Author: shyam

Weekly Recap: Graham-and-Doddsville

nifty weekly performance heatmap

The Nifty ended the week down -1.63% (-2.17% in USD terms).

Index Performance

Other than IT, almost all other indices got shellacked…

weekly index performance

Top winners and losers

CONCOR +4.08%
MCDOWELL-N +6.20%
ASHOKLEY +14.20%
ADANIENT -8.86%
M&M -6.92%
BPCL -6.36%
Adani Enterprises lived up to its reputation of a punter stocks. Average true range of prices: [256.05, 244.50], Beta: 1.61, volatility: 85.65 (vs. 15.87 of VIX)

ETFs

PSUBNKBEES +1.83%
GOLDBEES +0.80%
JUNIORBEES -0.58%
NIFTYBEES -1.70%
BANKBEES -2.34%
INFRABEES -5.69%
Infrastructure gave up all its previous gains (+2.63% move last week, +4.79% last month.)

Advancers and Decliners

advancers and decliners

Yield Curve

Look at the 50bps move on the short-end of the curve…

india yield curve

Investment Theme Performance

Quantitative value themes ended up out-performing momentum and smart-beta strategies.

*Contributed Themes

Sector Performance

weekly sector performance

Thought for the weekend

Charlie Munger on the Efficient Market Hypothesis:

 

Efficient market theory is a wonderful economic doctrine that had a long vogue in spite of the experience of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact one of the economists who won — he shared a Nobel Prize — and as he looked at Berkshire Hathaway year after year, which people would throw in his face as saying maybe the market isn’t quite as efficient as you think, he said, “Well, it’s a two-sigma event.” And then he said we were a three-sigma event. And then he said we were a four-sigma event. And he finally got up to six sigmas — better to add a sigma than change a theory, just because the evidence comes in differently. [Laughter] And, of course, when this share of a Nobel Prize went into money management himself, he sank like a stone.

 

Source: That time Buffett smashed the Efficient Market Hypothesis

Should you go contrarian on Gold?

This time, last year, almost all believed the metal would rise through the year. Analysts issued an average price forecast of $1,753 per troy ounce. Instead, gold averaged $1,411, suffering its first down year in 13 and worst year since 1981. By New Year’s eve the price was $1,202.

Gold ETF (USD):

Gold ETF (INR):

GOLDBEES

Investment demand for physical gold fell 25% last year. ETFs that keep gold in vaults on behalf of investors have dumped nearly 30m ounces from a high of 84.6m ounces at the end of 2012.

Currie, Goldman Sachs’s head of commodities research, had a target of $1,050 an ounce back in early October. The biggest gold bulls have abandoned ship. Paulson told clients at his firm’s annual meeting Nov. 20 that he personally wouldn’t invest more money in his gold fund. Billionaires George Soros and Daniel Loeb sold their entire positions in the SPDR Gold Trust exchange-traded fund in the second quarter.

Given so much hatred about gold, should the contrarian investor jump in? No. The odds of runaway inflation is low, equity market returns are likely to be more attractive compared to gold’s in the near term and investors are still in the process of pulling money out of gold funds. There will come a time to challenge the bearish thesis on gold, but investors going long right now could end up being too early.

[stockquote]GOLDBEES[/stockquote]

Source:

Gold bulls lose faith in bullion’s allure
Goldman’s Currie Says Gold Is ‘Slam Dunk’ Sell
Paulson Said to Inform Clients He Won’t Add More to Gold

Apollo-Cooper Breakup: Winner is Morgan Stanley!

Can’t make this stuff up. Morgan Stanley, that was acting as one of the financial advisers to Apollo, ended up being the ultimate winner in the whole kerfunkel.

APOLLOTYRE

On just the 2.7M shares it bought in July, it ended up making Rs.104M in 6 months. So, did they bet on the collapse of the very deal that they were advising? Smells funny…

Sources:
Morgan Stanley buys 0.5% stake
Morgan Stanley Asia sells 46.50 lakh shares of Apollo Tyres

Related:
Apollo Tyres: Buyer’s Remorse, Part III

Placebo Effects in Music, Wine, Medicine and Finance

I recently came across a few articles that got my wheels turning about the placebo effect in our lives. The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered. Although its origins are in medical research, researchers have observed it in other domains as well.

 

Are you listening to the equipment or the music?

The best headphones go for more than $1000, and the best amplifiers and related devices are many times that. But can you really tell the difference in quality between a $50 headset and a $500 one? How much of the difference is explained purely by the price tag?

Source: Placebo-philes

Did you know that for wine, price and quality are negatively correlated?

If you know what the wine you’re tasting is, if you know where it comes from, if you know who made it, if you’ve met the winemaker, and in general, if you know how expensive it is — then that knowledge deeply affects — nearly always to the upside — the way in which you taste and appreciate the wine in question.

Source: How money can buy happiness, wine edition

Doctors want to ban Homeopathy in the UK

A 2010 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy said that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, and that the principles on which homeopathy is based are ‘scientifically implausible’. However, millions of people suffering from chronic pain swear by their daily intake of diluted sugar tablets.

Source: NHS

Doctors confuse what they believe with what they know

Researchers have found that partial meniscectomy, where surgeons trim and remove torn pieces of the meniscus, is pointless. Researchers in Finland who studied two sets of patients—one that received the surgery, and another that was led to believe that it had—observed no significant differences in improvement between the groups after one year.

Source: Fake Knee Surgery as Good as Real Procedure

 

Technical analysis could be the placebo at work

Researchers believe that both technical analysis and folk medicine have strong potentials for statistical bias: the placebo effect for folk medicine and data snooping for technical analysis. Survival bias ensures that only the winners tell the story about how good it works. While the losers go back to allopathic medication (in the case of medicine) or their jobs (in the case of trading.)

Source: Technical Analysis as Folk Medicine

Monthly Recap: Financial Research

Nifty monthly heatmap

The Nifty ended the month +2.23% (+2.78% in USD terms)

Index Performance

IT and Realty indices stole the show…

monthly index performance

Top winners and losers

GLAXO +18.53%
BOSCHLTD +19.74%
INDHOTEL +29.48%
PETRONET -7.93%
ULTRACEMCO -7.22%
NTPC -6.79%
Glaxo shot up on the back of the buyback offer from its parent. Bosch, however, seems to be on a ride of it own…

ETFs

INFRABEES +4.79%
JUNIORBEES +4.45%
PSUBNKBEES +3.55%
BANKBEES +2.64%
NIFTYBEES +2.34%
GOLDBEES -4.61%
Infrastructure and banks continued to rock. Gold fell out of favour.

Advancers and Decliners

advancers and decliners

Yield Curve

Rates rose across the curve, but more so on the long-end…

india yield curve

Investment Theme Performance

The best performing strategy was small-cap value…

*Contributed Themes

Sector Performance

monthly sector performance

Thought of the month

Magic is based on belief in a set of rituals. A person will only consult a magician if they have faith in the actions that the magician will perform. Science is not based on belief in its theorems, the equivalent of magic’s rituals, but on a belief in the process by which science is created.

Source: Finance + Research