Stocks Worth Keeping Forever

Actual Question:

Which Indian stocks would you keep in your portfolio forever, starting from April 2017?

Answer:

Dear Friend

A very interesting and valuable question.

My guru, Warren Buffett repeats again and again that buying stocks is like buying the entire business. You don’t start and sell your own business with every movement in the price of the stock on the stock market. He also says that if a stock is not worth keeping for the lifetime, it should not have been bought in the first place.

Now let us address your question.

All the stocks listed in my academic portfolio, ‘Portfolio 2K15’ , except NTPC and SBI, are very good and worth keeping. Kindly note that for the past two years since starting this portfolio in February 2015, I have not sold a single share. However, my real darlings are:

1. NMDC Ltd.
2. Hindustan Zinc Ltd.
3. SJVN Ltd.
4. Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) Ltd.
5. Power Finance Corporation (PFC) Ltd.
6. Great Eastern Shipping Co. Ltd.

I think I will keep these stocks forever, unless something fundamentally alters the situation like change in ownership/ management, M&A , etc.

Related:

• Hold Outstanding Stocks Forever
• Buy Stocks to Hold for Very Long

In conclusion every stock in which we have made an investment should be worth keeping forever, but out of the 15 odd stocks of our Portfolio 2K15, six are certainly my darlings and they are worth keeping forever.

Thank you,

With Best Regards,

Anand

Can One Simply Invest in the Stocks Figuring in a Good Portfolio?

Investor sitting in a couch wondering whether he can buy stocks figuring in good portfolio

Actual Question:

Instead of investing through a mutual fund, why should I not directly invest in companies by looking at the portfolio of that particular mutual fund?

Answer:

Dear Friend!

Thank you, a very useful question indeed!

The answer is yes and no.

In an established portfolio you come to know of the shares in which the fund had invested but not the time and price at which the investments were actually made.

Let us take a practical example.

The ‘Portfolio 2K15’ is vale investor’s portfolio that contains about 15 best companies in India that were available at a reasonable price at one time. But now many of the shares are very expensive and should not be invested in today.

Please look at the table below which is shows the same best companies being rejected on the grounds of high valuations, namely ‘Price to Earnings (PE) Ratio’, ‘Price to Book Value (P2BV) Ratio’, a combination of both, and dividend yield:

Even though NMDC, MOIL, Hindsutan Zinc (HZL) and Vedanta are good stocks and find their place in ‘Portfolio 2K15’ today, in April 2017, they are expensive and hence not good for investing.

In conclusion one cannot simply identify the names of stocks included in a good portfolio and invest in them. Each of the stocks must be thoroughly investigated for their suitability in general and specifically whether they are available at a reasonable price.

Related article:

• Can an Investor Simply Pick the Top Held Stocks from a Mutual Fund Portfolio?

Thank you,

With Best Regards

Anand

What Stocks I invested in January 2017 and How I Selected Them

In this article I shall describe the stocks I have invested in yesterday for January 2017 and how I ended up selecting them. While the theme for investments in the last few months had been buying assets at a discount, this month the theme is “Balance”. The balance is between ‘Price to Book Value’, ‘Price to Earnings’ and the product of the first two. We are already familiar with the thresholds for these three parameters but still let us list them:

1. Price to Book Value (P2BV): Not more than 1.5
2. Price to Earnings (PE): Not more than 15
3. Product or combination of the above two ratios (P2BV*PE): Not more than 22.5

The stocks evaluated on the above criteria were all the 15 serious, individual shares figuring in our ‘Portfolio 2K15’, other than the exchange traded funds.

As there are three parameters or criteria, the investible sum had been determined as a multiple of three. It could have been Rs.900, 1800, 2100, 2700 and so on. I had selected Rs.21000. This figure suits many middle class wage-earning Indians. I allocated this sum of Rs.21000 equally among the three criteria at Rs.7000 each.

Kindly note that no efforts were either invested nor required for calculating the P2BV and PE Ratios of the stocks; they are readily available on many financial websites. I have taken the figures from “Economic Times”.

The three criteria are individually and independently applied to the said 15 stocks as follows:

Price to Book Value Ratio:

Criterion: P2BV; Threshold: ≤ 1.5	Max permitted	Current P2BV Ratios	Discount in P2BV	Weightage (% of individual scrip discount to total of positive discounts)	Allocation of Individual Investible Amount Rs. 7000 as per the weightage
1	NHPC	0.95	0.55	7.63%	534
2	PFC	0.45	1.05	14.56%	1019
3	REC	0.43	1.07	14.84%	1039
4	NMDC	1.77	-0.27
5	CAIRN	0.93	0.57	7.91%	553
6	SJVN	1.12	0.38	5.27%	369
7	Neyveli Lignite	0.89	0.61	8.46%	592
8	ONGC	0.93	0.57	7.91%	553
9	NALCO	1.32	0.18	2.50%	175
10	MOIL	1.84	-0.34
11	HZL	2.84	-1.34
12	OIL	1.22	0.28	3.88%	272
13	GE SHIP	0.68	0.82	11.37%	796
14	VEDANTA	1.44	0.06	0.83%	58
15	SCI	0.43	1.07	14.84%	1039
	Sum of Positive Discounts		7.21	100.00%	7000

A close examination of the above table reveals that those stocks that are not offering a positive discount in the P2BV (the positive number obtained from deducting the current P2BV from 1.5) are eliminated and their negative discounts excluded from counting the total discount of 7.21. The individual weightages are arrived at by dividing the individual discounts with the total of positive discounts, of 7.21. The investible sum set a part for the P2BV criterion of Rs.7000 has been allocated to each individual scrip based on this weightage.

In simple terms we have allocated maximum amount to the scrip offering maximum positive discount and least sum to the share offering the least discount.

Price to Earnings Ratio:

A similar exercise is carried out with the ‘Price to Earnings (PE) criterion and the results are as follows:

Criterion PE; Max permitted PE = 15	Scrip	Current PE	Discount in PE	Weightage	Allocation of Investible Amount Rs. 7000
1	NHPC	10.46	4.54	11.47%	803
2	PFC	5.08	9.92	25.07%	1755
3	REC	2.16	12.84	32.45%	2271
4	NMDC	15.79	-0.79	0	0
5	CAIRN	96.59	-81.59	0	0
6	SJVN	9.16	5.84	14.76%	1033
7	Neyveli Lignite	13.13	1.87	4.73%	331
8	ONGC	16.98	-1.98	-5.00%	0
9	NALCO	21.21	-6.21	0	0
10	MOIL	40.88	-25.88	0	0
11	HZL	15.39	-0.39	0	0
12	OIL	14.04	0.96	2.43%	170
13	GE SHIP	11.98	3.02	7.63%	534
14	VEDANTA	14.42	0.58	1.47%	103
15	SCI	33.82	-18.82	0	0
	Sum of Positive discounts		39.57	95.00%	7000

1. Again the stock trading at the lowest PE multiple and therefore offering the maximum discount to the maximum permitted PE multiple of 15 had got the maximum allocation of the investible sum.
2. For example REC with the lowest PE of 2.16 and maximum discount of 12.84 (15-2.16) got the maximum allocation of 32.45%; Vedanta with maximum PE multiple of 14.42 and the least discount of 0.58 ended up with the least allocation of 1.47%.
3. Those scrips trading above the maximum permitted PE Multiple of 15 got totally eliminated.
4. And finally some scrips got allocation under the criterion of P2BV did not get any allocation under this PE criterion – example CAIRN.

PE*P2BV Ratio:

Value Investing principles require that besides the above two criteria independently applied, the combined effect or the result of the above two criteria shall not exceed 22.5 (15*1.5 = 22.5). I applied this third condition, ascertained the discount (22.5 – actual PE*P2BV number), made the allocation based on the discount percentage and the results are as follows:

Criterion PE*P2BV; Max permitted  = 22.5	Scrip	Actual PE*P2BV Value	Discount	Weightage/ Discount %	Allocation of Investible Amount Rs. 7000
1	NHPC	9.937	12.563	11.07%	775
2	PFC	2.286	20.214	17.81%	1246
3	REC	0.9288	21.5712	19.00%	1330
4	NMDC	27.9483	-5.4483		0
5	CAIRN	89.8287	-67.3287		0
6	SJVN	10.2592	12.2408	10.78%	755
7	Neyveli Lignite	11.6857	10.8143	9.53%	667
8	ONGC	15.7914	6.7086	5.91%	414
9	NALCO	27.9972	-5.4972		0
10	MOIL	75.2192	-52.7192		0
11	HZL	43.7076	-21.2076		0
12	OIL	17.1288	5.3712	4.73%	331
13	GE SHIP	8.1464	14.3536	12.64%	885
14	VEDANTA	20.7648	1.7352	1.53%	107
15	SCI	14.5426	7.9574	7.01%	491
	Sum of Positive Discounts		113.5293	100%	7000

Sum of the three allocations:

Having completed the assessments based on the three criteria as above, we now sum-up the three amounts allocated for each scrip. Next the number of shares that can be bought is ascertained by dividing the allocated sum by the current market price of the share. Once this quantity was available I just placed the order online and bought the shares as follows:



Conclusion:

In the end I had allocated an investible sum for investment in the month of January 2017 and it resulted in the independent assessment based on three fair valuation criteria on the constituents of our Portfolio2K15 resulting in a balanced allocation. Three shares highlighted in red background and white foreground, were totally rejected and the rest 12 had all received provision depending on their merit.