The SOIC Podcast

“Equity mutual funds are the perfect solution for people who want to own stocks without doing their own research.” —Peter Lynch

Hi Investors! We hope you are compounding everyday. 2022 was a challenging year for stock markets, however, those who prepare while the going is good, generally have a better time while the tide is against as well. This episode brings you a way to strategise your Mutual Fund portfolios in 2023 with Top 5 Mutual Funds. This episode is divided in 2 sections.  What not to do in 2023? What you must do in 2023?  This episode aims to enable you to do better tax planning as well. 

“Be a free thinker and don’t accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in.” –Aristotle

You must have observed that the stock market keeps getting spooked every now and then. Recent report by Hindenburg Research has led to a steep fall in Adani Group shares and with it many rumours and fears are taking the broader markets down as well.

As small retail investors with a long term horizon, we can’t get in and out of the markets at each drop of the hat. We need to be prepared emotionally and financially to take such shocks in our stride and study the events unfolding with a clear and objective mind.

We’ll discuss the contents of Hindenburg Report, Adani Groups reply and most importantly, what impact this can have on the stock markets and banks in India. Every investor should have basic knowledge of accounts like financial ratios, balance sheet, cash flow, etc. 

We wish you great success and hope this episode helps give a sense of how an independent investor should think.

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.” —Warren Buffett

Stock markets can be crazy sometimes—well most of the time. 😆 From the euphoria after the COVID crash till Oct '21 and ensuing sideways pain from then on has left many pondering if they should stick around or go packing.

I, on the other hand, believe that such markets are a perfect opportunity to study stocks and different industries. Those who work hard in difficult times often come out victorious when the tide turns in their favour.

We’ll discuss 4 Interesting Stocks which are definitely worth your time; where these businesses are standing and how the future can unfold as per the opportunities available. An international business with ~57% PAT Margins is also featured.

We hope to keep adding value to your investing journey.

Happy learning!

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt  

In 2021, China imported oil worth $257 billion and at the same time they imported semiconductors worth $380 billion. Semiconductors are like the little brains behind almost everything we have working in our offices, houses, road, military and any other place you can think of.  There is a race among countries all over the world to be self-sufficient when it comes to manufacturing semiconductors. However, this is not an easy task. This is creating some major shifts in the way the world has been working.  We will cover some major impacts of this Semiconductor Politics on various stocks and themes. Our purpose is to keep you posted and armed with the knowledge that’s useful for your investing journey. This is the first episode in a new series: Macroeconomics 2.0 

The topic which we will focus on is Major Shifts in Supply Chains across the World with Reshoring, Nearshoring & Friendshoring.  

We hope you enjoy this series on Macroeconomics 2.0 

“Value Investing is all about your ability to delay instant gratification.”—Parag Parikh

PPFAS Mutual Fund, a name synonymous with the Art of Value Investing, has been under the lens of many skeptics due to the underperformance of the year gone by.

To get a better understanding of the investing process and philosophy of the Fund Managers at PPFAS, this episode will cover the analysis into their History, Fund Manager's Profiles, Performance, Portfolio Strategy, and Pros & Cons.

“We’re right 50.75% of the time…but we’re 100% right 50.75% of the time. You can make billions that way.” —Gregory Zuckerman

India is witnessing a massive inflow of funds into mutual funds. The SIPs are fast becoming a habit among the working population of the country. It was about time we analysed a Mutual Fund house at SOIC.

We try to give you information that is deeper and adds a lot of value to your understanding of the subject. This episode gives a detailed analysis of Quant Mutual Fund. They have delivered a staggering 38% CAGR returns in their flagship scheme—Quant Active Fund over a 3 year period. Other schemes like Quant Small Cap Fund have aced 53% CAGR in 3 years. Such numbers are unheard in mutual fund schemes or anywhere else in investing.

We will look at how Quant came into existence, what is Quant Investing, its outperformance over benchmarks, pros & cons of Quant strategy and a special value add feature—Think like a Mutual Fund Manager. Investing in a mutual fund scheme is like investing in the fund manager’s philosophy. We urge you to listen to the complete episode and don't make up your mind by these unbelievable numbers. 

“If you can’t explain to a ten-year-old why you own a stock, you shouldn’t own it.” —Peter Lynch

We can often observe that most difficult subjects and concepts when broken down into parts can be easily understood. Similarly, when we are dealing with businesses that have too many moving parts and there is so much to track, it gets difficult for small investors to stay updated. Many lose track and end up paying a huge price for that. However, once we break it down to small parts it gets much easier to understand and track.  We are going to take up one such business—Jubilant Ingrevia Ltd. We are going to break down the episode into different parts like the Introduction, 3 Business Segments, Technical View, Valuations and Thesis-Antithesis. We'll also take a closer look at the historical margins of the business and where do we see them heading in the near future. We are going to be joined by Mr. Saurabh Kumar of Scientific Investing.

“During the Gold Rush, most would-be miners lost money, but people who sold them picks, shovels, tents and blue-jeans (Levi Strauss) made a nice profit.” —Peter Lynch

In 1849, a farmer saw a glittering substance in a river nearby in California, USA. He had found a small pebble of gold. This led to a frenzy all over the USA and people from all over the country started marching towards California. This was a mass movement of would-be gold miners, people with aspirations to find riches in rivers and waters in the form of Gold. However, a minuscule percentage of people actually found gold. Whereas, people who were supplying and selling picks, shovels, alcohol, tents & blue-jeans made far greater sums of money and became rich. The famous jeans maker from the USA, Levi Strauss was born in this California Gold Rush. The story is covered in detail in this episode. 

The legendary investor Mr. Peter Lynch coined the term Proxy Investing. It means investing in companies that are act as a proxy to the sectors or phenomenons in the limelight. He practised this style of investing often in his tenure as the lead fund manager at Fidelity.

We'll tell you all about proxy investing in the Indian context. We will take a closer look at various sectors that are being touted as the next big thing and what opportunities these sectors put forth for the businesses that may serve as a proxy to their success. Themes that we will cover are Recycling, Fluorination, Cables & Wires, Consumption (Retail), Infrastructure & Auto Ancs. 

Peter Lynch, the legendary investor in his famous book One Up on Wall Street, gave us his list of 6 types of stocks that is applicable universally. I will add 3 more to this list which will be helpful to categorise stocks in terms of the Indian Market.

Predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does.” –Warren Buffett

Dear Tribe Members, as we have discussed many times, “investing is an art and not science.” A thesis we may have built some weeks or months ago for a company may be undergoing changes. There could be changes for good and bad, however, it is very important to keep revisiting your thesis and confirming and verifying it through maintenance research. In this episode, we’ll revisit 3 such businesses we have talked about many times on our platform. Towards the end we’ll share 2 Bonus Ideas that seem very interesting to us and are definitely worth our time reading about them. In the future we will do a detailed business analysis about these two businesses as well.

One business about which we are sharing our maintenance research is SRF Ltd. We had made a detailed episode of >50 mins on SRF a few months ago. You can check that out as well on the SOIC Podcast channel. We’ll also discuss the changes and developments that seem very interesting in Narayana Hrudayalaya & Axis Bank. We have done a very interesting comparison between Axis Bank & ICICI Bank. Then finally towards the end we’ll tell you about 2 Businesses we are currently studying.

We hope to keep adding value to your investing journey.