The Hindu Business Line : Sunday, October 12, 2008

INVESTMENT WORLD

INSIGHT: Not learning from history
As the world struggles in the throes of a credit crisis, it seems appropriate to recount some (un)forgettable meltdowns of the twentieth century, the economics behind them and the panic that they created. Each of these major crises had features ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Index Outlook
Last week’s rout in stock prices was on a scale that none of us have witnessed in our lifetimes. Sample this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 18 percent, its worst weekly decline ever, Nikkei crashed 18 per cent in just ...

STOCKS: Infosys Technologies: Buy
Investors with a one-two year perspective can buy the shares of Infosys Technologies, considering its attractive valuations and reasonable business prospects, despite the current rough ...

MUTUAL FUNDS: Magnum Contra Fund: Invest
The fund hasn’t fared too well in the recent meltdown, with the year to date NAV correcting by more than 50 per cent. However, the good long-term record and the fund’s flexicap mandate make it a reasonable investment at this ...

RIGHTS ISSUE: Tata Motors — Rights Offer: Avoid
Rights offer price of Rs 340 a share (ordinary) and Rs 305 an ‘A’ share; current market price of Rs 292 a share. Posed with this equation, it should be obvious to any shareholder of Tata Motors (TML) on what the response should be ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Query Corner: What the charts say
I have purchased Themis Medicare and Kalindee Rail Nirman for Rs 250 and Rs 215 respectively. Please give your view on these ...

GENERAL INSURANCE: How to make bank deposits a safe cover
When rumours about the financial health of a private bank began to circulate last week, people queued up at the bank’s ATMs in the wee hours to withdraw money. One of my friends who had large sums parked in fixed deposits with the ...

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION: Home buyers in the grip of ‘Diwali dilemma’
To buy or not to buy is the dilemma home seekers face as Diwali draws closer. As always, and this time too, developers have rolled out festive offers ranging from freebies to equated monthly instalments ...

INTERVIEW: ‘Not much room to manoeuvre, even within large-caps’
Companies may try to go slow on their spending programme as the high interest rates could ultimately affect project internal rate of return (IRR), feels Ms Srividhya Rajesh, Fund Manager – Equity, Sundaram BNP Paribas Mutual. ...

INVESTMENTS: Clear liability before retirement
I am a 38-year-old NRI. My wife is 35. We have two daughters — the eldest is aged 4 and the younger one is 10 months old. I would like to lead my retired life in India from next year. I invested Rs 60 lakh in plots a few years ago. ...

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION: Build it with bamboo
A house that can be assembled with minimum fuss to house people when natural ...

FOREIGN INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS: What the P-Note relaxation could mean
These are unprecedented times and market regulators across the globe have been up in arms fighting the tumbling stock prices. The Reserve Bank of India and Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) have been pro-actively managing the ...

MUTUAL FUNDS: Fund Talk
I am 33 and have been investing Rs 1,000 through SIP regularly for the last two years in Magnum Contra, Franklin India Flexi cap, DSPML Equity, Birla Midcap & DSPML T.I.G.E.R. I am planning to start new SIPs in Sundaram ...

INCOME TAX: Reaping income-tax benefit for treatment
I was working in a private company but resigned as I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. I underwent surgery and I am under medication. I am spending around Rs 2,000 a month on medicines and around Rs 8,000 a year ...

INTERVIEW: What the CRR cut means for investors
The RBI’s recent move to cut the cash reserve ratio by 150 basis points was welcomed by many participants in the debt market as it is expected to infuse much wanted liquidity to the extent of Rs 60,000 crore into the banking ...

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION: Pimpri Chinchwad beckons developers
Pimpri Chinchwad, largely seen as an industrial hub, is now developing into an attractive destination for developers. The PCMC area, which earlier catered to the workforce of the industries located there is drawing white-collar employees ...

INVESTMENTS: Opportunity in debt now
Failed to book profits on your equity portfolio when the markets were at 21000? Well, one lesson you can draw from the recent stock market debacle, is that investing requires you to maintain a constant vigil and grab opportunities when they ...

STOCK MARKETS: Some lessons from the dotcom crash
All said and done, when it comes to the stock market, it is the dotcom bubble that burst at the beginning of the new millennium that springs to mind. This fall did drive home an important tenet — valuations always matter, no matter how ...

STOCK MARKETS: Sensex long-term outlook review
If 2007 was the year of the raging bull market, 2008 will go down in history as the year in which the bear charged out from its lair rejuvenated after four years in ...

ECONOMICS: Why beer seems cheaper than water
My friend frequents an upscale neighourbood pub. He complains that the pub charges him premium for providing bottled water but generously gives him free side-eats such as wafers and salted nuts. What, he wonders, is the logic behind such ...

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION: Go for a ‘green building’

All the bad news on global warming has sensitised professionals to the need for conservation. So the question is, how do we reduce the use of natural resources in commercial frameworks? The green building certification ...

INVESTMENTS: Note the notes
Investors draw conclusions about a company’s performance from numbers as captured in its profit and loss account and balance sheet. But these numerical indicators don’t explain much about the source and the quality of ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Infosys
Infosys moved in line with our expectation and declined to test the long-term support at Rs 1125 on Friday. The intra day recovery from that level was strong and the stock went on to record a close well above this support. A short-term ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: SBI
The out-performance of SBI continued in a week when the entire stock market edifice was crumbling. Though the stock could not progress higher, the decline was not very severe either. The stock recorded an intra-week trough at Rs 1181 on ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Unitech
Unitech declined with the rest of the market to an intra-week trough at Rs ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Reliance Infra
Reliance Infrastructure fell in to a bottom-less pit and the stock ceded 30 per cent in just four sessions. We had expected the stock to move sideways between Rs 660 and Rs 1100 over the medium-term. But the break of the lower boundary brings ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Reliance
Reliance Industries recorded an emphatic close below the long-term support at Rs 1700 on Monday and ended with a 13 per cent loss for the ...

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: Tata Steel
Tata Steel was bludgeoned out of shape last week as it plunged to a 26 per cent decline. The stock fell to the long-term support at Rs 290 indicated in our previous column. The stock halted at this level in June and again in October ...

FOREIGN INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS: Prominent bulk deals on NSE and BSE
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STOCKS: Union Bank of India: Buy
Investors can consider buying the Union Bank of India stock with an investment horizon of more than a year. A low price-to-book value, with a high return on equity, indicates the stock to be relatively undervalued. Investors should, however, ...

STOCKS: GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare: Buy
FMCG stocks have withstood the market fall better than others, but with the ongoing ‘flight to safety’ bidding up their prices, frontline stocks in the sector are now quite expensive in relation to the rest of the ...

MUTUAL FUNDS: DSPML Balanced Fund: Invest
Investors can consider buying units of DSPML Balanced Fund. With over a third of its assets in debt, the fund declined 22 per cent on a one-year basis. Exposure to debt has restricted the fund’s losses to about 50 per cent of the ...

MUTUAL FUNDS: Diversified funds — It’s all in the selection
If the two-year round trip of stock market proves anything for your mutual fund investments, it is that a lot hinges not just on your fund selection but also on the fund manager’s stock and sector selection. An analysis of the ...

STOCK MARKETS: What ‘long-term’ portfolio? Risk management for the trader
Stock prices are down more 50 per cent down from the all-time highs. This sharp decline in prices has resulted in large losses for even the astute traders. Most “investors” continue their loss-making exposure under the pretext ...

DERIVATIVES MARKETS: Another volatile swing on the cards for Nifty
Bears tightened their grip heavily on the markets causing one of the steepest falls in the history of ...

STOCK MARKETS: Yet another week of gloom
The week beginning October 6 saw the Sensex start at 12284 points, a good 2 per cent lesser than its previous close. But that was just the tip of the iceberg as far as the losses were concerned. The bellwether index went on to lose over 16 ...

STOCK MARKETS: Bull's Eye
E-mail your response by Tuesday to ...

STOCK MARKETS: Baskets of X
E-mail your guess before Tuesday ...

BOOKS: Corporate reporting reduced to form-filling
Browsing through Indian annual reports, what comes as ‘the overpowering feel’ is of ‘form-filling and compliance fulfilment,’ rues Shankar Jaganathan in Corporate Disclosures: The Origin of Financial ...

NEW FUND OFFER: Update
Principal Mutual Fund has extended new fund offer period for Principal Emerging Bluechip Fund. The fund will now close for subscription on October ...