Month: August 2015

Understanding business Models

Over last few weeks, I have started reading an excellent book on business models – Business Model Generations – A handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers – This book is must read for all buddying investors

The book is logically structured right from providing canvas for depicting business models of the company then moving on to patterns, design and strategy

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I will do few posts on the book as there is enormous ground to be covered, In this post focus would be on what authors call as building business model canvas using key nine building blocks

A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value

There are nine building blocks of a business model – While at first I found this to be another fuzzy MBA thing which has lot of academic value but no practical value 🙂

However once I started practising it and drew the canvas of a business which I thought I knew, I realised that there were quite a few areas of business were I had little or no knowledge, This was truly an humbling experience

Let’s first understand what are the key nine building blocks (Note most is … Read the rest

Why sitting on your ass works in Investing

In my last month’s newsletter, I briefly touched upon deliberating on idea of selling and not holding stocks at over stretched valuation

Charlie Munger says ,

Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass

Fisher famously stated that

the time to sell a stock is almost never if the right kind of company is purchased after extensive research and analysis

Another theory could be that I am operating under disposition effect i.e. instead of looking at the overall portfolio performance, I am looking to gain from every stock. This narrow framing leads to selling winners and holding onto losers, I partially mitigated this by always looking for performance at portfolio level rather than at individual level

Also, it’s painful to sell winners too early. If they really skyrocket

See how some of our exited positions have sky rocketed in this bull run

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My investing philosophy is also evolving, I liked what Buffet wrote in 1967 letter

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My logic was that for a small portfolio, this is the best way to gain size, i.e. buy things at attractive prices and then resell them when price catches up and keep doing this till portfolio attains … Read the rest

Annual Review – La opala

La Opala is one of the prominent kitchen utensils (tableware) companies in India, The Company’s brands comprise La Opala, Diva and Solitaire. Solitaire is directed at the high-end segment, Diva caters to the mid-end while the La Opala brand addresses the first-time requirements
They are engaged in the manufacture and marketing of opal glass tableware and 24%-lead crystalware products. Their opal glassware portfolio comprises plates, bowls, dinner sets, coffee mugs, tea sets, soup sets and dessert sets. Their crystalware portfolio comprises barware,vases, bowls and stemware. They introduced the heat-resistant borosilicate range of cookware during the fiscal gone by (Outsourced)
The company had another good year in terms of numbers
Sales, Profit and CFO all went up

Laopala-1Laopala-2

Key developments during the year

  • Equity dilution via qualified institutional placement to generate about INR 55 Cr (~11 million USD)
  • The addition of tea and coffee range products to broaden glassware portfolio
  • Start of importing of glassware and then selling them with a mark up

Only cialis prescription cheap one pill should be taken in a fashion that is similar to candy. We are levitra uk loved that gonna let you know about the various side effects on our web site. The Internet and … Read the rest

An inspirational Teacher

The word guru is derived from two words, gu and ru. The Sanskrit root gu means darkness or ignorance, and ru denotes the remover of that darkness.
I have been blessed to have so many teachers in my life who have showered their knowledge, apart from parents teachers have the most profound impact on our psyche in life
I would not be talking about all of them here then the post would become a book, But I will talk about one
Prof S P Srinivas who taught us worldly wisdom through his finance lectures, Sitting through and listening him in class was an enormous experience, I always walked out with an awe feeling , how can one man have such an immense grip on so many subjects – Finance, Psychology, History, Literature and I can go on and on, and top to it all he has the best one liners on pretty much everything in life 🙂
He was always in library outside classes, reading always reading – He was a real life example of what Munger calls a learning machine
Tons of what he said stays with me and guides me when I am indecisive, he is a permanent … Read the rest