How the Investor can maximize VALUE of his Investments?

What would it be like if we tried to click the mouse pointer on an icon and the icon kept shifting position? It would definitely irritate and frustrate us. Similarly “value” is something which can behave like the irritant icon. In the financial world which “value” is “true value” for a particular investment can be difficult if not impossible to determine. This is because the parameters based on which evaluation is being made may shift, throwing up a different figure each time.

 

Value

 

So what is “value” ? It is generally believed that the value of a stock is built around the organization’s patents, brand, fixed assets like land and building, financial resources, human capital, financial resources, growth potential or ability to produce earnings and cash flow. Many would be of the opinion that it is the organization’s ability to produce consistent earnings over a period of time. At the other end of the spectrum would be something called “liquidation value”, which in simple terms would be the short-term assets which are pegged at a higher value, after meeting all liabilities than the market quoted capitalization.

 

Back in the 1950s’ people were interested about the information pertaining to business enterprises which were on the verge of liquidation as the prices tended to move north when such an eventuality presented itself. “Worth more dead than alive” was a rhetoric which was popularly used to describe such opportunities. However it is important to note that the ‘value of today’ may be different from what it was yesterday and could vary with the “price of tomorrow”.

 

It boils down to the fact that it is of paramount importance to the investor to get his assessments right, as that is where the crux of the matter lies. A conclusive assessment of the stock value which the investor loosely believes in is far better than an inconclusive or incorrect opinion on valuation which is firmly believed and implemented. 

 

The Relationship between Price and Value

 

It is always true to say that “value for money” is derived from acquiring an article or making an investment when the utility derived from the object (article or investment) is greater than the price paid for it. This analogy may be further extended to state that “Investment success doesn’t come from buying good things but rather buying them well”.

 

Identifying Opportunities for Value Investments

 

Investment markets are of a nature which creates opportunities from people who buy and sell emotionally and from people who trade in the market instead of investing in the market. That’s why Warren Buffet quoted that ‘ Stock market is designed to transfer money from Active to the Patient. It is important to note that the investor needs to make a concerted attempt towards understanding the mind and motives of other investors. It can provide enriching knowledge and experience required for sustained profitability in the financial world.

 

On the flip side, investing aimlessly would be like chasing a mirage. An oasis which seems to exist but actually may or may not be there. It leads to a situation where the investor will either gain a windfall or  incur stupendous losses. It can be safely concluded that – buying something at less than its intrinsic value is what it is all about in the investment market.

 

Adding Value

 

No prediction is cent percent foolproof unless proved so in the long run. The full risk in a portfolio can only be understood threadbare until hindsight is visible and by then perhaps the worst is over anyway. It is always a good policy to weigh the management performance against the market volatility to have a fair estimate of the investment opportunity when such a possibility presents itself.

 

Value Investing Skills

 

What kind of result a person can expect if he masters the value investing skills? Here is a matrix which has been used by Howard Marks to compare the priorities and expected outcome of two different investors and an assessment of their respective prospects:

 

	Aggressive Investor	Defensive Investor
Without Skill	Records high gains when the market is on an upswing and looses heavily when the market moves down.	Does not lose much when the market moves down but does not gain much either when the market moves up.
With Skill	Records high gains when the market moves up but does not lose as much when the market moves down.	Does not lose much when the market moves down but does record good gains when the market moves up.

 

 

Tips to become a better Investor

 

So what does the investor do to assess value of an investment which he or she has made or proposes to make in the future? Well, if we may emulate Warren Buffet, the best thing to do is to gather as much relevant information as possible. Buffet, is known to read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post besides the business section of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Fortune, Forbes and Business Week.

 

1.     Read the business section of your daily newspaper with particular attention to news on companies whose stock you hold or propose to hold.

 

2.     Gather a fair idea of the different economic parameters which have an effect on stock price- petroleum prices, GDP figures, ratings by international rating agencies etc.

 

3.     Fix your own parameters as regards your risk taking ability, the amount of investment to be made and other investment priorities.

 

The above should hold every investor in good stead on a long term basis. 

 

The author is Ramalingam K, CFP CM is the Chief Financial Planner at holisticinvestment.in, a leading Financial Planning and Wealth Management company

 

The Biggest Threat to your Investment Decisions and What You can do about it!

One of my clients got a call from her mother when we were seriously building her portfolio. I enquired after seeing her panicky reaction. Her mother wanted my client’s son to be removed from a school immediately because there is an accident happened in the swimming pool. The student died during a swimming session. How correct the decision would be to take the child out of the school without understanding what exactly happened?

Be it good or bad, human mind takes decisions based on availability bias. Read ahead to understand the impact of availability bias in the investment decisions we make and how we can avoid this situation.

What is availability bias?

The availability bias is nothing but taking decisions influenced by the recent happenings or under dramatic circumstances. Most of the times, we make decisions based on such occurrences. Yes, we do this while investing our hard earned money.

What happens when you take investment decision influenced by availability bias?

How do you decide to buy or sell stocks? Do you just rely too much on immediately available information? It could be something you read in a paper, advice from your friend or hyped among investors. Do you know what happens when you take such decisions?

You must know about few incidents that happened in the recent past. India’s largest coal production company Coal India came public in 2010. It was known as ‘mother of Indian IPO’. Some even claimed that Coal India IPO would show the mountain to climb for the investors. The investors rushed and bought a high number of stocks. Look at it now, just within 3 years. As the coal prices and so the stocks going down, it is considered as the most dreadful investment option by the investors. The reliance IPO stands out as one more example here.

The same happened with the tech bubble in the end of 19s and the beginning of 20s. Everyone wanted to become an entrepreneur and holding some stocks that has ‘.com’ in its name. Not only in India, house bubble that occurred in USA is the perfect example of people loosing huge if the decision is taken because of availability bias. The reason is the popularity of the products.

How can we avoid falling a victim of availability bias?

Sir John Templeton, a brilliant investor and mutual fund pioneer, even advises us to avoid popular. He says, “Avoid the popular. When any methods of buying or selling stocks become popular, move on to the unpopular one”

Taking decisions based only on emotions, immediately available information, popularity leads to disaster. What can be done to avoid putting ourselves in such scenario? Study, study and study more about the product before investing in it.

Read, analyse and map with your goals while creating a portfolio. Invest in a product only when you have made enough research about it. Listen to what others are saying without having any prejudiced thoughts. Use the information collected from others just as pointers for your research, not for taking any major decisions. Analyse the pros and cons of each product.

Seeing any red flags in the portfolio. Do not ignore them. Dig more to understand why you have them in red. At the end of the research the red ones may become green and vice versa.

Bottomline:

Think about September 11 terrorist attack on the twin towers in America. Remember looking at the planes crashing at the twin towers and the fatality it brought in? Imagine, what would have happened if people chose to go by road instead of flying due to availability bias? Road accidents would have gone up. Whereas in reality, flight journey has become much safer due to the safety measures applied all over the world.

Likewise, not getting influenced by your emotions, the recent ups and down in the market, information from your friend or family is very important while taking the most important decisions about your investments.

Still feeling difficulty to get rid of these. Follow the simple exercise to get rid of availability bias.

-          Write about a product you want to buy or sell

-          Write about the reasons why you want to buy or sell

-       Take a break once written. Go out for walk, read a book, watch a nice movie or play with your child, so that you don’t think your investments.

After a break read the reasons again and again. You will get a clear picture on what exactly needs to be done now. Take your decisions brilliantly now!

K. Ramalingam is the chief financial planner at Holistic Investment Planners, a leading financial planning and wealth management company.

3 Questions to Answer before you Choose an Investment

                                       

3 Questions to answer before you choose an investment

When you plan to make an investment, you must be fully aware of the ins and outs of your investment. Therefore, a good advice is to find answers to a few very necessary questions, before you can actually decide upon an investment. Let us explore what these questions are, where an investor needs to lay his focus on before investing his hard-earned money.

1.       Do I have an Exit Strategy?

It is good to always plan your exit, before entry – especially in case of any investment acquisition.Wondering why? Because no investment can be convenient for you, forever. With time, your objectives are most likely to change. There is a reason behind you acquiring an investment. As those reasons contravene, it is the right time for you to make an exit without much delay. Therefore, it is important for you to know your exit reasons well in advance.

Exit can be healthy, in a condition when your investment turns feeble. Such a step then, will make a room for new growth to take place. Everything is volatile, so should your portfolio be. This will help keep it harmonious with the time.

There is nothing like a permanent investment. Therefore, you must always have your exit strategy pre-defined, to avoid your first loss from turning into your worst loss. You should always keep saving capital, to be prepared for investing in the very next opportunity. Trimming your portfolio of troubled investments, you are making a space for new growth opportunities.

2.       Did the investment pass the ‘business common sense’ test?

Every investment must have some business sense behind it, after all, investment is eventually about business. Your earnings, valuation and ROI must be compatible with the benefits and obstacles, possessed by the underlying business. It is really not a good thing if you lose money through your investment. This Business Common Sense test can be used with perseverance, to help you escape from troubling investment speculations and obsessions that may cause losses.

Here, one must know the Common Business Sense Test, to help them avoid getting stuck in a hoax. This test is not just limited to dodging manias and speculations, but the same can also be used to detect possible frauds.

Always remember that your investment is like a property on either your assets or the earning power of your business. Whether in case of debt, equity or real estate – one must eventually be able to make a business sense out of the promised returns. If that is not happening, then something is fishy. Never forget the common sense investment advice that if it’s sounding too good to be real, then it probably not is.

3.       How does the investment affect my portfolio’s risk profile and mathematical expectancy?

Never make an investment that either does not raise the overall returns in your portfolio, or lowers its risk. By matter of choice, you should aim for getting both these things accomplished. All of the investments should be therefore analyzed for their risk profile, and mathematical expectation on how much should they return over time.

Winning or losing the game of investing is entirely based upon your intensity in the front line. Therefore, you must ask the questions as mentioned above, till the time you have the answers for making a wise decision.

The bottom line

Finding answers to these diligence questions can help you save yourself from the most common, but very expensive down the road and help you retire rich and quick.The bottom line lies in building a well-diversified portfolio, for a consistent and long-term investment growth.

The author is Ramalingam K, CFP CM is the Chief Financial Planner at holisticinvestment.in, a leading Financial Planning and Wealth Management company

Investment Behaviours and Returns

Why investors are not making returns in the stock market?

In the last 10 years, sensex gas grown at 17.79% CAGR. That means, if someone could have invested Rs. 1 lac 10 years back, it could have grown to 5.14 lacs. In the last 10 years one third of diversified equity mutual funds have delivered a CAGR of more than 25%. That means if someone could have invested 10 years back in these mutual funds Rs.1lac, it could have grown to Rs.9.31 Lacs.

But how many investors have REALLY got these kinds of returns…?

In this context knowing about the study conducted by Dalbar to determine how the investment behavior and decisions impacted the overall investment performance would be advisable. Dalbar, Inc. is a US based leading financial services market research firm. They have done comparative study on the returns of S&P 500 Index and the returns of the investors for a 20 year period ending 31-12-10.
 
The study revealed the following two important facts.

·        The average return of the S&P 500 during this 20 year period is 9.14%.

·        The average return of the equity investor during the same period is only 3.27%

When the market is delivering so much, why is that the investor is making out less? What are all the factors contributing for this gap in the market returns and the investor returns?
Though the market is delivering returns, investors were not able to benefit. Why is it so? What went wrong?  It is because of the nature or character of the investor.
Agriculture is getting affected by nature, either because of excess rain or no rain.  But we found out a system to fight against this nature. We built dams. So whenever there is excess rain, dams retain water to save agriculture and whenever there is no rain, it releases water to help agriculture.

Similarly investors are supposed to find and build a dam against their nature and behaviour towards stock market investing in order to get better returns.
What are the natures or behaviours of an investor that blocks him from getting the market return?

Fear:

When stocks suffer large losses for a sustained period, the overall market can become more fearful of sustaining further losses. At that point in time everyone will come with their own logic, reasoning, and statistical evidence on the chances of further losses. Fear stands for “False Evidence Appearing Real”.

Greed:

Most of us have a desire to acquire as much wealth as possible in the shortest amount of time.  This get-rich-quick mentality makes it hard to maintain gains and keep to a strict investment plan over the long term.

An investment portfolio based on ones personality

Basing investment portfolios on one’s personal likes and dislikes are the first of the powerful influences. It is like investing in cars and fancy gadgets just because you love them. Investing on shares just because you think they are smart or flashy is ambiguous, for they could sink in the long run. It is better instead to invest in profitable ventures that pay in the long run. It is true; our investment fancies make us pay a heavy price.

Follow the flock policy

The follow the flock for fear of being the black sheep policy makes you as an investor to believe in following others in the share markets. The pitfalls of group behavior lead us to buying high and selling less.

It also leads to unbalanced investment emotions of black or white (wrong or right) with no shades of objectivity and rationality. Buying high and selling low has made many investors suffer heavy losses in the long run.

A look at positive investment behavior:

It is good to be investment smart with humility and reasonable aspirations that makes achievement of financial goals a reality. I have never known of any high return investments that did not have high risks.

Patience over a lifetime and being able to assume stress helps in aiming for long term positive returns and contributes to assuming less financial stress after retirement.

Positive investment behavior requires balanced moods, one of neither elation nor panic. Neither selling in a panic due to share market positions or adverse world or country conditions is advisable, nor is a reaction of extreme financial prosperity, both can destroy a lifetime of healthy investment. A long-term investor needs to realize that neither despairing nor elation of situations in civilization proves worthy for long term financial portfolios.

(The author is Ramalingam K, an MBA (Finance) and Certified Financial Planner. He is the Founder and Director of Holistic Investment Planners (www.holisticinvestment.in) a firm that offers Financial Planning and Wealth Management. He can be reached at ramalingam@holisticinvestment.in.)