Is it time to buy or sell?

As the “Reliance” euphoria and chinese whispers have been discounted by the markets, the markets find themselves clueless just before the triple witching day. Media reports on RIL’s entry in shale gas, E-GoM meet on June 24, 2010 are some positive signals but still needs to be transformed into reality.

Thankfully there is no bad news from europe but the euro-zone crisis is far from over. But, adding to the woes, any bad set of numbers from U.S front (this time U.S housing data) spoils the mood globally.

Also, we have the Q1 results lined up and the market pundits will be eagerly waiting to analyze results of select blue-chips stocks which may augur a certain direction to the markets.

Amidst all this, we cannot forget one most important factor for the Indian Economy, Monsoon. Though the monsoon express is on time but it’s yet to be seen whether it performs well on a pan-india basis and give boost to the agriculture , which has been continuously underperforming in terms of it’s contribution to GDP and an outperformer in terms of it’s contribution to inflation.

I think this is the right to rebalance the portfolio, a partial profit booking always advisable during any bull phase. Also, this is the right time to identify the duds in portfolio and get rid of them.

The simple theory always works : Buy the dips, sell the rallies.

Unity always prevails

Euphemism on the indian bourses continue as the “Reliance” stocks continue to move northwards. The scrapping of the non-compete agreement, withdrawal of defamation suit, finding new synergies, suddenly the world has changed in the Ambani camp. More so, these are cheerful times of Reliance shareholders as they continue to make moolah.

Analysts and investors are suddenly looking for growth drivers in Reliance camp and how they intend to harness this new found freedom. This is the emotional attachment and blind faith of an Indian shareholder with the name “Reliance”.

Mukesh Ambani, as perceived by lot of market experts is the winner of the family feud and Anil, a clear looser. Perhaps, the Ambani siblings can look back over the last 5 years and analyze what they have achieved in the personal capacities and whether they could have achieved much more in unison?

A classical illustration of family in-fighting over parental estate and in the process ruining the father’s legacy who build this empire starting from scratch. This one transformed in a bigger battle field as they tried in whatever manner they can, to allure more shareholders in their camp .Ultimately, resorting to appeasement, they suddenly are finding new synergies with every passing day.

“United we stand, divided we fall”

It's a learning curve

I visited Indore Zoo last weekend with my 16 month old daughter after a huge gap of almost a decade. As we reached near the main gate of the zoo, we saw a huge crowd. Some were buying entrance tickets, while others were gossiping and chatting.

We entered the zoo after paying a meager entrance fee of Rs. 5/- and initiated a leisurely stroll following hoards of people. At the outset, we came across cages of birds like emu, peacock and then came the relatively bigger species like blackbuck, deer. Suddenly you feel that you have entered a different world or colony altogether but when you see human species around, the illusion breaks then and there.

We stopped walking and looked at the cage that was roughly 20 meters away from us and saw a leopard pacing to and fro in the cage almost alone in his own world. My daughter got excited after seeing a scale-up version of what she is accustomed to see in our home (our pet dog). She waved her hand in excitement and signaled the big cat to come nearby, a visible friendship invitation.

On the contrary, there were people busy in making their presence felt by pelting small stones and twigs

at the leopard cage. Perhaps, the explicit expression of human nature that we are superior or may be the "Return on Investment" factor .Each and every person utilized their own means to distract the leopard and forced him to come out of his own world. This continued till the time when a person from zoo authority opposed the act and threatened to employ a coercive action.

We continued our stroll to have a glimpse of other wild species like elephants, alligators, crocodiles. Finally, we had a glimpse of tigers and were bit unfortunate like some others as they opted to take rest in a covered area at same point of time. Some people left the place in disappointment while some others; firm believers of human centrism tried every possible means to break the sound sleep of tigers until they saw the zoo authority guy around.

We retraced back to the entrance after the wonderful experience. Even more, it was quite an adventure for my daughter as she made some new non-human friends over there and had an awesome time.

On the way back, time and again I was thinking of the incidents mentioned in the aforesaid lines.

Perhaps it is the reflection of the thought process of human species and reason why humanity dominates and sees the need to continuously "develop" most of the Earth. It is a well-known fact that we are responsible for the ecological crisis and the extinctions of many non-human species .If this goes on, we may be responsible for more such extinction events.

It's a learning curve and hope we learn from our past sins.