The last one year has been a value investor’s dream. Analyze and find an undervalued stock, buy decent quantities of it and voila!, in a few months time the market has recognized the undervaluation and corrected it. As a result most of the stocks in my portfolio have corrected substantially and I am looking at decent gains.

This has been the experience across the board and I don’t think it is proof of my or anyone else’s special genius or abilities. Now, before we start considering this as a normal state of affairs, let me point out an experience I have had for the last few years. This experience is not unique and has happened to me several times, but I am giving this example as it is recent and ongoing.

I read and analyzed Merck in Aug-Sept 2006 and found it to be substantially undervalued. The company had a growth problem, where due to the limited portfolio of products, its topline was more or less stagnant. However the company was able to improve its bottom line by 50% during the same period by cutting costs. In addition the company had almost 350 Crs in excess cash and was thus selling at 4-5 times its earnings.

So here was a company with great ROE, moderate growth and high cash balance selling for a song. I decided to start building a position and started buying the stock slowly. I eventually built my position for 2 years with the stock dropping during that period. The net result of the position was a loss of around 15% by the end of 2008 including dividends.

Was it a bad pick?
Now a valid argument could be that the stock was bad pick in the first place. In investing, it is important to remember that decision need to be made looking forwards and not backwards. My approach to investing is to compute intrinsic value with conservative assumptions and buy at a discount to this number. This approach may not work everytime, but works surprisingly well most of the time.

The company had a decent performance in the past, was reasonably well managed and had quite a bit of cash. During the period 2006-2008, the company was able to grow the topline by 30% and the bottom line by 10%. Not exactly a blowout performance, but pretty decent. In addition, there were a few things happening below the surface. The company started investing heavily in sales and marketing during this period due to which the topline started accelerating at the cost of the net margins.

The turnaround
The turnaround in the price finally came in Q2-Q3 2009 as the topline growth started flowing through to the net profit in terms of growth. At the same, the market was also in a mood to correct undervaluations and price most stocks closer to their fair value.

Whats the point?
The point is that undervaluation and fundamental performance alone are not sufficient triggers. A lot of times it is the market mood which decides when the undervaluation will correct and you will make your returns.

Now, one can say that if it all depends on the moods, then one should wait for the mood to turn and buy the stock before the turn happens. Well, on that please leave me a comment if you know some logical approach of figuring that out without getting into mumbo jumbo.

The point of the post is that an investor cannot control when the market will correct the undervaluation, but he or she can look for sound companies selling below intrinsic value, buy them and hold a portfolio of such companies with patience. Some of the holdings may take time, but over the course of time the portfolio as a whole will do reasonably well to be worth your while.

I am planning to start a new monthly post with the topic – what’s on my mind. It’s more likely to be a brain dump of my thoughts – more for myself – to check back in future as to what I was thinking (or smoking J ) at a particular point of time. This should help me cross-reference some of the investing decision I took at the time.

It’s a natural tendency to look at decision after they play out with a fair amount of hindsight bias. Like others, I too have a tendency to forget the key factors which played into my decision and color the history based on present information. Anyway, more on this bias in a later post.

Dollar depreciation

The US is now running a deficit of almost 1.4 trillion (that’s 1000 billion and 1 billion = 100 crores). That’s a lot of zeroes. The deficit is almost 10% of GDP and projected to continue for some time. A deficit of this proportion would land (and it did in 91) a country like India in serious trouble very quickly. If we had to borrow as much to fund our deficit, we would have a crisis (as we did in 1991).

Now the US dollar is a reserve currency and they get to print it and hence can monetize their debt. In addition, it’s a rich country, so other countries are ready to lend to the US. However there is finally a limit to everything and something which cannot go on forever will stop some way or other. In the usual case, a country incurring such a deficit could see its currency depreciate, cost of debt and inflation shoot up and contraction of its economy if it went too far. The US has been able to avoid all this as it is still the largest economy and other countries do not really have too much of an alternative.

That said, it is appear likely (atleast in the long run), that the currency will keep depreciating. That does not mean, that we will not have episodes (as in 2008), where the currency strengthened. However in the long run a country with a large deficit and growing debt can fix it in 3 ways – inflate, raise taxes and cut expenses. Inflation (via currency depreciation) is easier politically and hence looks more likely to happen.

All of the above is a conjecture, but still a probable scenario. Now, you may ask, how does it impact us? A few points come to my mind

• Our currency is still a managed currency and everytime the dollar has depreciated, RBI attempts to control the appreciation of the rupee. This has in general resulted in high liquidity in the domestic markets which results in asset bubbles – spike in real estate and Stock markets etc.
  
• Higher inflation due to higher commodity prices as most of commodities are priced in dollar
  
• Reduction in margins for IT and export oriented companies due to stronger rupee and weaker growth in export market such as US
  

The problem with macroeconomics is that you may be right in the long run, but in the short run be completely off the mark. In addition, it is easy to guess, but difficult to arrive at specific investment decisions based on these macro-economic mumbo jumbo.

All said and done, I am worried about the implied (based on current valuations) bottom line growth for IT companies and the head winds faced by them.

Automotive sector

The growth for the current quarter is likely to be high due to the base effect (dec 2008 was bad) and hence the market may still react positively. However in view of the valuations, I have already started reducing my position in maruti. Need to make up my mind on Ashok Leyland, which has appreciated quite a bit

Overall market levels

I am not sure if the market are overvalued at 22 times earnings, but at the same time I have started reducing my Index ETF positions. I do not look at chart and any other technical indicators. As I have said in the past, when the market has fallen below 12 times earnings, it has generally been a good time to buy the index and a market level of 23 and above a decent time to sell. Its not a precise approach, but makes decent sense from a valuation perspective.

Fixed income investing

I would prefer to buy short dated debt (short term deposits) or floating rate funds. I think that inflation is likely to go up and hence it would better to buy floating rate funds than fixed rate ones. Again, no specific analysis as to why I think that inflation will go up – only reason is that the government has a stimulus package and low rates. Once the inflation starts creeping up, RBI may have to raise rates again.

New ideas

Not many attractive ones. So I am currently just studying some companies such as Tata sponge and others from a learning perspective. This should help me pull the trigger when the valuations are right. I need to avoid trying to be too clever for my own good.

Aniruddha brought up a very good point in the comments and as a result, I decided to add it to the post as it captures the issue for a long term investor. My response follows the comment

Hi Rohit,
i also tried with options while ago. I realized that, i would never sell my portfolio. So even if it is hedged by options, it’s waste of money. If market falls you would earn money through options but that time you will not sell your entire portfolio. Option Profits would be offset against your virtual loss. Same thing with advances. The gain in the portfolio is offset with the option premium you pay, which would expire worthless.I found it good tool to earn money in volatile market for traders.

hi anirudha
As i said, for a long term investor, options will not make sense unless one plans to sell in the short term. Here again it may make sense to just sell and not get too clever with options. so options is still an area i am trying to figure as part of my portfolio.

If however one is managing money professionally, options can help reduce short term volatility, which is critical for clients who may not have the emotional fortitude to bear huge swings in the portfolio and may pull their money out at the wrong time.

Options work well as disaster protection too…end of 2008 if you thought icici was going down the tube and had deposits, then puts would have helped. I bought those options to protect my deposits with the bank and it was more of an insurance, than a trading position.
——————————————————————————–
I recently wrote on my purchase of options for hedging purposes and received several comments and emails on it. I discussed about the ‘what’ of the transaction, but did get into the ‘why’ of it. So let me discuss about it a bit here and then try to give a response to the various comments on the previous post

The why of options purchase
As I stated my previous post, the only scenarios where options would make sense for me are
· The market appears considerably overvalued and options are underpriced due to low volatility: This is a valuation and not a timing decision. However it is not a decision based on deep fundamental analysis. As the market gets more overvalued, I can reduce my long positions and the put option acts as a backstop for me. So in this case I am paying a small premium to protect myself from the downside, as I reduce my holdings and benefit from the upside in the interim.
· I wish to hedge a specific stock position which I plan to sell in the next few months: In such a case, I would prefer to buy a put option on the stock to hedge my open position. This is a hedging position and has no element of speculation in it. I am basically paying a premium for an insurance (against the stock dropping below the strike price)

In both the cases, I am paying a small premium for ‘insuring’ my portfolio for the short term as I sell the overvalued position. If I were to do this multiple times, I would expect to lose money on my options with the benefit of protecting my portfolio from downside while I am reducing my holdings.

In the past one month, I was lucky to have sold my open positions and then have the market drop a bit, due to which I was able to close out my options at a decent profit. I was lucky and not smart in this case.

Aren’t you speculating ?
I cannot deny that there is an element of speculation here. However I did not create a position with that in mind. As I said earlier, if I were to do this multiple times, I expect to lose money on my options positions with the benefit of being able to hedge the downside. If the market does crash, then the options positions would reduce my losses and thus reduce volatility of my portfolio. Speculation depends on the objective of a position and not on the nature of the instrument.
The cost of short term options is around 12-13% (annualized) for a downside protection for 10%. It would stupid of me to hedge my portfolio using options on a regular basis. Yes, the market is efficient in this aspect.

Why not buy long dated options
For starters, I looked for long dated options and was not able to buy them. The second key point is that the price of long dated options is very high. There is no point in buying a 10% downside protection for 1 year and pay 15% or more premium for it. In such a case, I am better off selling the open position itself. I see option protection useful only if I wish to buy short term protection in an overvalued market with clear plans of selling the overvalued positions during the same period

Imperfect hedge
Some readers pointed out that I bought an index put where as my portfolio is mainly midcaps. Well, my disclosed portfolio is mid-caps, but not necessarily my entire portfolio. I do have mutual fund holding and Infosys stock and hence an index hedge is good enough for me. I have disclosed my portfolio in the past and the associated disclaimers.

Educational experience
I am in a learning and exploratory phase in terms of options. Options basics and pricing is easy to understand. The difficult part is to build a sensible strategy around these instruments and use it properly. My positions in the past have been miniscule (<0.5 %) and a gain or loss is more or less a non-event.

I will continue to read and learn and may dabble in these instruments a bit in the future. I see the utility of these instruments in arbitrage positions, but continue to be doubtful in terms of their utility for my core portfolio.

The other day, as I was discussing my options plan with my wife, she summarized it well – All boys have their toys, in my case they are options.

Note : The position discussed in the post was closed sometime back and I do not currently hold any open positions in the instruments discussed in the post

I have a confession to make – I have moved to the dark side, figuratively speaking J. I have rarely written about options and derivatives. There is a simple reason behind it. I do not have as much experience in these type of instruments.

I have been reading on these instruments for some time now and have been dabbling in them a bit for some time now. My foray into derivatives has been mainly for hedging. I still firmly believe that trying to time the market is a waste of time (atleast for me). However that does not mean that I would not like to act when I feel the market may be overvalued.

There is a difference between the two points – time v/s price based action. Let me explain – lets assume that I hold a stock, which i assume is worth 100 and is currently selling for 60. Lets also assume that everyone thinks that the market is overvalued as a whole. If I believe in timing the market, I may decide to sell the stock assuming that market is likely to correct and so will the stock. When that happens, I may buy back the stock at a lower price.

If one approaches this from a price based view point and is agnostic about the market (it may or may not drop), then one may decide to do nothing as the stock is still undervalued. If the market drops, the stock has only become cheaper and one can choose to buy more. If however the market rises, and so does the stock, then well we have a nice profit on our stock.

The benefit of the above approach is one can focus on a single variable – discount of current price from the fair value of the stock and not worry about the market level, sentiment and other such factors. Ofcourse, if you think you can predict the market levels in the short term, then dancing in and out of stocks can be profitable. I however avoid these gymnastics and keep my life simple.

So how does a derivative – a put or a call option fit into the above approach ?

There are certain points of time when one can objectively look at the market valuation and conclude that the market looks fairly overvalued. One can look at the past history of the market and arrive at a reasonable conclusion that if the PE of the market is above 25, then the forward returns are likely to be low. One could look at the data and just ignore it or alternatively try to profit from it.

During the last 1-2 month, after the market hit 16000 and higher levels, I felt that the market was getting over priced. The number of attractive opportunities were reducing and the forward returns were likely to be low. At the same time, even if the market is overvalued, it does not mean that it will drop in the next 1-2 months.

At this point of time, I decided to hedge my portfolio with the use of a put option. Let me detail my thought process and strategy behind it

Buying insurance

In buying a put, I was looking at buying insurance for my portfolio. The objective of insurance is to protect your asset at the minimum cost and not necessarily profit from it. A put option is the right, but not the obligation to sell. So if I buy a put on a stock selling at 100 with a strike price of 80, I have to pay a premium for the option. The value of the option increases as the stock price drops below the current price. If the stock drops below 80 , I am fully hedged against any further drop in the price of the stock

The price of a put option depends on 5 factors – strike price, duration, current price, interest rate and implied volatily. I cannot go into option pricing in detail here, but in simple terms – lower the strike price (below the current price), lower is the price of the put (other factors being constant)

With the above point in mind, I had make a decision based on the following factors

• Strike price of the index put
  
• Duration of the put
  

The Strategy

At the time of the analysis, the index was in the range of 5051-5100 and I decided to pick a strike price of 4500. The maximum duration of the put which I could pick at that time was the December contracts. The reason for picking 4500 as the strike price was due to the fact the probability of the market dropping 15% or more looked low and at the same time a higher strike price required a much higher premium.

An additional factor in buying puts was the low implied volatility (read here for more details on implied volatility). As a result, the options seemed underpriced (I have bring a value angle into it J ).

I ended up buying the December contract for 100 with a strike price of 4500.

The result

After buying the options, the market continued to rise for some time. Options are brutal instruments, also called as wasting assets. Options lose value with time (called as theta or decay). In addition, if the price move in the opposite, then loss is almost exponential.

The above situation changed in the subsequent few days and with a 10%+ drop in the market, the options were almost in the money and had more than doubled in price. The end result is that they had achieved the objective of hedging my portfolio during the market drop.

Conclusion

Am I happy with success of my options strategy ? that would mean that I would be happy on making money on my fire insurance if my house burns down. I look at options merely to hedge my portfolio against short term drops. The cost of this insurance is high (almost 10-12% per annum of principal value) and hence it would be silly to buy puts every time one felt that the market is a bit overvalued.

I would personally buy options under two scenarios

• The market appears considerably overvalued and options are underpriced due to low volatility
  
• I wish to hedge a specific stock position which I plan to sell in the next few months.
  

I am looking at other strategies such as covered calls, collars, butterflies, rabbits (ok I made that up) and will post if I attempt these stunts in the future and survive J

Now that I have managed to irritate some of you, by rejecting stocks which you hold, let me push it still further J

Torrent cables: Erratic performance in the past. Loss in the current year and some years in the past.

TRF ltd: Negative cash flow. High accounts recievables being funded by supplier debt

Bharat bijlee: Poor cash flow. Rough estimate is 20% of net profit, hence the valuation is double the current PE. Fairly valued.

Allied digital services ltd: Raised new capital, majority of which has been used in accounts receivables

Ganesh housing: Fully valued or overvalued. Constantly raising capital for growth

Supreme industries: very low free cash flow and low margins.

UB engineering: Negative networth. Business turned around in the last 2-3 years.

Some quarterly results

Some of the companies, I hold currently have declared their quarterly results. A quick review and some thoughts

VST industries: The company reported a 40% increase in topline and 50% improvement in bottom line. Volume growth seems to be driving the top and bottom line in case of this company. I do not have access to the reasons behind it and hence it is difficult to evaluate the sustainability of the performance. I need to analyze if the growth is being driven by some new products as it is unlikely that the existing products would suddenly do so well.

Asian paints: The company is now firing on all cylinders. The company has reported a 100%+ growth in net profits. This has been a long term holding for me and as I have written in the past, I am also an ex-employee of the company. I am not surprised with the performance of the company. The company has a long history of good performance and has increased its market share and competitive advantage substantially in the last few years. The valuations of course reflect the strength of the company

NIIT tech: The company reported a 12% decline in topline and similar decline in the bottom line. The key reason behind it are the hedging losses. The company has been able to improve its operating margin during this period. There is nothing much to get excited in the current quarter results and with rupee appreciation, it is likely that the negative impact of the hedges will be reduced. I do not expect much in terms of the performance, which has clearly been a disappointment for me. I have marked down the intrinsic value of the company accordingly.

Maruti Suzuki: The company reported a 45% increase in topline and 90%+ improvement in net profits. The topline has been driven by domestic growth and major increase in exports. The bottom line has been driven by moderation of various commodity prices. The performance has been as expected in view the good monthly sales numbers and the stock price has already factored in this performance. As I have written earlier, I have started exiting this position.

I will be posting on the results of the other companies in the coming weeks as they are published and I am able to complete my review of the numbers.

The period from Oct 2008 – Mar 2008 was a no brainer period – as long you could suppress the sinking feeling of watching your holdings drop everyday. As I had gone through a similar phase (though longer, but equally mind numbing) in 2001-2003, I was better prepared emotionally to deal with it. I had promised myself in 2003, that I will ignore the doomsday predictions and invest a meaningful amount of money when and if the crash came.

As they say, be careful what you wish for. I got my wish in 2008 and more. So during this period it was a matter of picking a decent company and investing in it. The valuations did not matter much as almost everything was dirt cheap, as long as one could be sure that the company would survive the likely recession and prosper in the future. This period did not last too long and we have been on an upswing since April 2009.

The situation is now completely different. I have never seen a market where almost every company, especially mid-caps and microcaps are doing well too. During the previous bull market in 2007, there were pockets of undervaluation as the markets were focused on the hot sectors – realty and infrastructure at that time. So one could find undervalued IT or midcap companies easily.

Sudden corrections

That situation has now changed completely. The correction in undervaluation for several companies is startling. I have seen companies like Hawkins cooker, VST and countless more correctly suddenly by 40-50% or more in a matter of days. This is more pronounced in case of companies which have reported good results in the previous quarter.

The upside is that most of us are sitting on pretty decent gains for the year, far more than we expected at the beginning of the year. The downside is that the number of attractive opportunities are shrinking by the day.

Modified approach

I have been running filters and have done an initial analysis on some 200 odd companies and can hardly find anything which would send my pulse racing. There are a few decent opportunities out there and one could invest a moderate amount of capital in it, but nothing in which I could commit something meaningful and be confident about it. One option could be to do nothing and wait till something really attractive comes up. The other alternative, which I may end up following, is to buy the entire set of moderately attractive ideas in equal proportions. The end result would that each one of these ideas may not do well, but the group as a whole should give me above average returns.

I plan to publish a few of these ideas in the coming weeks, provided they do not run up in the meantime. However, as I promised in my previous post, the top 1-2 ideas are reserved for those who have already contributed or plan to do so in the near future.

An update on donations

I have received a commitment of around 15000 Rs (rupee equivalent) from around 13 readers. Needless to say, that I am very pleased with the results and would like to thank them (which I have already done personally).

A Happy Diwali

Finally a happy Diwali to all the Indian readers and may all of us have a prosperous year ahead.