One of the rare books covering the investment strategies and journey of renowned domestic investors. The book was published by Partners at ALTAIS advisors Vishal Mittal and Saurabh Basrar. Top investors covered in the book are as follows: Ramesh Damani, Raamdeo Agarwal, Rajashekar Iyer, Anil Goel, Govind Parikh, Bharat Jayantilal patel, Hiren Ved, Kenneth Andrade, Vijay Kedia, Shyam Sekhar, Chaitanya Dalmia.
You can check their website for more details: https://altaisadvisors.com/masterclass/book/
Important Points from the book
Rather than focusing on their individual stock picks we have tried to focus mainly on the common pattern in their investing strategies and ideologies
1. Invest heavily (a higher percentage of portfolio) when you have conviction backed by sound logic
2. You need to be bullish on India to make investments in Indian companies because majority of Indian companies are domestically focused
3. New Bull markets have new leaders when a bull markets ends the stocks which have gained the most falls the most
4. The entry price that you pay for a company should be very cheap so that even if your assumptions go wrong in future you don't end up losing money
5. We get attached to stocks which have given us a lot of returns in past even though in current & future expected scenarios they seem very overvalued
6. We need to focus on art of disciplined selling - it's important o have a sound selling mechanism just buying at right price wont create wealth.
7. Lower interest rates leads to increased liquidity which in turn reduces company cost of capital and is good for equity markets
8. Don't sell your winners because they have crossed some threshold of % of portfolio
a) Sell only if their valuations are very extreme or business has turned negative
9. For a company to make lot of money for investors the market size of industry should ne huge so that the company can expand & Management execution track record should be great
10. Similar to doing a business in investing initial 5-10 years offers struggle and then you understand the main edge and if you focus on it you succeed well
11. There should be tailwinds in your investment i.e. something naturally happening good for the company and industry as a whole
12. Be courageous to act differently and have patience for your thesis to play out
13. Always ask "why" try to understand the logic behind the increases or decrease in fortunes of the company
14. Never EVER invest with a poor management
15. Indicators of Bull Market nearing its end
a) Bull market ends when bad companies IPOs are also getting oversubscribed
b) IPOs market is hot
c) Government is also selling stake
c) companies are also selling stake
d) the stocks with junk quality also start rising exceedingly well
16. The highest valuation are awarded to businesses with High growth + High ROCE
17. Great companies have 2 characteristic
a) They grow more than expected and
b) they grow with consistencies
18. A good indicator that a particular sector cycle is ending is to see lot of new players from India or abroad trying to enter the sector especially after the good period has sustained for sometime
19. In bear market everything falls and in bull market everything rises but the real difference is that in bear market good businesses falls the lowest and in bull market good businesses rises more than average. So the real difference comes by losing less in good businesses.
20. When a lot of companies start expanding in the industry have a close watch on supply side economics. Expected Supply should not outstrip demand because then industry down-cycle begins
21. Apart from equity the second asset class that can provide decent returns is real estate market
Attending Altais Advisors' masterclass with super investors opened my eyes to the art of investment. Their insights on ghostwriting a book are invaluable for aspiring authors seeking financial wisdom.