Depends on your style, of course, but absolutely correct.

Paying 50-100x earnings for 'blue ocean' sectors has become normalized with promise of changing trends and immense future opportunity. Stock markets look forward, if the future opportunity is great, in most cases that 100x valuation already factors a 30x valuation in 3 years.

For investors, the question of where the buck stops is difficult to answer, because the goal post keeps changing. 30x is reasonable for one business, for another 70x is acceptable. So why not everything in between too?

Not every business captures the opportunity available. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, as my English teacher used to say. When investors have seen valuations creep from 20x to 100x in a matter of a year or two, it is easy to to keep dancing to the same music.

But like we used to play musical chairs in childhood, someone will be left standing too. And here the rules aren't that 1 person gets eliminated at a time, hundreds get crushed at the same time. In childhood, we had a 1/X chance of being caught standing when the music stopped.

The margin of safety was high till you got down to the last 3-4 people playing the game. Similarly, your margin of safety reduces dramatically when valuation becomes irrelevant. A few months of underperformance and suddenly things don't look so rosy any more.

@Dinesh_Sairam @a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Questions that are only answered with time haha.

@a_basumallick @ashwinidamani Just to add - sustainable FCF is a faraway concept for most till (if) they gain scale or innovate/add value. Till then, it's generally always a struggle to manage WC and capacity addition. Wouldn't expect that to change for a while.

Bull runs in small caps are usually fast and furious, and the cycle repeats itself every 3-4 years. Every time, retail is sold stories of business turnaround and stock charts look fantastic for meteoric wealth creation. For the class of 2020-21, here's a couple of past stars.

These small cap stocks with 30-40 crore market cap went up 23X and 11x in a span of 24 months between April 16 and April 18. The story looked great then, but subsequently once liquidity and interest disappeared, the prices went right back to where they came from.

When in the thick of the action, it can be difficult to keep a level mindset. To keep the narrative believable, these companies are able to massage their top-line and bottom-line for a short period of time to show an imminent turnaround. Note the trends in these financials.

The company usually exhausts its ability to massage the financial statements very soon and the business health plummets dramatically. One collapsed so dramatically it has been selling fixed assets. The other one is Uniply Industries - a simple search on Twitter will suffice.

Newer small cap investors may be subscribed to many Twitter handles, Telegram channels, groups and even premium advisory services. Don't take anybody's word for the narrative being sold to you. On-the-ground-research and scuttlebutt can be plain fiction.

The anatomy of Private Equity (PE) funding in a public listed company.

A thread 👇 (1/n)

PG Electroplast Limited, a contract manufacturer of various kinds of electrical goods and appliances, recently announced an 80 crore fund-raise through preferential allotment of equity shares and compulsorily convertible debentures (CCD) to Baring PE and family funds. (2/n)

Such transactions are a great way to understand Private Equity deals in a public setting. Because of disclosure norms for listed companies, everything related to a fund infusion in a listed company is made available to the public. (3/n)

From a retail investor’s perspective, it is easy to focus only on WHO is investing. In this thread, I will try to look at such a transaction from the perspective of all stakeholders – the company, the PE investors, and the public shareholders. (4/n)

PG Electroplast sees an opportunity in the Productivity-Linked Incentives (PLI) by GoI. Under this scheme, companies making incremental investments into manufacturing facilities receive up to 6% of the incremental sales generated from such investment as an “incentive”. (5/n)

Insolvency resolutions suck for creditors, but this one takes the cake.

Listed company gave loan to related party, defaulted along with other dues. Related party creditor acquired the listed entity via insolvency.

Only losers are operational creditors w/ 88% haircut.

Company name is Covidh Technologies Ltd - really old bankrupt company. Not a significant event, just an observation.

Correction: Listed company *took* a loan from related party (in first tweet)

“You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.”

— Warren Buffett

I always knew that aiming low was the best path for me, and so I merely sought to learn from my betters a few practical mental tricks that would help me avoid some of the worst miscognitions common in my age cohort.

Key Learnings from one of the best Investing Letters that I have read this year from @rohitchauhan

Time for a thread with SOIC Key Takeaways 🧵🧵🧵🧵

First Key Learning:

The first is the importance of getting the trend and its timing right. No business does well in isolation, it is a part of a much bigger trend. For eg:In sectors like API/CDMO/Chemicals, many businesses have created wealth. As they are going through tailwinds

Thus,It becomes important to identify long-term trends like manufacturing, Financialization of saving, or Formalization of sector (think PVC/CPVC Pipes) and to be patient. Long-term trends keep offering opportunities. Just think about it- if its truly long term, then the

Opportunity will exist for a long period of time no?

Second Key Learning:

Look at Valuation in a broader context and not in isolation. When a sector catches fancy of the markets, and earnings growth is strong in the entire sector. Most of the time, markets start discounting

the earnings and reward the business with a high multiple. As long as the trend holds and management is executing, one should hold the stock and be tolerant of higher valuations 💯💯💯

earning growth -skill
re rating - luck

those who don’t believe this, haven’t been in the market long enough to understand this.

What a privilege it was to host @Gautam__Baid for my first ever Twitter Spaces event along with @dadalife369 and @Finvents.

While we wait for the YouTube recording. Here are 8 of my biggest takeaways from today's session.

#investing

1 - Start by coming up with a portfolio allocation strategy based on your aims and objectives for investing. Include flexibility, tracking and rebalancing as part of your strategy.

2 - Learn from those who succeeded before you to ultimately develop your own investing style

Here are three books that influence @Gautam__Baid's investing style - They are some of the best books in investing along with Gautam's The Joys of Compounding.

3 - Develop a robust repository of sources from which you can generate investment ideas.

Here are the ones @Gautam__Baid uses.

It is a super-comprehensive list.

4 - Focus on the process as opposed to the outcomes. This is very important.

Developing a superior process leads to the repeatability of exceptional outcomes.