Crazy things we see and hear during bull markets

Is there anyone who is still not convinced that we are in a mad bull market? This thread is not for them :grimacing: :grimacing:

I’ll share some of the crazy things that some of us are hearing right now and some blasts from the past as well :bomb:

Do share your experiences and stuff you see as well.


Tweets

  • Kalpen Parekh, DSP Mutual fund

Bullrun

  • Arvind Kothari, Niveshaay

BR#2

  • Sandip Sabharwal - Ex-Head of SBI MF

BR#3

Relatives giving health advice is a thing of the past. It is time for the other way around :disguised_face:

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The last one hits one of Peter lynch’s quotes in his books .

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Nifty microcap has posted a return of 100 percent from march 2023. On a weekly basis rarely has index gone down more than 3 or 4 weeks that too slightly. Whenever the index goes down 1-2 percent the financial media and people start shouting ‘CRASH’. It is amusing to see people thinking that 1-2 percent down move is crash after such double triple digit returns. I have heard aunties chatting in salon how she could make 40-50 percent every year and can provide recommendations for her kitty party gang. Covid has created many optimistic investors. For sure this is not going to end well. I can attribute this madness to 3-4 points.

  1. People feel stocks only go up and finfluencers have helped propagating this narrative

  2. Crazy MF inflows in last 4 years. Fii are exiting like crazy since last 3 years. All of these ads about 'mutual funds sahi hain ’ and lack of liquid investment options and self fulfilling prophecy has created this effect and people still keep on doing SIP no matter the valuations. Just FYI india is the most expensive market valuation wise globally. Just wish we had access to brazil, russia, china, indonesia, vietnam, thailand capital market.

  3. Government intervention. The current government is good at marketing about how well things are going even though the gdp growth numbers are way worse than last regime.Also taxing debt instruments at 30 percent rate since last year has made equity the only available option. On top of that prime minister endorsing psu in parliament which have low free float have created gamestop scenario in india.

4.Due to less depth in a lot of stocks in india it is easy for prices to get distorted. On top of that LIC acts as backstop in case anything goes down for a single day. ADANI came out unscathed revealed the entire picture. Things are manipulated beyond a point. Such open clues were given to sebi about shady ownership of adani companies last october but according to sebi all is well and lic sbi continues to loan and invest in those companies .At the end of day it is people’s retirement money. Let’s see how it ends.

Problem is these mutual fund companies will never come out saying markets are expensive as there is a conflict of interest. To them 2 percent of AMC charges matter.And hence they keep benefitting if more people keep investing.They have no major skin in investments.The only way i see this ending is if major scandal comes out. Else this balloon keeps on growing till the money flow is not enough to sustain it. I believe the latter will happen .

If someone wants to be a devil’s advocate and vouch for the case that earnings will grow amazingly in india. I just have few counters to that argument. India’s debt is increasing rapidly and globally money flow is decreasing as recession signs are popping everywhere. On top of that high inflation and high interest rate regime and high global debt would not support it. Though india has a lot of room to grow as we are currently are 2500 usd per capita income but due to globalization we will not be immune to global macro symptoms.The whole rally started because of excessive money printing globally since covid. The ghosts of it will come back to haunt sooner than later.

Would like to hear about other people’s views. Let’s get this thread rolling. @nithin your opinions about this?

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Interesting observations and points… yah we are seeing typical bull run consequences.
Completely agree with fin-influencer and tax-treatment of debt instrument part, which are new in this bull run.

Maybe couple of views you would like to re-consider

In recent past there have been launches of hybrid/multiasset funds. Isn’t is indication that mutual fund industry is gearing up to handle repercussions of expensive market

I think couple of years ago SEBI came up with skin in game policy in which required key executives part of salary should be their own mutual funds.

In general I think MF industry is far more regulated esp. when once consider real estate or for that matter direct stocks as alternative investment vehicle

Reasons I am Cynical about equities

  • Extreme euphoria
  • No margin of safety
  • Even through macros are fine, we are a fragile country.
  • We aren’t innovating profitable products or services for large scale exports.
  • Ease of doing business for MSMEs specially isn’t great.
  • Corporates are deleveraged but personal debt is skyrocketing. Another NPA cycle in the making?
  • Food, healthcare and Education inflation is far more than incremental salaries.

Reasons I am relaxed

  • 8 years in the markets and we have been through (or still going through) demonetisation, a pandemic, two full fledged war, high bond yields and very incompetent US presidents. So we might just manage to pull ourselves out of the next big crisis.
  • Single party govt.
  • Short selling infrastructure is very restricted. Therefore smart money (large corporates, institutions and govt) don’t have much of a choice but to go long. And smart money can influence the markets in their favour.
  • Present Nifty PE is 22.92. When I entered the markets in 2016, Nifty PE was 23.31. When nifty PE peaked at 41 in Feb 2021, nifty has rallied 62% since.
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