Investing lessons from the COVID pandemic

 2020 has been an eventful year for investors – one that they are unlikely to forget anytime soon in their lifetime. In many ways it has been similar to 2008, the only difference being that both the downside and upside in 2020 has been much more rapid than in 2008. Surely 2020 is one for the ages – tales about the pandemic and how investors first lost money and then made more money will be narrated to progeny on many a dinner table. So what investing lessons can we take from this pandemic? Here are some that I have put together in no particular order.

• Take volatility in your stride

Stock markets are volatile in the short term. That is because all kinds of people – from traders to Institutional Investors with different time horizons – are plugged into the markets every day, each one trying to work it for their own benefit. Consequently ups and downs are a natural attribute of the stock market. Hence do not be perturbed by volatility. Learn to ignore it or if possible even take advantage of it – to invest even more on every significant correction. 

• Invest for the long term

Remember that behind every stock that is trading in the market, there is a real business that is serving real Customers and generating real revenues. As long as the overall economy is growing (which it will, because this is a common objective of all Governments worldwide), many of these businesses will prosper and grow faster than the economy and will be rewarded by the stock markets. This takes time – months and even years. Always invest for the long term and have the patience to let the markets reward your conviction.

• Stay Diversified

In the past 20 years, not a single investment asset class — Large Cap Stocks, Small Cap Stocks, Real Estate, International Markets, Gold to name a few — had the best returns in back-to-back years. Each year the best investment category flip-flopped. Staying diversified, as per your recommended asset allocation, gives your portfolio the best chance to benefit from all asset classes in the long term

• Focus on Asset Allocation

Long term wealth is created not so much from superlative returns in the stock markets as much as from a judicious mix of asset categories in your portfolio. Assets such as Debt, Real Estate, Gold, etc. have their days in the sun and are also capable of generating superlative returns. Hence always focus on the asset category mix of your portfolio in order to generate wealth for the long term.

• Rebalance your portfolio regularly

Business performance changes over time with changing market conditions. For instance, in 2020 Technology stocks have done very well due to the high demand for Work from Home whereas Airline stocks have languished due to the diminished travel demand. If you could have foreseen this change in March/April 2020 and rebalanced your portfolio accordingly, it would have performed very handsomely at the end of the year. At this time technology stocks have run up too much and further upside may be limited. This may create demand for value stocks once again. Hence rebalancing your portfolio for this change may help you in 2021.  

So there you have it – a mini capsule of investing lessons from 2020. These lessons are not revelations – they have been repeated ad nauseam by various investment experts using different words and sentences. Yet many of them remain in theory and rarely get implemented in their true spirit. This is where an Investment Adviser can help. If you are not able to implement these lessons on your own, then consider hiring an expert to advise you on your portfolio and be by your side to help you navigate the markets ups and downs. 

Corona pandemic – rebalance your portfolio now

Only when the tide goes out do you know who has been swimming naked.

Warren Buffett

We are now in the 13th day of a three week lockdown in India that is being enforced by the Government to arrest the spread of the global corona pandemic which has gripped the entire world. The speed with this virus has spread all over the world is truly terrifying. But perhaps it indicates how much people are on the move nowadays, and how much more they have to travel regularly in today’s commercial world. As of today more than 90 countries and half of humanity is in complete or partial lockdown all over the world! This is because the most effective way of stopping this virus from spreading is to maintain physical distancing from everyone else.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, lockdowns may stop the virus from spreading but they have economic consequences. Shutting down businesses means people lose jobs. The Government is urging many employers to let their employees work from home. While this is eminently doable for services business, it is hardly possible to implement work-from-home in the manufacturing sector. Even if people do not lose jobs, their income will be curtailed in the short term reducing their purchasing power thus negatively impacting the economy. Governments have announced major fiscal stimulus packages in anticipation of such economic slowdowns. There have been debates in some countries whether the economic cost of a lockdown will be more than the damage caused by the virus itself. That is why the response of Governments around the world to this virus has been different. This is illustrated nicely in the chart below

Notice that India is highest on the stringency scale and lowest on the fiscal stimulus scale on this chart. What does this imply – in short it means that India has the best chance among all these countries to be the least affected (economically) by the virus. And in case India’s containment strategy falls short, the Government has more room to announce more stimulus packages in the future. As of today, when I compare the corona virus numbers, India’s strategy seems to be working - touchwood. Notice also that China which adopted a less stringent policy than India has already started coming out of the lockdown and has started resuming normal manufacturing activities, in less than three months. You can extrapolate this to estimate yourself how soon normal life will start resuming in India.

The United Nations estimates that only China and India, among the large economies, will come out of this pandemic with a positive GDP growth rate. The rest of the world will go into a recession. The chart above certainly gives credence to this forecast. If you also believe that the India growth story - while impacted in the short term - is going to be largely intact in the medium and long term, then this is the right time for you to do the following:

• Review your portfolio now and rebalance it to invest into those businesses that will be the beneficiaries of India’s growth story.
• Review your asset allocation. It is likely that your exposure to equities has fallen due to the correction in the stock markets. This is the time to restore your asset allocation by moving some money from debt to equities.
• Diversify your portfolio as per your own risk profile. Be aware that too much diversification may negatively affect your returns.
• Keep at least six months of living expenses in cash/liquid instruments. 
• Finally, stay calm and stay invested.

Having said all of the above, Be aware that this is the time to be aware and alert. There is no room for complacency, because of the possibility that the situation may get worse before it gets better.

When to sell your stock?

What others are doing means nothing.

Warren Buffett

As a long term investor in the stock markets, researching stocks and buying the ones that meet your investment criteria is often only half the story. The other half is about knowing when to sell your stocks, book your profits (or losses) and reinvest the proceeds. And although the majority of long term investors struggle with the second half, the process for both of them is surprisingly similar. Yet, investors cling on to their holdings, even when selling them and reinvesting the proceeds into other promising opportunities which are staring them in the face clearly make more sense. There is a psychological aspect to this.

First of all, no investor wants to accept that he/she was wrong by booking losses. This emotion comes into play for loss making holdings. In such cases patiently waiting on loss making holdings becomes the default strategy. I am not saying here this is wrong. This strategy may be advocated when the original reasons for making the investment are still valid and all that is needed is a patient wait for a change of technical momentum in the stock. In such cases, waiting for the market to recover and in fact even buying more at lower levels makes eminent sense. In other words, patiently waiting on your loss making holdings makes sense when the underlying business remains fundamentally strong and has a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. 

Secondly, in the case when the holding is in a profit position, investors are averse to closing their position and booking their profit in the fear that they may lose out on further future gains. This may not be entirely the wrong thing to do either. This approach is advocated only when the original reasons for making the investment are still valid and no other better opportunity is visible on the horizon.

Here are some questions that will help you determine if and when to sell your stock holding.

1. Do you need the money? If you need the money to cover an unforeseen expense then the choice is clear - you have to sell your position. This is the easiest decision for selling your stock.
2. Have the latest quarterly results been in line with expectations? After the announcement of the latest quarterly results, does the stock still meet your original investment criteria? If so, hold it. If not sell it and re-invest the proceeds in the next best available opportunity. 
3. Has there been a recent event that makes a material impact on the business? Has the company admitted publicly to accounting fraud? Has any promoter of the company got involved in scandal that affects the company’s image and its brand? These types of material events are rare but they still occur once in a while. As an investor, when you don’t know the extent of the unknown, it is best to exit your position if you can. Bad news is highly viral and can depreciate the stock’s value so quickly that you may not be in a position to sell your holding at all, because of lack of buyers.
4. Are there better opportunities out there? The business world is a competitive place. Existing businesses who are leaders in their space have to fight hard every day to retain their place. Despite this other upstart businesses are born everyday who either challenge the leaders in existing categories or establish a whole new category altogether. Smart Investors should always be on the lookout for such upstarts and invest in them when they are still affordable, at the cost of selling some of their current holdings. 

What to Do?

One thing is clear – in today’s day and age long term investors cannot afford to buy and hold any more. This strategy does not work very well in the Internet age any more, where upstart businesses challenge existing leaders every day. What is required instead is periodic monitoring of your portfolio and constant scouting for better opportunities. If you have the time, inclination and aptitude for doing this on your own, by all means go ahead take the challenge and prepare yourself to do this task on your own. If not, consider engaging the services of a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) who can perform this activity on your behalf.

2017 - Letter to Clients

2017 has been a good year for Indian long term investors. The Nifty started the year at 8179 and ended it at 10,531, recording an impressive annual gain of 28.8% in the process. Equity remained the preferred asset class for investors this year, partly due to the continuing subdued mood in the real estate and bullion markets. 2017 has also been an impressive year for me and for all our Clients at Attainix Consulting. The average annual return of client portfolios under our advice clocked in at 53.6% this year. This is almost twice as much as the benchmark itself and is admirable by any yardstick. More importantly, all our client advised portfolios beat the benchmark Nifty by a significant margin. This is a matter of immense satisfaction for me, because it implies that our stock picking methodology generated healthy alpha (excess return above and beyond the benchmark) for the benefit of all our Clients, justifying our advisory fees! Further, it endorses our investment thesis that businesses with high degree of knowledge assets will always outperform the competition and continue to find favor with investors. The fact that we are the first and only firm that has quantified this investment thesis into programming logic that enables us to pick stocks free of human bias, only gives us an added edge!.

Which begs the question - what is the basis for our investment thesis anyway? Why do we believe in businesses with high Knowledge assets? And what are Knowledge assets? Why do businesses with high degree of Knowledge assets

have a competitive advantage in the marketplace? We will have to go back in time to answer these questions. Take a look at the graphic alongside. It shows that for the longest time in our history and until the turn of the last century agriculture was the main source of income for a majority of the population. Scale was achieved during this era simply by expanding into additional land. But land is a limited commodity and businesses had to find a way to get more from the land under their control. The invention of the steam engine and electricity enabled this need, ushering in the Industrial era. This era led to the creation of scale enabling businesses that achieved scale simply by replacing human and animal labor with machines. In this era the focus shifted from the production of agricultural produce to industrial products. This era lasted for the next 150 years or so which is when the Information era kicked in, with the invention of the computer. Just as machines in the Industrial era fastened the production of goods, computers in the Information era hastened the processing of Information. Thus in this era the focus shifted from the production of industrial goods to the processing of Information. Those businesses that could process Information quickly, efficiently and continuously were able to convert this information into Knowledge. And Knowledge is Power. This Knowledge gave such businesses a leg up over their rivals. It also gave them pricing power and enhanced their profitability beyond bounds. But it also attracted competitors who tried to replicate this process. Businesses that are able to encapsulate and institutionalize their information processing and knowledge generation process and shield it from their competitors have effectively developed an asset, which we classify as a Knowledge asset. Knowledge assets are intangible in nature – they are formed from a fluid combination of human knowledge and skills, business processes, databases, brands and supplier/customer relationships. Such is their beauty that Knowledge assets are hard to develop, maintain and replicate, but their impact is eminently visible and measurable! 

Having understood the nature of Knowledge assets, the only question left now is how do we discover such assets? That is where our icTracker software comes in – it calculates and reports the Knowledge assets (a.k.a. Intellectual Capital) of leading Indian and US businesses continuously. It provides us the basis for our simple three step stock picking process which, although described on our website, is worth repeating here.

STEP 1 – EVA check: We start by first checking whether the business is generating more money than its cost of capital. This is done by calculating the EVA (Economic Value Added) of the business. Ideally, we want to select businesses that have a positive EVA. The rationale for this check is that if the business is not able to generate at the least even its cost of capital, then it is actually eroding shareholder value. Alternately, if the business is generating more than its cost of capital, it will be in a position to fund its future expansion from internal resources, which will further decrease its cost of capital. Note that, this check will eliminate startup and fledgling businesses by design. It does not mean that such businesses are not good investments. It only means that these businesses have to prove their business model before they can be considered worthy of investing for retail investors.

STEP 2 – Knowledge assets check: This is the asset quality test. Here, we check whether the business is generating profits from traditional assets (such as land, building, machinery, cash) or from Knowledge assets. We look for businesses that have at least 50% of their total assets in the form of Knowledge assets. The rationale for this check is our belief that businesses that are generating profits from traditional assets will come under competitive pressure sooner or later, simply because such assets are not defensible. Anyone with sufficient cash can buy land and machinery. Knowledge assets on the other hand take years to build and develop and once in place, they provide sustainable competitive advantage to the business. In other words, such businesses develop a moat, which is difficult to surmount.

STEP 3 – Affordability check: In the above two steps, we have shortlisted businesses that are generating value through the use of Knowledge assets. As investors, these are highly desirable businesses because in all probability they will continue to generate sustainable profits for years to come. All that remains to do now is to find whether the stock underlying the business is affordable. For that we compare the market value of the stock to the intrinsic value of the business. Those stocks that have a low ratio of market value to intrinsic value are the ones that have not yet been recognized by the stock markets and hence worthy of our attention as investors.

This simple three step stock pricking process has not only proved its mettle during our back-testing but also provided above-benchmark returns to real Clients. Our icAdvisor service uses this exact stock picking process. In addition, when designing Client portfolios using the icAdvisor service we strive to reduce risk for our Clients by the following three actions: 

• Taking risk profile of the Client into consideration. This ensures that the stocks that we recommend match the risk taking ability of our Client. For instance, a Client who has low risk appetite and interested primarily in capital preservation will benefit from investing in established mature businesses that have a high dividend yield than from investing in emerging smaller sized businesses, which are considerably riskier.
• Selecting stocks from different sectors. This ensures that we do not put all our eggs in one basket. Rather, we divest the portfolio into multiple sectors, picking no more than one or two stocks from each sector. Sectoral impact on the portfolio, if any, is thus limited to the specific stock.
• Striving to build a perfectly diversified portfolio. All our Client portfolios are designed at the efficient frontier – it means that the quantum of each stock in the portfolio is such that it has minimum correlation with any other stock in the portfolio. This gives each stock the chance to perform independently of each other in the portfolio.

Despite all the above steps, sometimes one or two stocks in the portfolio fail to perform due to the vagaries of the market. This is the reason why we provide a free rebalance option in our icAdvisor service. Many of our Clients opted for the free rebalance this year and saw the benefit of doing so. Others chose to skip it because of satisfactory performance of their portfolios. Remember, even though the rebalance is free from our side, there is still a cost that you have to incur in terms of brokerage fees, transaction fees and government taxes.

In passing, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for putting your faith in our investment thesis and in our icAdvisor service for generating above average returns for your hard earned money. Your continued trust makes us stay committed to the vision encapsulated in our tagline – ‘Growth through Knowledge’. I believe that we can grow only when you see value in our service and growth in your own portfolios. I am available to address client queries at all times and am approachable via email or whatsapp. I am also open to feedback and suggestions and welcome you to provide the same. I also hope that if you have benefitted from our service, you will spread the word to your own friends, family and colleagues and have them share the benefit as well. 

Finally, let me wish you and your family a very happy and prosperous Happy New Year and hope that the relationship that we have built this year will continue to grow for many years to come!

Abhijit Talukdar
Founder, Attainix Consulting
SEBI Registered Investment Adviser