Moats & Floats: Info Edge (India) Ltd.

Disclaimer: This blogpost draws heavily from the teachings of Prof. Sanjay Bakshi, Warren Buffett and Pat Dorsey.

There are a lot of ways to make money in the stock markets. You can scan the stocks on frequent basis and try to find any anomalies between market pricing and perceived intrinsic value of the company. Then you bet on closing of this gap.

There is another way. A better way, but the one that requires more hard work. In this method, you avoid looking at the markets at first place. You see, if you pick a company by scanning from day’s winners or losers list, your valuation would be colored. This is what is known as Anchor Bias and it will have an adverse effect on your judgement skills. So, you pick a company – a random pick. You go to the website and download last 10 years of annual reports and start going through them one by one.

You don’t have to read all these annual reports cover to cover, you can pretty much focus on just Chairman’s letter and MD&A (a tip I got from Jana’s awesome blog Seeking Wisdom).

The rationale behind going through earlier annual reports is that you should view the business as an unfolding movie, not a still photograph. Also, you want to know how they arrived at their current position in the market today and whether management is aggressive or conservative and delivers on its promises.

The Outlook for Global Growth in 2015

Hat Tip: McKinsey & Company

Oil As A Weapon

Hat Tip: The Big Picture

World Order - History of last 2000 years

An Annotated History Of Oil Prices Since 1861

Hat Tip: Business Insider, Goldman Sachs

Opec States Scramble to Avoid Debt Default

To cut production to maintain oil prices required to balance budgets OR wait till the lower oil prices takes out marginally expensive shale production (in some fields), OPEC is on a slippery slope here.

Hat Tip: The Big Picture

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