Subscriber Update - Aug 2022
Dear Subscriber,
Welcome to the fifth issue of Equity Midas Capital’s Subscriber Update. This letter marks the first quarterly review of the IY2022-23 (IY = Investment Year, 31 May 2022 to 31 May 2023) recommendations.
To begin with some good news! Happy to inform that more than 85% of subscribers renewed their subscription for IY2022-23. This is a reflection of your confidence on EVM. Thank you.
EVM is a novel concept and is quite contradictory to traditional investing principles. Our recommendations follow a definite schedule and are published end of May every year. This means that we do not respond to market gyrations or company results during the year. While this follows our back testing methodology, not all future conditions can ever be tested and incorporated in the model. We saw an extreme example of this in May 2022. Month of May 2022 was a difficult month for EVM recommendations; all the gains in our recommendations till April end were almost wiped out in May.
There were many reasons for the portfolio and market under-performance including poor operational performance or the recommended companies, impact of Russia-Ukraine war, Government action and high input costs. More importantly the market was worried that these factors will have a long term impact which in turn will keep the operational performance of the companies under pressure. This magnified the negative impact on the stock prices in the month of May 2022.
The swiftness and the depth of the correction along with the fact that some recommendations did very poorly both in their operational performance thru out the year and market performance, prompted a detailed review internally of the model. We realised that while the model itself did not need any changes, the data distortion caused by Covid and subsequent market action needed a fix.
Covid had impacted the company performance data very hard, at the same time, the stock prices did not reflect the drop in company performance. The stock prices stood tall during this time. This anomaly had to be taken care of in the model, which we did. The fix we applied was on the “capability verification” part of the model. IY2022-23 recommendations have been derived using the updated model.
Stock Performance Analysis
This Investment Year, we recommended 7 Large & Mid cap stocks and 8 Small & Micro cap stocks. While the mix of small cap stocks helps us generate better returns, they add volatility and sometimes make trading difficult.
Last year we faced issues with some small cap stocks hitting circuits on our recommendation dates resulting in some subscribers facing difficulties to execute their trade. This year onwards, the model ensure that the small & micro cap stocks have enough liquidity/trading volumes to ensure that the subscribers would not face any issues in executing their trades.
As on end of Aug 2022, an equal-weighted portfolio of our 2022-23 FEAST recommendations (in other words the average returns for our FEAST recommendations) has yielded 9.3% capital returns i.e. without dividends. FOUCS recommendations have yielded 12.6% capital returns in this period.
Both the portfolios have performed better than their benchmark indices. Though a quarter is a very short time to draw conclusions on the performance, we are pleased that the returns are in line with the benchmark returns. Barring one small cap company all other companies have performed per the overall expectations.
Lets see how we got here:
Key Observations
- This year’s investment recommendations were released when the markets were pretty pessimistic. Most stocks were down and our recommendations corrected immediately along with the market.
- At its lowest point the Feast portfolio was down by more than 11%. If not for the support from large & mid cap stocks, the fall would have been much greater.
- As we have always seen, the recovery was due to a small set of out-performing stocks. This has been the case thru out the back test history. It is always the out-performance of 1-3 stocks (typically small & micro caps) that push the overall returns higher.
- The very nature of our recommendations process (derived using quantitative techniques) means that only those stocks are recommended that satisfy the required criteria. Within those, which stocks will perform better depends on many factors but primarily their operating performance.
- Though we are not an investment advisor and cannot recommend capital allocation across all stocks, due to the very nature of our recommendations we always maintain that the best strategy is to invest in all recommendations for an investment year. The actual allocation is out of our purview and is entirely the investors/subscribers decision.
Operating Performance Analysis - EVM View
We rank the recommendations based on the operating performance and group them in 4 quadrants based on expectations achieved in that quarter. Here is how we group them:
| QUADRANT CLASSIFICATION PER EXPECTATIONS ACHIEVED (%) EVERY QUARTER | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quarter 1 | Quarter 2 | Quarter 3 | Quarter 4 | |
| Quadrant 1 | <=20 | <=40 | <=60 | <=80 |
| Quadrant 2 | >20 & <22.5 | >40 & <45 | >60 & <67.5 | >80 & <90 |
| Quadrant 3 | >22.5 & < 25 | >45 & < 50 | >67.5 & < 75 | >90 & < 100 |
| Quadrant 4 | >25 | >50 | >75 | >100 |
Based on this definition here are the returns of each quadrant for this quarter:
| QUADRANT | NUMBER OF COMPANIES | AVERAGE RETURNS | EXPECTATIONS ACHIEVED |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | -16.18% | <=20 |
| 2 | 3 | 2.34% | >20 & <22.5 |
| 3 | 0 | NA | >22.5 & < 25 |
| 4 | 9 | 20.08% | >25 |
As seen from the table above, companies that have met or beaten the expected operating performance have delivered better returns.
| QUADRANT | TRANCHE | MARKET_CAP_CLASS | COMPANY | EXPECTATIONS ACHIEVED (%) | RETURNS (%) | PE RATIO | 5 YR MEDIAN PE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | Sharda Cropchem Ltd. | 7.4 | -27.47 | 58.7 | 15.8 |
| 1 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | Transport Corporation Of India Ltd. | 15.1 | -2.78 | 17.3 | 17.7 |
| 1 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | Gujarat Ambuja Exports Ltd. | 17.4 | -18.28 | 13.2 | 11.8 |
| 2 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. | 21.0 | 3.77 | 27.7 | 29.0 |
| 2 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | UPL Ltd. | 21.6 | -1.33 | 14.6 | 17.8 |
| 2 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | Cipla Ltd. | 22.3 | 4.58 | 33.3 | 31.4 |
| 4 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | SRF Ltd. | 25.5 | 3.22 | 14.1 | 24.5 |
| 4 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | Timken India Ltd. | 26.2 | 32.28 | 58.4 | 49.4 |
| 4 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | Fineotex Chemical Ltd. | 26.6 | 51.65 | 13.2 | 17.4 |
| 4 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | E.I.D. – Parry (India) Ltd. | 27.0 | -4.64 | 9.1 | 10.2 |
| 4 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | Nitta Gelatin India Ltd. | 27.1 | 44.59 | 10.7 | 12.8 |
| 4 | May | LARGE/MID CAP | ITC Ltd. | 27.8 | 18.42 | 24.1 | 21.8 |
| 4 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | Solar Industries India Ltd. | 29.4 | 27.17 | 35.9 | 44.5 |
| 4 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | Apcotex Industries Ltd. | 29.7 | -2.96 | 27.7 | 25.5 |
| 4 | May | SMALL/MICRO CAP | Kama Holdings Ltd. | 30.6 | 10.98 | 7.9 | 8.2 |
Investor Queries
Ans: In simple terms, we do not believe in price targets. There is no reason that a price target derived by any method should be respected by the markets. Markets to do not work on targets, take the example of Adani stocks or Tata Elxsi or Bajaj twins or HDFC twins. Markets reward operating performance or the promise of operating performance. There is no method we know of that can quantify that reward. Further, the operating performance itself is a big unknown.
A follow-up on this question is why do we not have a stop-loss. Again the same logic here, selling the stock does not mean it will not go up.
Stop-loss, targets or for that matter future operating performance are a function of some kind of predictions. We do not want to get into making any judgement calls about the future.
We are continuously improving our model to better the stock selection. We do not want to be rigid in our though process, we understand that price targets and stop-losses are logical ways of locking-in profits and avoiding deeper losses. How do we integrate it in EVM is something that will need more work.
On this topic, I will also introduce a concept “Cost of Opinion”. What this means is that all our opinions/judgements/predictions have an cost impact. We never really quantify that impact in real life except for stock markets. Stock markets give this impact very clearly and very easily. All of us have a gut feel about the market like the markets are very expensive, they will fall at least 20%, inflation will hit the markets hard or India is the only growth economy, markets will double by 2025, etc.
Question is whether the opinion is strong enough to warrant an action. Should you sell your holdings when you feel that the market is very expensive and vice-versa?
I know many investors who do take an action. Gut feel based actions give the most satisfaction when they turn out to be right.
As an analyst, I do not have the luxury to give opinions based on my gut feel. So when I feel the market is expensive or when I feel they are cheap, I am consistent in my response. I do nothing.
I understood this fact very early; Markets are not obliged to respect my gut feel.
As an Subscriber, you are free to take action in situations that make you uncomfortable, but a recommendation from us will only be the output of the models we have thoroughly tested.
Q2. As an investor, should we do a SIP in your recommendations?
Ans:Our back-tests have not included SIP hence we cannot recommend SIP. SIPs are a great tool for wealth building (please refer our blog post on this subject). EVM is more of income generator, fill it, shut it, forget it kind of investment approach. We have tested it that way. But this is a great suggestions and we will test EVM for SIP and release our findings soon.
Chef's Corner
We are spending a great amount of our time in working on the “Demand” analysis model. Suitable for disciplined active traders we are trying to define a model which can quantify the demand for a stock. We have been working on this for quite a while and expect this to continue for at least 1 more year before we have something concrete to share with you all.
The concept is very exiting. We are aiming at creating a definition of “demand” in the same way we had defined “expectations”. Once that is done, the stock selection would be an easier task. The thesis will need to be proven, more demand = more returns.
SEBI Registered Research Analyst
Equity Midas Capital
equitymidas.com