Do it yourself

The legendary Warren Buffet has been on an equity portfolio selling spree in recent weeks. His fund, Berkshire Hathaway, has reportedly raised over US$275bn in cash; which is over 20% of total assets under management. His selling in the stocks of Apple Inc and Bank of America have been reported the most. Apparently, either his team is not comfortable with the present market conditions (valuation, growth, macro, geopolitics etc.) or believes that they can get much better buying opportunities in near to short term, or both. They may be looking for better buying opportunities in terms of better stocks or better price points in the same stocks. It may be pertinent to note that it is not Berkshire Hathaway alone. A number of reputable investors have taken note of the conspicuous warning signs flashing on billboards for the past few months in particular. Yen carry-trade Hike in the policy rates by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) and strengthening of Japan is perhaps the most talked about event...

  If I must choose one word to define the current global situation, it will indubitably be “tumultuous”. There is commotion, agitation, emotional outbursts, upheaval, chaos,  distraughtness , indecision and haphazardness in almost all spheres of life – be it economics, finance, governance, politics, or geopolitics. As the trust deficit deepens and widens further, the leaderships are dissipating fast. USA and UK which have provided political leadership to the world in most of the past hundred years, no longer enjoy wide acceptability. In fact both the countries are struggling to manage even their own internal conflicts. The trends elsewhere also suggest that people are choosing perceptibly stronger and decisive leaders to lead in these tough times. Some examples are Brazil, Israel, Sweden, Italy, and China. Geopolitically, the hegemony of NATO is facing serious challenges from the new alliance of Russia, China, and North Korea, who have not shown much respect for the extant glo...

After almost a decade the Indian financial sector seems to be out of troubled waters. Almost all significant banks are beyond solvency concerns and set to progress in the path of growth. The asset quality has shown steady improvement for most banks despite Covid disruptions. The loan growth has improved from historic lows seen in the past few years. Earning growth is strongly aided by healthy recovery from the bad accounts. Moreover, the loan books of most tier 1 and Tier 2 banks are tested for stress and provisions are adequate to meet most foreseen adversities. These institutions have come a long way from the first announcement of Dirty Dozen (the largest 12 non performing accounts) in the summer of 2017. Eight of the notified 12 accounts have been resolved with more than 50% recovery. Resolution is under progress for two accounts and the other two are under liquidation. As of the end of FY22, no major potential stressed account has been reported that can materially alter the curre...