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Thursday, September 18, 2014

To do nothing

My grandfather once told me: Doing no business is a business decision.
Of course, later he admonished me for not investing more, or not selling out bits of my portfolio :)

Quite often, the intrinsic value of a company moves lesser than its market value.
Over the last few months, the Indian stock market has seen a ridiculous escalation in market prices of a lot of its listed companies.
In some cases, this was justified, and in other cases, I deem it pure speculation.

So, if a base case 25% RoE company moves from 8x PE to 30x PE over 2 years - what does one do?
A 5x-7x on a holding says nothing about how overpriced the company may be.
Furthermore, a strong moat evidenced by strong pricing power, strong staying power (balance sheet) and strong market position may justify a rich valuation.

Oddly enough, it may not justify a new investment in the same company based on the principle of margin of safety.

When companies are not priced compellingly well relative to its business strength - like the one foot fence that Buffett always talks about - it makes a lot of sense to do nothing and keep reading.

This is one such time period.

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