COAL INDIA: I HOPE SOMEONE IS WATCHING

Coal India futures are outperforming the stock by 4% and today is not even ex-date. So what really happened here?

The essence of the situation lies in the special situation rule that exchanges have in treating futures and options contract. Normally the stock is adjusted for dividend in cash market but the same adjustment is not carried out in futures and hence, in earnings season, some of the index stocks tend to go into discount as they factor in the dividend impact. However, if the dividend is more than 10% of the market price, this falls into special category and even the futures prices are adjusted to reflect that.

What this means in simple terms is that come the ex-date, Coal India future price will also be deducted by 29 Rupees to arrive at previous day’s price. If you shorted Coal India and hence on ex-date you see the price lower by 29 Rupees, don’t cheer it – you are not getting this money.

The case of Coal India was curious. By late afternoon the gap between spot and futures was over 20 points but by the time the trade wound up the discount had narrowed to 12 points. So clearly, there was some big buying in Coal India futures before the markets closed yesterday. Were some of these market participants sure of an over 10% dividend? And if you had bought the future yesterday, you would be sitting on a gain of nearly 40-50% on your margin money given the big move in future.

What makes it even more interesting is the dividend component. A dividend of Rs 29 is 10.03% of the market price of Coal India. Even 10 paise lower and the dividend would have been less than 10% and miraculously, the discount would have widened again today to nearly 28 Rupees instead of converging with future price.

So really, should a 10% move on future price be dependent on a differential of 10-50 paise in dividend? And what would have been the reaction if this was a private company? These are some important questions. May be time has come for the exchange to do away with this special situation rule being applied only if the dividend exceeds a certain percentage. Let them do it for all dividends. It will take away some fun on stock futures trading but it will make the process a lot more transparent. 

SINTEX –WHO IS REALLY BUYING?

Sintex stock is up 72% this month and what is truly amazing is that the stock has started to rally right after 30^th September, which is end of the quarter. So what exactly happened in Q2 and what has happened since?

I am just looking at the recent shareholding pattern changes. In quarter ending September 30^th, FIIs hold 3.7 crore shares or 11.82% of equity, which is remarkably lower than 7.8 crore shares or 24.8% of equity they held at the end of June quarter. And what really amazes me is that this was not bought by either mutual funds or other domestic financial institutions whose total shareholding is almost flat between quarters. And the promoter shareholding didn’t change as well – so who really bought?

The non-promoter, non-institution shareholding is up sharply to over 40% vs little over 27%. In fact individuals now own 8.3 crore shares vs 5.5 crore shares. But what is really perplexing is the category called “Bodies corporate” – Their shareholding is up to 4 crore shares vs 2.8 crore shares. That’s a jump from 8.9% to 12.9%.

Who are these corporate bodies and individuals? None of them holds over 1% stake and hence it’s not shown in the breakup of shareholding pattern, but if the grapevine is to be believed, we have seen a lot of smart/informed buying by certain blue blooded investors (Also, this at times has been disguised promoter buying but we cannot infer that in every case)

By the way, promoters also bought 25 lakh shares between October 17 and 18 and they made a proper disclosure to that effect. From those levels, the stock is up 50%!!!

Now Q2 numbers looked good for Sintex, but the balance sheet is still in a mess. In fact from the same shareholding pattern, you see Bank Of Newyork holding 10.2 cr shares as a trustee for $140 m FCCB due in 2017. Now 10.2 crore shares are worth 350 crores and $140 m FCCB amount to Rs 870 crores. So there is still a lot of risk that this company is carrying.

What to do now with the stock? Well, if you managed to get in early, there is no harm in booking say 35-40% of your holding which might cover your entire costs and make some money as well and ride the rest with a strict trailing stop loss. But if you have missed the bus, wait for the next bus – don’t try to catch this one.

Note: This article was first published on moneycontrol.com

ASIAN PAINTS - HOW EVERYONE GOT IT WRONG

ASIAN PAINTS - HOW EVERYONE GOT IT WRONG

I love how people can be in denial despite their call going horribly wrong. One of the leading brokerages downgraded Asian Paints on October 14, cutting the target from Rs 505 to Rs 405, and since the brokerage is a real blue blooded one, the stock fell from Rs 485 to Rs 470 – the analyst must have felt a million dollars, but wait, within 3 days, the stock is back to 485 and on 5^th day, the stock hits a lifetime high of 530 Rupees after spectacular number.

The brokerage also had a research tactical idea of the stock underperforming which was closed today. All they say in closing the note is this – “This Research Tactical Idea is closed because the stock price has moved contrary to our expectations. Effective immediately, the Tactical Idea published on Asian Paints (ASPN.NS) on October 14, 2013 has been discontinued and should no longer be relied upon”

Now my problem is not that an analyst call has gone wrong. My problem is the resistance the analyst community has to eat their words and admitting that they got it wrong. I have seen 5 brokerage reports this morning and none of them has a buy on the stock, It’s a consensus Sell/Underperform/Underweight.

To all these analysts – I have just a one line response– the stock is up 8% this week, 13% this month and 20% this year. Oh, and the stock is up over 100% since the start of 2012.

Now of course, the key is what to do with this stock going forward. At 30-35x on eyear forward earnings, this is one of the most expensive stocks. But then, when has that stopped a stock from moving higher? If that was the case, Jubilant Foodworks would have never had the rally it had – HUL would have topped out at 450 or 500. Why are investors willing to pay this kind of premium?

The answer lies in the factor that we sometimes ignore; the growth factor. The company has seen double digit volume growth in a seasonally weak quarter. Over the last many years, the company has grown its topline and bottomline in double digits and the stock has been one of the most consistent performers over a 20 year period. In fact if you were to just take FY16 into account, the stock would be available at around 25x earnings, still expensive but then at least you have visibility and certainty of earnings.

Bottomline, the stock may well correct 10% if the market gets into further risk on mood and we see a shift from defensives to high beta. But as of now there is no evidence to believe that the stock will change its texture of being a consistent long term outperformer

WHAT IS THE STREET PRICING IN FOR ONGC?

The ONGC stock has been in focus all through this year. In fact this is the only PSU oil stock worth any significant weight on the index. It’s a pity that this stock has been suffering from whims and fancies of Government in an election year.

Let’s just take a look at what is going on. India’s FY13 oil subsidy burden was Rs 1.6 lakh crores. The Government paid Rs 1 lakh crores out of that and made upstream companies pay the balance Rs 60,000 cr. This roughly works out to 62% for Govt and 38% for upstream, which has been stable for 2-3 years. Out of this, of course ONGC paid the lion’s share of over 80%.

FY14 started on a great note. Global crude price started to soften and the government introduced a monthly price hike of 50 paise per litre on diesel. The combined effect was a projection of only Rs 80,000 crore as under-recovery for FY14 – a straight cut of 50%. However, just when things looked sanguine, came the unknown devil of sharp Rupee depreciation.

A sharp depreciation from Rs 55/$ to around Rs 65/$, along with 10-15% surge in crude prices from lows meant that the under-recovery projection is now back to Rs 1.6 lakh crores. If the Govt bites the bullet and hikes diesel prices by Rs 5/l in one go, this can come down to Rs 1.25 lakh croes, however that diesel price hike is now looking a distant reality.

So where does ONGC stand amidst all this drama? As I wrote, when the year started with an under-recovery projection of Rs 80,000 crores, the street applied the formula of 38% and assumed that the upstream contribution will be down to Rs 30,000 crores. However, it missed the risk that the Government will want to take the benefit of its move on diesel and fall in crude prices. Slowly but surely, street began to realize that there is a risk of upstream still ending up paying Rs 60,000 cr as the ‘worst case scenario’.

However, now even this Rs 60,000 cr burden actually looks ‘best case scenario’ for upstream instead of being ‘worst case scenario’. There is a good chance that the Government makes upstream pay more than they did last year citing the fact that upstream gains significantly due to Rupee depreciation and at some stage needs to pass on some benefit to the Government.

The ONGC stock was comfortable above 300 when FY14 started, even hitting a high of 355 – but since then it’s been a downward journey and we have seen a correction of 22% from the highs. To be fair the stock is still YTD positive and that’s because the street believes that while there may be near-term concerns, the sheer value in stock may start to reflect once elections are out of way.

Disclaimer: The author of this article does not invest/trade in stock markets including derivatives. His only exposure to stock markets is via the stock options given to him by his employers as part of his compensation. All views expressed in this blog are my personal views and my channel does not subscribe to the same

BULLS BEWARE, BEARS HAVE THE KNIVES OUT

Thursday should reaffirm the extent of the bear market India is going through. I know a lot of people would think I looked at some other screen since the Sensex was up 400 points and the Nifty rallied 100 points. But to me the internals matter – and the internal that stood out yesterday was FIIs selling Rs 1278 cr in cash markets. This is more selling than they have done on really bad days.

I raised this point yesterday during my show on CNBC-TV18, before this data was out – if you are a bull you don’t want to see FII net sell figure on a day like yesterday, and that’s precisely what happened. So essentially, in a shallow market, the FIIs are now selling on any good day, and yesterday was as good a day as any with so many large caps rising 4-5% or more in certain cases.

Refer to my last post where I spoke of the market mayhem and raised the possibility of FIIs selling in the last remaining safe bastions. That’s starting to happen – so far FIIs have been protected with their investments in IT, Pharma and to a certain degree some FMCG names, but the currency is fast eating whatever limited gains they have made. And this is in a relative world, where the US markets are trading pretty close to all time highs and investors have options to park their money somewhere else.

Now, next week assumes extreme significance. The bears are in firm control and they have so much ammunition at their hand that any rallies like yesterday would give them fodder to feed on, in this case bull’s meat to feed on. Also, look at the options data in non conventional way – the way deep out of money August Puts have added Open Interest, yesterday clearly looks like another bear trap.

I know the market is deeply oversold and almost everyone is bearish and normally that’s the signal of the bottom. But the last stage of bottom formation is always the most painful and results in most wealth erosion for bulls. That may just be around the corner.

Disclaimer: The author of this article does not invest/trade in stock markets including derivatives. His only exposure to stock markets is via the stock options given to him by his employers as part of his compensation. All views expressed in this blog are my personal views and my channel does not subscribe to the same.

MAKING SENSE OF MARKET MAYHEM

So finally the market is capitulating. But what really is happening out there? Who is selling and what should the market be weary of?

The internal that would worry me the most is that FIIs have actually invested $12.7 bn in cash markets this year. And the Nifty is down 8% despite that. In fact the Dollar Nifty is down 16% year to date. Where exactly has this money gone and what happens if even 10% of this money has to go out?

Well let’s look at the Nifty internals. You would be amazed that only 8 Nifty stocks are in the green this year, but those who are have actually been money spinners. For example, at number 8 is ITC with 9% gains, HUL is up 12%, Dr Reddy’s 17%, Lupin 28%, Infosys 30%, Sun Pharma and TCS are up 40% and the biggest of them, HCL Tech is up over 50%

On the other end of spectrum, the 42 Nifty stocks that have fallen – 33 of them have fallen more than 10% - within that 15 have actually fallen over 30%, 7 over 40%, 2 over 50% and a poor soul by the name of JP Associates nearly 70%. And I am not going into the Nifty Junior and midcaps because you know what’s coming there.

So with some of the erstwhile FII favourites likes SBI, BoB, L&T, ICICI Bank decimated, the key concern should now be what happens to the likes of IT stocks and the pharma stocks. And if that has to happen, will it finally lead to an FII exodus. Keep in mind, even if this market was flat, an FII would have seen 8% erosion purely because of currency.

The other angle that’s scaring me is the absolute low levels of cash market volumes and hence the depth of the market. 96% turnover is being generated in the derivative market with lion’s shares coming out of Index options, which has become a gambler’s den. Even if someone has to sell $10 m of stocks, that would lead to big price damage. Factor this, on Friday, FIIs sold less than $100 m in cash markets, DIIs more than bought that and still the Sensex ended with near 800 point collapse.

And while the consensus is that this market is only headed down, that has been the consensus for some time now. And when a consensus trade is so right, sometimes the bravado of approaching the market with contra views an be painful, unless of course you have deep pockets and a really long term view. Somehow the internals of the market and most importantly the ticker is telling us that there is more to come.

Disclaimer: The author of this article does not invest/trade in stock markets including derivatives. His only exposure to stock markets is via the stock options given to him by his employers as part of his compensation. All views expressed in this blog are my personal views and my channel does not subscribe to the same.

WANT TO BE A GOOD TRADER ALONG WITH INVESTOR? LEARN FROM LIC

Intriguing headline right? LIC, the biggest institutional investor of Indian equities a savvy trader? Well that ladies and gentlemen is the fact and the institution has proved it so right with the biggest of blue chips – Infosys and this despite remaining essentially a large long-term shareholder. So what am I saying?

Let’s take a look at LIC’s investments in Infosys over the last 3 quarters and try to see what it is up to.

At the end of December 2012 quarter, LIC held 4.16 cr shares of Infosys representing 7.2% stake. By the end of March quarter, this was down to 3.42 cr shares representing 5.96% stake and in the just released June-ending quarter, its gone back up to 3.86 cr shares representing 6.72% stake. What’s the big deal you would ask?

The big deal is that by cutting its stake LIC part protected itself from that ill fated 22% fall Infosys had after Q4 results and by buying after that fall, it managed to participate in the rally that followed, especially the 10% thumbs up stock got after Q1 results. Let’s try to put some numbers here.

LIC sold 74 lakh shares between December to March. Stock moved between Rs 2700-2900 during that period– so let’s assume an average price of Rs 2,800 for that period. After Q4 numbers, stock collapsed to Rs 2,300. And with an average price of Rs 2,200-2,400 for the quarter, let’s take the average price of Rs 2,300 for the quarter in which LIC bought 44 lakh shares. And now of course, the stock is back to Rs 2,800

So just for those 44 lakh shares, LIC managed to sell at highs and buy at lows with a difference of Rs 500/share – that translates into Rs 220 cr of trading profit. Keep in mind LIC is a long term shareholder and would have paid no tax on the shares it sold and the shares it acquired last quarter for sure will again be held for long time.

Of course, LIC had its own compulsions last quarter as I had written here – it had to raise money for the plethora of PSU paper that hit the market, but let’s give credit where it’s due. It managed to play a counter consensus trade successfully for 2 straight quarters. And that’s the whole premise – even if you hold a share with a very long term horizon, sometimes a minor churn or tweaking in portfolios isn’t a bad idea