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My experience with Equity mutual funds

By Rohit Chauhan
In Mutual funds, Uncategorized
May 1, 2007
5 Min read
8 comments
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As I write this post, I have been investing in mutual funds for over 8-9 years. This is a post to show the experiences I have had with mutual funds and learnings from my mistakes and sucesses. So it is not a showpiece of my brilliance or of my stupidities (of which you will find more of in the narrative). It is just a gist of my experience and learnings

1999-2000: Time of confidence and on top of the world

It is mid 1999. I had already dabbled a bit in mutual funds. I had invested a small amount in UTI-Mplus 91 in 1995 at a discount to NAV (it was a closed ended fund then). The discount had closed and I had made over 20% per annum and was feeling more confident of investing in mutual funds. Also I had moved out of Unit 64 scheme in 1998 after I had read a few adverse reports about it and managed to avoid the losses.

So here I am in 1999, feeling confident and having a little bit of cash in my pocket. Towards the end of 1999 (right a the start of the bull run) I started investing in mutual funds (yes, got the timing right!)

This was my list of mutual funds at that time
Alliance new millennium fund
Alliance buy india fund
DSP meryll lynch opportunities fund
Kotak MNC fund
Kothari pioneer fund balanced and Internet opportunities fund
Prudential ICICI tech fund
Alliance 95 fund
Franklin index fund

So I was heavily invested in IT funds. Considering that I was in mutual funds and spread across several of them, I incorrectly assumed that I had diversified the risk.

2001-2002: What was I thinking ?!!

The tech carnage started in mid 2000 and several of my funds lost 80-90% of the value. The saving grace were the non IT funds. But those funds lost more than the index as they were also heavily wieghted in IT. So the herd mentality affects everyone at the same time.

Although it was easy to blame the mutual funds and their aggressive marketing (they advertised 100% gains for 3 month periods), I realised it was my greed and faulty logic which was the reason for my losses.

I had been reading buffett and other value investors since 1998 and was a firm believer in value investing, but allowed myself to be carried away by euphoria and greed.

By the end of 2002, my mutual fund portfolio was down 25% and I had already exited from several tech funds and moved into diversified funds.

My fund summary by the end of 2002 was as follows
Alliance new millennium fund
Alliance equity fund
DSP meryll lynch opp fund
Zurich equity (now HDFC equity)
Prudential ICICI tech fund
Alliance 95 fund
Franklin index fund
Pioneer ITI index fund

So as you can see, I had started moving out of tech funds and into index funds.

A few learnings

– avoid sector funds. If you want to invest in a sector, find some good stocks in that sector. Sector funds don’t diversify risk, only concentrate them
– A good portion of funds should be kept in low cost index funds. You are garunteed market returns in the case of index funds.
– Diversified equity funds are the best option as these funds allow the mutual fund manager the maximum flexibility, unlike the sector fund where the manager and the investor are stuck in the same sector even when the sector is sinking.

2002-2004: Fixing the portfolio

With the above learnings in mind, I took my losses and moved into diversified equity funds. I chose funds which had demonstrated long term outperformance.

My portfolio looked like this by 2004.

Alliance equity fund
Reliance vision
DSP meryll
Franklin templeton – Blue chip growth and Dividend
Templeton india growth fund
Prudential ICICI growth (switch from tech fund)
HDFC equity
Rest was index funds and Nifty BEES.

My portfolio by this time reflected the following approach

– reduce the number of funds in the portfolio. More funds do not provide diversification, they just reduce the reduce the return without reducing the risk
– Select funds with low expenses and a long term performance history
– Prefer diversified equity funds over sector and promotional funds (like an MNC fund or similar idea based funds).

2004-2007: Doing nothing (and reaping the rewards)

During this period my fundamental approach did not change drastically. I have kind of fine tuned a few aspects of my mutual fund approach, but the broad approach has remained the same and has worked quite well

A few changes during this period have been

– reduction of the number of mutual funds and consolidation into fewer high quality funds
– Regular investing through a Systematic investment plan, barring when I feel the market is extremely high
– Limit the total number of mutual funds to 4-5 at best and re-invest additional money in the same funds.

The net result of the above journey from the year 2000 to 2007 has been a net performance of around 23% per annum , which would be around 5-6% more than the market returns.

Next post : My approach to selecting mutual funds

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Fixed income investing

By Rohit Chauhan
In Investment process, Mutual funds, Uncategorized
April 27, 2007
4 Min read
8 comments
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My blog and most of my posts refer to equity investments. I have once in a while posted on real estate. However fixed income investments are a fair percentage of my portfolio. The reason I don’t post much on fixed income investments is because there is not much I can do to generate extra returns in proportion to the time and effort I will have to spend on it.

The fixed income options available to me are

– Bank FD : this is almost a no brainer and the most passive form of investmtent. However I don’t chase returns blindly. I typically hold deposits in only the Top banks and avoid the second tier banks and co-operatives. The extra 1-2% return is not worth the risk. In addition, I tend to look at the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and the NPA levels of the bank, before going ahead with the FD. The name or reputation of the bank alone is not sufficient. Typically the CAR levels of the bank should be above 8-9 % (TIER I) and NPA levels below 1-2 %.

– Company bonds : The next avenue for fixed income investing is company bonds. I have invested in company bonds and FD’s in the past when the interest rates were higher and it was possible for me to process the paperwork. However since 2000, partly due to the amount of paperwork involved then (there was no Demat for bonds) and due to the easy of investing in mutual funds , I stopped looking at company bonds and FD’s. Also due to the high profile failure of some of the companies and the losses incurred by the bondholders, I kind of lost interest in company FD’s and bonds. The key factors to look at when investing in such instruments is the interest coverage ratio ( PBIT/ Interest expense ) which should atleast be 4, Debt equity ratio for the company ( < 0.5 if possible) and debt rating by the rating agencies such as Crisil (invest in AAA or AA+ only).

– Mutual funds – fixed income: This is my favored avenue during a falling rate scenario and I tend to invest with well know mutual fund houses such as franklin templeton, DSP etc. At the time of investing in a debt mutual fund, I tend to look at the following factors
o Asset under management – avoid investing in funds with low level of asset as the expense ratios could be high.
o Fund expense – lower the better. Although the indian mutual fund industry typically gouges its customers and charges too high compared to the returns.
o Duration of fund – This is the average duration of the fund. A fund with longer duration will rise or fall more when interest rates change
o Fund rating – 80-90% of the fund holding should be in p1+ or AAA / AA+ securities.
o Long term performance of the fund versus the benchmark

– Mutual funds – floating rate funds : This is my favored approach in a rising rate scenario. In addition to all the factors for the fixed income mutual funds, I also tend to favor floaters with shorter duration.

– Post office : Nothing much to analyse in this option other than it was an attractive option a few years back when the Post office offered better rates than available in the market. Currently the 8-9% per annum for the 6 year duration is not attractive enough.

– FMP (fixed maturity plan) : I have just heard about it and have yet to understand about this investment option.

Finally in terms of tax effectiveness, debt based mutual funds are the most efficient as they are subject to long term tax rate after 1 year.

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You can be a stock market genius – Recaps, stub stocks,warrants and options

By Rohit Chauhan
In Arbitrage, Book review, Uncategorized
April 24, 2007
3 Min read
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The final section of the book starts with recaps. Under a recap, a company may decide to buy back stock from the investor via cash, bond or through preferred stock. Thus the proptional ownership of the investor remains the same. However the company doing the recap is able to create value for the investor. For example, a company is trading at 200 Rs per share. The company earns 20 Rs per share (post-tax). The company returns Rs 150 to the shareholder by raising debt. Post the recap, the company has say Rs 15 of interest expense. As a result the post tax earnings are now are Rs 11 share (assuming 40% tax rate). Even if the company continues to sell at 8 times earning, the net gain for the shareholder is now Rs 38.

The stock after the recap is called as a stub and an investor can benefit from buying such stub stocks after the announcement of the recap. The reason for this is that the stub is a leveraged position on the stock. As the company has high amount of debt, the equity value is depressed due to high leverage. As the company pays off debt, the earnings grow rapidy. Also the multiple could expand at the same time due to reduction in the risk. As a result a small improvement in the debt level can result in a large improvement of the stock price.

Recaps are rare (and even rarer in the indian markets). As stubs via re-caps are rare, the same result can be achieved through LEAPS (Long term equity anticipation security). Leaps are a form of long term call options on the company. They are a leverage call on the medium to long term performance of the company. For sake of an example, lets assume that the stock price of company is Rs 88 / share. The company is highly leveraged and I feel that the company should do well in the next 1-2 years. I could (theortically speaking) buy a LEAP at 50 Rs/ share. If the company does well and the stock goes to 150 Rs/ share in two years, my gain would be 300%. The downside is that if the stock goes below the strike price, then I lose my money completely. LEAPS are thus a leveraged bet on the performance of a company. However, I think the indian market does not have LEAP securities yet.

Warrants provide an alternative route to put in a leveraged bet on the performance of the company. Warrants however have an advantage that their duration is much longer than options and LEAPS. The book has specific examples on recaps and all the other specific arbitrage options like spin-offs, arbitrage, and merger securities.

For all the previous posts on the book
Introduction
Bankruptcy and restructuring
Arbitrage and merger securities
Spin-offs

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Company analysis worksheet and valuation template

By Rohit Chauhan
In Company analysis, Uncategorized
April 20, 2007
1 Min read
2 comments
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I have received several requests for my company level valuation template. Instead of responding individually to each of the request, I am posting it in the ‘My analysis worksheet section’ (see here)

The company level analysis worksheet is still a work in progress and I will keep uploading updated versions in the future. I use this worksheet as I detailed it here in an earlier post, for a detailed analysis of a company once it has passed through the basic filters.

I am also uploading the worksheet which I created for gujarat gas limited in 2003 (see here). I have since then, bought and liquidated my holding. I will upload more of such worksheets in the future.

In addition, I am also posting a quantitative worksheet. This worksheet has some quantitative analysis of the relationship between PE, ROC and Competitive advantage period. It has a similar analysis of the relationship between FCF (free cash flow), ROE and depreciation (see here)

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