Falling markets,rising Stars

Hello Friends,
I was listening to one of leading mutual fund managers last week and couldn't help myself laughing at his comments and worse he was on the panel to advise the investors how to invest in the stock markets, and I thought of sharing my views on this interesting scenario of falling markets and rising number of experts....
Lots of leading mutual funds raised money around December-January period this year. All of their prospectus and ads talked about how well the Indian economy is doing and there is a huge potential for growth. They claimed that all the investors should provide their money to "experts" who know it better where to invest it. And also the investors were encouraged to put this money through SIP(Sytematic Investment Plan) which means that an Investor shouldn't try to "time" the market but invest systematically to get better returns. All this was happenning when the Sensex was hovering around 21000 mark. So far so good...
Come June 2008.... Market crashed from January highs to around 15000 odd level. Mutual funds are sitting on a whopping amount of cash of approximately 20,000 crore and are not investing this money in the market. Their explanation is that market is now "Overvalued" and "Overheated". It is not safe investing the money now because share prices might further fall and then they will invest. Can you imagine the same "experts" who were singing growth stories when Sensex was at 21000 are now afraid to invest as suddenly market is overvalued at 15000!!
They advised the investors to go for SIPs because it isn't prudent to time the market and now they are refusing to invest in the good stocks at such low valuations because they think market might fall more and they will "time" it better by investing at that time.
Well one can only draw two conclusions out of the whole situation...
1. Either these so called "experts" are a bunch of fools whose judgements and statements change by the way market swings.
2. or they know the real situation(that the markets were overvalued at 21000+) and made fool of the investors by luring them with false claims.
I can only say that in either of the cases, it is the common investor whose hard earned money they are playing with. The market might have fallen but these experts have made good money for themselves. So next time you see an ad of mutual fund scheme, don't just blindly trust it because there's lot more than what meets the eyes!!
Happy Investing...

Games govt play....

The headlines today say that govt(read PM) is trying very hard to get the Nuclear Deal through despite of all the opposition of the Left parties and even Manmohan Singh has "threatened" to step down in case it doesn't go through. Well I thought this issue was in the as there wasn't much noise about it in the recent days,infact PM himself has said few days back that there are few "ironies" of life one has to live with. Now what possibly has happened over last few days that this thing has surfaced again.There are two things that have happened in the recent times which could have jolted the govt..

1. Congress has lost state election in few states which have gone to elections in last year or so.
2. Inflation is rising like never before in the recent weeks(latest figure that came out today is at 11.05% which is much higher than RBI limit of 5%). And needless to say common man is feeling the heat. The rising oil prices all over the world have made the matters worse.

Now we can probably understand the latest "concern" of PM about the nuclear deal. As this govt doesn't have anything meaningful to show to the Indian citizens(Elections are only 6 months away) so this seems like a last throw of dice. They want to show that power doesn't matter to them as much as nation's "welfare". Well this attempt is more out hope of than realty. You can't hide your face under a "cosmetic make up" for too long, as finally it will start coming down and I am afraid this has already happened with present govt. Now let's see how much "make up" they are left with. By the way there has been a huge campaign being run by govt cuerrently to show its "achievements" and the good work it has done over the last 5 year. I can't understand if you have done something nice for someone(common man) why you need to put it on a poster for him to know it? Well govt is "hoping" to come to power again this time by "advertising" their achievements. There was something called "India Shining" campaign that came 5 year's ago from BJP led govt. It couldn't convince the nation then. So what are the chances that UPA will come to power this time again. Well there's an old saying "History repeats itself..."