Do it yourself

At the beginning of the year 2019, a large number of experts had forecast that: (a)    USD may weaken as trade war begins to hurt; (b)    Global growth may slow down as Central Banks (with the exception of BoJ) tighten the monetary policy. Fed was expected to hike 3-4times in 2019. ECB was expected to begin tighten from last quarter of 2019. (c)     Inflation to pick up as US inches towards full employment and China eases. Commodities were therefore expected to do well. (d)    The "bubble" called Bitcoin may burst completely. (e)     Emerging markets may do well in view of the weaker USD and Crude forecasts. The opinion was divided on US treasury bonds, but a majority expected the benchmark yields to either rise or at least stay above 3% mark. Gold and silver did not find mention in most strategy reports and were advised to be avoidable assets. The Chinese Yuan (CNY) above 7CNY/USD w...

A video of Ranu Mondal singing an old classic song of legendary Lata Mangeshkar on a railway platform in Ranaghat (West Bengal) went viral on social media last month. Suddenly, the woman henceforth living a nondescript life became a popular figure overnight. So much so that a Bollywood music composer and singer, famously known for his concern for underprivileged, decided to record a song in her voice for his upcoming film. The video of her recording was released instantly on social media and attracted many hits. I saw the viral song from railway platform and the recording video many times over. In my view, Ranu is good at imitation but unfortunately she may not be a talented singer per se . Nonetheless, sudden popularity has changed her life dramatically. She is attending TV shows and public functions and getting lots of media coverage. But this popularity might not be sustainable. There are hundreds of example where people lacking talent gained sudden stardom an...

Cloning is not innovation As per the latest list released by The Forbes, unsurprisingly 8 out of top 10 most innovative companies in the World in 2018 were American companies. ServiceNow has been termed as the most innovative company of 2018, while Facebook is positioned at number 10. The two non American companies in the top 10 occupy 8th and 9th place in the league table. One of these two non American companies is Naver Corporation, which runs an online platform in South Korea. The most surprising entry however is at number 8, which is Hindustan Unilever Limited - an Indian fast moving consumer good (FMCG) company. I say surprising because it is the only company in the top league not running a technology driven business or in simple words an old school company. The other surprising part was that no company from Germany, Japan, and China figured in the list of top innovators. If this list is valid then there are sufficient reasons to believe that —...

1QFY20 Earnings - pain aggravating The latest earning season has been disappointing on most counts. If we can avoid getting into the nitty-gritty of the performance relative to corresponding quarter of last year or immediately preceding quarter, we shall find the reported earnings much below par across most sectors. The earnings totally belie the high hopes, the street had from FY20 earnings. There is a stampede amongst analysts to downgrade earnings estimates to bring these in line with the market conditions. The unfortunate part is that the revised earnings estimates also mostly appear driven by the prevailing stock prices and not by the earnings potential and prospects of businesses; and hence may not be reflecting the true state of the anticipated corporate performance. A significant majority of corporate managements guided caution in terms of near term growth, indicating that the 2QFY20 earnings may also not be encouraging. 2HFY20 outlook is generally opti...