Category: Your Money

Weekly Recap: Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck

nifty weekly performance heatmap

Nifty ended the week down -1.00% (-0.94% in USD terms). Media and pharma dragged.

Index Performance

weekly index performance

Top winners and losers

MCDOWELL-N +4.67%
CROMPGREAV +4.91%
CUMMINSIND +6.81%
ZEEL -8.67%
SSLT -8.65%
BAJAJ-AUTO -7.15%
Taper much? Bajaj Auto: a parabolic up move followed by an equally swift down-move (what were they smoking?)

ETFs

PSUBNKBEES +1.36%
INFRABEES -0.64%
GOLDBEES -0.65%
JUNIORBEES -0.84%
NIFTYBEES -0.88%
BANKBEES -1.65%
PSU Banks – they are so bad that they are good…

Advancers and Decliners

Have all the weak hands finally been shaken out?

advancers and decliners

Yield Curve

india yield curve

Interbank Rates

mibor interbank lending rates

Investment Theme Performance

High beta got crushed, and the market discovered value…

Thought for the weekend

Jim Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies:

I’ll tell you some guiding principles that I think would work very well:
One thing I’ve always done is do something new.
Second, collaborate with the best people you possibly can.
Be guided by beauty.
Don’t give up.
Finally, hope for some good luck.

Source: Secret Sauce: Jim Simons on Life and Building a Business

Global PMI Roundup

The Flash numbers came out yesterday. Here’s what you need to know:

US

PMI rebounds to eight-month high in November. Data confirms ongoing modest improvement in manufacturing business conditions.

US nov 2013 flash pmi

Eurozone

PMI signals slowing growth for second successive month in November. Composite Output Index is at a 3-month low, manufacturing is at a 2-month low.

Eurozone nov 2013 flash pmi

Germany

Composite Output Index is at a 10-month high. Manufacturing is at a 29-month high.

germany nov 2013 flash pmi

France

French private sector economy slips back into contraction. Composite Output Index is at a 5-month low, manufacturing is at a 6-month low.

france nov 2013 flash pmi

Source: Markit

Quick! Throw your money away now!

Are we witnessing the rise Neo-Socialism? The words change, the data-set is new, but the story remains the same:

 

With globalisation, the share going to labour has withered everywhere, in countries as diverse as China, India, the UK, USA and Norway. In the future, the only way those relying on labour could raise their living standards will be by sharing the rental income gained by finance and capital investment in the global economy. We must imagine a new system of distribution, in which the whole of society receives a share of the rental income currently being taken wholly by financial capital.

 

Plus, there is a new acronym to be worried about, ESC (Economic Stabilisation Credit) aka individual, unconditional basic income.

Read the whole thing here.

Because three heads are better than one

I have been compiling and maintaining different investment themes for a while now. We have the Quant and Story themes that reflect investment strategies that have proved to be successful over different time-horizons and market conditions. I am proud to introduce a couple of themes that have come from contributors outside of StockViz. Now users of StockViz will benefit from different perspectives that outsiders bring.

Velocity

The Velocity Theme is an equally weighted momentum theme that will be re-balanced at most once a month. Our own home-grown Momentum 200 Theme uses an efficiently weighted portfolio and ignores stocks that have split over last year. It will be interesting to see how a slight tweaking of momentum setups impact performance over the long term.

Long Term Equity

The Long Term Equity Theme is a portfolio of stocks and ETFs for an extremely long time-horizon. “Set it and forget it” if you will. I am thrilled to have someone who thinks with a different hat – we are mostly quantitative in our approach, even our fundamental analysis is quantitative. But that doesn’t mean that a long-term buy-and-forget approach will not work.

You can follow each of themes by clicking on the “Follow” button under each of these themes.