HVOS Shikshan and Rahat Sangh Election Chaos

To Halari Visa Oswal Samaj Election Organizing committee,

At the start I completely accept that organizing such a large scale event must have taken a lot of precious hours of a lot of important people, I appreciate all the hard work done in it.

It has nonetheless left a very sour taste in my mouth. So much so - that I have discussed and argued a lot yesterday with a lot of elected representatives and voters and am surprised with my findings and observations.

-> Why were there no "English" names in forms?

-> There were no instructions on how to vote. Why this is a problem will be clear in following points.

-> What was Age-education-profession of candidates? How do i make a decision on whom to vote for? Most females and younger generation folks dont know 264 people just by their name / town. More information (at the least Age-education-profession) should have been there in the ballot, online and elsewhere (including advertising pamphlets).

-> On the ballots, nowhere is it mentioned to limit votes till 130. I have put 132 (50% of 264 names on the ballot). I have been told my vote will be invalid. I have done Postgraduation and given many professional exams. I am not alone - there are 10s or 100s of such educated people (grads, postgrads) whose votes will be considered invalid in an election for education institution. Shocking!!!!!!!
Why will my vote be invalid? There should have been clear instruction on the ballot. And in english too.
If my (and many such) vote doesnt get counted, i want a written statement to that effect explaining the reason(s).

-> Nowhere was it written on how to vote. Meaning a tickmark or cross sign or YES / NO or Y / N or what sign. No votes should be disqualified because of such a reason.

-> I have been told by many folks that we cant allow such votes now because of constitution --- If this is a reply, please call me and I will explain why that is grossly unfair. Constitution is for the benefit of people. Does it mention in the constitution that in advertisements, we will talk of 130 people in 2 parties, totalling 260. but when you goto vote, you will see 264 names? Where was it written on ballot that one has to vote for 130 and not 132 or 100 or 200 people? Or bcos of tick vs cross.
Will a decision to invalidate votes stand in the court of law? Since there was no written info on ballot, I would think not.

-> How were the nominees chosen? When was this process done? We were not aware of it. Please spread this information as well for future elections.

-> It was very very clear during advertisements and when entering the samaj wadi that there are two groups. After the vote, i was told that is not the case. Grouping is only unofficial? If so, why were they spreading pamphlets and shouting to vote for one - within wadi premises?? Nowhere was it mentioned that I could vote for any of the 264 people irrespective of the group.
Which is why you will find most people have voted for Group A or Group B ---- if groups were unofficial, this is highly immoral by the groups and the samaj to make voters believe that there are groups and we should vote for the groups.

Sumeet Mohan Savla
Borivali - East, Mumbai

Gold - parabolic move in rupees?

I am still a novice investor (novice since my experience i.e. # of years in this field is < 3, but not due to my knowledge) and so please take everything I say with a pinch of salt.

Today, I got this email - which talked of Gold vs. silver and concluded that over the past months / years, gold has been a better investment / hedge and it concluded that gold would continue to do so.

I have no opinion about the debate between gold and silver.

(As a disclosure, I own lots of physical gold and some silver - mostly as part of family jewelery and little as investment. I am short some gold at the commodities exchange)

Please see the chart below:



I looked at this chart and I observed that this gold move is quite a parabolic move over 30 years.
Since I am a novice, I will highly appreciate readers' views on this.

About sentiment: in India, Gold has always been perceived as something of very high value. Something that is never sold - except in case of dire circumstances (like bankruptcies or last resort of financing).
As evident from the chart, throughout my generation (and before), gold's price in Indian rupees has always gone up in the long run. So, this has led to the belief that gold always goes up and never down. Also, when gold reached 15k-16k Rs. , I met a lot of gold bears ---- many of them sold out half or all of their family gold as well! But, i see noone nowadays who is doing that. Will keep hunting more for this. My jeweler kept calling me to sell gold at 18k Rs. But, now, at 19k, he doesnt!

Do note that after 1980 peak of gold in USD, gold price did fall a lot and took 25+ years to reach the same value. (ignoring inflation).

I am not so smart to predict such a long-term move for gold in INR.
But, I think even if this is not the peak for gold in INR, we are certainly closer to it than most people think. This could mean two things:
1) Price of gold actually peaks out in USD - My expectation is gold might have peaked for few weeks / months in USD; but may eventually go higher in USD.
2) INR appreciates big time and as a result, gold price in INR doesnt rise much from here or infact falls. I think this is a very very strong possibility considering that India is one of the few truly safe havens for investment money in world (sorry communists to my right (china) and sorry capitalists in US with socialist policies). 20-25% CAGR growth for so many companies (and much more than that in many instances), with 8-10% country GDP growth in a world where countries are worried about deflation / depression / double-dip recession / bla bla - is a wonderful place to invest in.
3) Both of the above.

Summary: in the long run, we are much closer the eventual gold top in INR than most people think - whether this is due to INR becoming much stronger or due to GOLD actually making a top in USD (or both), i cant say.

So, sell some gold ...

Cheers,
Sumeet Savla

PS Any help in getting me a better / bigger chart of gold in INR will be highly appreciated.

Correction over?

[Today, I am just writing my views without much data. Will improvise with data points to add to views going forward.]

Very very interesting times...
Clearly the street is divided - I think there are more bears actually.
We have had few panic like sessions (96% down A-D in stocks & up / down volumes). We have had few people recommend shorts evven after nifty fell by 500-600 points in a couple of weeks.
People (traders / analysts) are quite convinced that market will fall below 200 dma and go much below it.

So, i would say we bounce from here, and then go sideways till budget.
Post-budget, we will probably fall a little and then start a fresh uptrend from March.

The risk to this is with the huge rally in Dow today (assuming it lasts till close), we gap up tomorrow and there is a frenzy buying by retail again - saying that 'yay! we bounced from 200 dma and tok support there' and then we close lower than open tomorrow.
So, a lot depends on how bullish the sentiments turns to.
For the last 2-3 weeks, in economic times & moneycontrol, all questions asking about whether nifty will go below 4500 before budget (or similar questions) have had a 2:1 ratio in favor of downside. So, my view that we will bounce a lot.

Ofcourse, if we show a follow through day, and ideally a 2nd follow through day & strong leadership to confirm the 1st one, then the uptrend will be stronger and could lead to good upsides due to so many bears around.

Are we heading down soon?

Attached are 3 month daily chart of the 2 primary indices.



While Sensex did follow-through on 26th Nov, nifty (^NSEI) hasnt. And there are already 2-3 distribution days. There is no leadership either.
Also, I am counting day 1 of rally as Nov 21, although we didnt make a new low since Oct 27 - reason is we had 7 continuous down days and we had a new lower close in sensex, though not a lower low.
Some days - like today - NSEI ended marginally in red, while SENSEX ended marginally in green - but I am counting in both the indices this as a distribution day - since volume was much higher, so it seems to be more of churning going on.

Only 31 stocks (including 3 GOLD ETFs) out of 1300 stocks on NSE exchange satisfy the following property:

• They have relaive strength (calculated over the last 1 month *AND* over the last 6 months above 80.
• They closed above 50 day SMA. (In most of these cases, 150 / 200 SMA is above 50 SMA and in most cases, these SMA are moving downwards.)

Only yesterday 298 scripts out of 1230 scripts traded on NSE (24%) made a new 52-week low while only 1 made a new high. Today 166 scripts (13.5%) made new year lows, while 2 made a new high.

I am computing Marty Zweig indicator tool too (whether avg of advancing stocks ratio and up_volume is above 90% or below 10%).
Since October 1st, this number was below 10 on 4 occasions: 3.005 on 6th Oct, 6.23 on 10th Oct, 8.55 on 15th oct followed by 3.26 on 24th oct.
The only 90+ day was the shortened trading day of Diwali 28th Oct (trading was on for only 1 hour that day, so I am not counting that.)

Infact, we have NOT had a single >90 or <10>This will change at some point - I think it will change in the next 5-7 days and I think that would be on the downside since we have no leadership and no accumulation days. Distribution days however are adding on.

Meanwhile, US has logged on a weak-ish follow-through-day. Lets hope no distribution day shows up today or in the next week. Also note that the FTD in US came right after a 9% down day - and the volume was only 6-10% higher than previous day.

-Sumeet

US in recession for a year already!

Ya, as I had said to some of you in my private talks - that we will soon hear - after US elections - that USA has been in recession for a year. And now that information is officially out. Politics!!

On the same note - now that Chidamabaram is out of Finance Ministry in India, we may soon hear some revalations here too. Or we may have to wait all the way until a new government.

-SS

We had a weak follow through day and now a distribution day on Sensex

Sorry for not being regular and not updating the site for the past few months. Was caught on the wrong side in the July rally, but have made very good amends since then and I am now almost up YTD from April now (its really tough to be counting exactly!).
Anyways, back to my take on markets:
I didnt have a really strong view for the last 10-15 days. We overdid the rally from October lows by bouncing as much as 40%+ in 5-6 days on not so great volume. So, at that point, it was tempting everyone to short and then we overdid on the down side by falling for 7 days continuously. So, we have been range-bound for most of November.
Back to december, I still dont have a very clear view, but I will state some of my observations.
The original rally started from Oct 28. It gave a follow through day (FTD) on Nov 4th. The sad thing was a distribution day immediately followed the FTD and so the rally immediately became weak. Besides that, it had already come up 40%+ in 5-6 days.
On 14th november, the 3rd distribution day on nifty, i counted the market rally as over. Since then, we have neither gone up much nor down much.
A new rally started from 21st Nov. (Note that we didnt really break the previous Oct lows and so some people may say that the previous rally from Oct is still on.) It has NOT YET given a FTD day. Counting the 1st day and until now, we have had 1 accumulation and 1 distribution day - clearly no trend whatsoever on low volumes.
On the Sensex however, we have had 1 FTD on 26 Nov 08 and so that makes it 2 accumulation days (including FTD) and 1 distribution day. However, the FTD only had 7% more volume than previous day.

This rally looks more likely to fail than succeed - but a clear direction can appear only on breaking 2500 on closing basis and in that case, there is a STRONG chance of going to my final targets for the indian markets - 1800-2000 range on NIFTY.

Few stocks have meanwhile looked strong, but not too strong yet: NTPC is one of them.
I have reshorted all original shorts about 10 days back and they are giving me minor profits at this time - we probably will have another 1-3 distribution days before we break 2500.

Based on analysis of previous bear markets, I believe we will make it to 3500-3700 range atleast once (maybe twice) in the next year (2009). But, we will not cross 3700-3730 in 2009, no matter what. Ofcourse the market view is so bearish that not a single person agrees with me that we will goto 3700.

DONT GO LONG yet. Market is too weak right now.

Mutual Funds: I reviewed many of them and they are all very well placed. High cash levels. Stay invested in the good funds. Continue SIP. In addition, I am planning to buy a bit extra below 2500 nifty (only mutual funds), and then average down with higher amounts to invest until 1600.

Futures: I hope to go long in nifty futures from 2000 and average down (pyramid) until 1600 (no SL) and will then hold for 3500-3700. Very risky, and it is indeed going to be very rewarding if it works.

US and India comparisons

US - World's earliest democracy. India - World's biggest democracy.
US - there is a housing reform bill. India - there is a banking/insurance reform bill
US - tax rebate package - to boost economy........ India - farmers relief
US - elections. India - elections
US - Fed not raising rates as expected........ India - RBI raising rates, but slower than expected / inflation rise.
US - real int rates -ve ... India - real int rates -ve
US - markets still not recuperating much... India - market is 20% up from the recent lows