewilderment amongst
market participants.
As an investors I am naturally
inclined to look for opportunities in the mayhem; and I already see some
investment opportunities emerging. Though I am not too excited as yet. I am
preserving some cash (20%) for even better opportunities that may emerge in
next month or so.
But before I share my thoughts of
the emerging opportunities, I find it pertinent to put the context in, what I
believe is the right perspective.
Mistry episode has yet again
challenged the faith of investors in the corporate governance standards in the
country. After the AV Birla group announced group restructuring a few months
back punctured the faith of investors, the Tata feud has widened the whole
considerably.
·
The corporate governance premium on Tata group
companies and others like Infosys et. al. is vanishing fast.
The Army supported by the
Narendra Modi led political establishment made first ever and most audacious
official admission of the surgical strikes on PoK based terror camps. PM Modi
followed the move by demonetization of high denomination notes (HDNs).
·
These steps and political utterances after these
events have completely demolished the predictability of policy. So much so that
the defense minister brought the "no first use" nuclear doctrine
under clouds; and tax officials are openly talking about retroactive amendment
of penal provisions of IT Act to impose penalty on disproportionate rise in
income declaration post demonetization of HDN.
The mostly unexpected victory of
Donald Trump, after a surprising Brexit verdict in June this year, should challenge
the confidence of policy makers and investors who rely on "experts"
to gauge the mood of the public and socio-economic realities on the ground
level; besides of course highlighting a perceptible shift in the public
opinion.
·
The two largely unexpected events have
highlighted the widening chasm between the public opinion and the elite group
that has been so far considered "opinion maker". The natural outcome
of these has to be rising mistrust
The rising unpredictability and
mistrust in the social order, and consequentially in the market place is
worrisome as well as encouraging.
Worrisome, in the sense that it
may deepen the chaos in the socio-economic sphere.
Encouraging in the sense that it
will precipitate the corrective action and lead to emergence of a more robust
socio-economic order.
...to continue tomorrow.
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