Thursday, November 10, 2011

Criteria for stocks featured on this blog

Given the great uncertainty in India and abroad of all kinds-political, social, economic; some new scandal or Black Swan event makes it to breaking news, with inevitable repercussions on  stocks. Stocks oscillate by 10% or more due to news about potential open offers(Indian affiliates of MNCs), takeover battles(PVR Cinemas), income tax raids(realty companies), top management arrest(Money Matters, Anshal Housing, LIC Housing Finance, Everonn), regulatory sanctions(telecom cos, SKS), sudden taxation impositions or rulings(coal taxes in Australia and Indonesia made Indian power stocks fall..). But much of this is noise, and may quickly dissipiate. Therefore, the stocks I would feature in the blog would have the characteristics outlined below, which would hopefully filter the chaff from the wheat
  1. Management Quality/Integrity:-This is not negotiable. Ideally, first time entrepreneuers or those who have devoted their prime to the company, have too much invested in it to let it fail. Hence, these kind of promoters would be preferred.
  2. Too Big to fail:-The company should have some political clout, economic significance or importance so that it is not allowed to fail.  Alternately, support by group companies is great.
  3. Business model impact:-The news should not adversely affect the business model, even if it is perceived to.
  4. Magnitude of price  change:-I would prefer a 30%(or more) price decline, to ensure that the noise element has not affected.
  5.  Ugly ducklings:- As Peter Lynch said, the best time to buy is when there is blood on the streets. Hence, these stocks should be viewed, at the time of writing, as ugly ducklings. This would be readily apparent from media mention
  6. Far below internal comparable:- The stock should trade close to its book value(even better if it trades for below the net cash on books!). Barring that, it should now be far below recent deal prices(QIP, preferential allotments). However, I would entertain a deviation to this rule if the valuations v/s peers are much lower.
  7. Realistic chance for repricing:-There should be a chance for the stock to correct back to normal. This criteria of mine, would ordinarily rule out holding company discount valuation plays, because the promoters are not likely to offload any time soon, and hence

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