About

Ahead of the Curve provides analysis and insight into today's global financial markets. The latest news and views from global stock, bond, commodity, and FOREX markets are discussed. Rajveer Rawlin is a PhD and received his MBA in finance from the Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. He is an avid market watcher, having followed capital markets in the US and India since 1993. His research interests include capital markets, banking, investment analysis, and portfolio management, and he has over 20 years of experience in the above areas, covering the US and Indian markets. He has several publications in the above areas. He currently teaches business and management students at CHRIST University. The views expressed here are his own and should not be construed as advice to buy or sell securities.

Friday, 30 January 2015

Coal India FPO, another sign of a market top

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/coal-india-fpo-another-sign-market-top-rajveer-rawlin

Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Bear Market Lessons from History

While the financial media tends to be absolutely infatuated with stocks hitting new highs every day, we would do well to pay attention to some ongoing bear markets, Charts are courtesy yahoo finance and marketwatch.com:

Hottest Deals On Refurbished Apple Products | JemJem

1) Japanese stocks continue to languish under the effects of deflation following a well over 26 year old bear market, down over 45% from the highs set in 1989.

2) Despite some great innovation out of the U.S from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook e.t.c the #NASDAQ continues to remain in a 15 year bear market near its highs set in 2000.

3) Despite going parabolic yet again, Chinese stocks continue to remain in a 7 year bear market down well over 50% from the highs set in 2008.
SSE Composite Index (000001.SS)

4) US bank stocks are entering a 7 year bear market despite all the #QE money and super low interest rates down over 30% from their highs set in 2008.

5) The #Euro is also in a 7 year bear market down over 25% against the dollar from it's highs set in 2008.

6) #Gold and gold ETF's continue to be in bear markets down well over 35% from their highs set in 2008.

7) The more recent casualty #oil and oil ETF's are down well over 60% from their highs set in 2008.

It is well worth noting that it is no strange coincidence that there are major bear markets in several key asset classes and despite recent bear market rallies caused by the FED's QE for ever policies the hibernating bear is all set to emerge with a vengeance.

Bear market lessons from history from Rajveer Rawlin

Bear Market Lessons From History http://t.co/TcQy3nOE0r pic.twitter.com/wNba6Jh5Ys
— samuelR (@RajveerRawlin) September 7, 2015

Tuesday, 6 January 2015

Earnings Yield Suggesting Nifty still overvalued

The #Nifty currently sports a #P/E ratio (trailing) in excess of 20 (Data courtesy Sanjay Jaiswal at Market Pulse):
Nifty p/e

Invert this and you get an earnings yield of 5.0%, you can add about 1.2% for dividends bringing the total to 6.2%, the current risk free rate which is the return on 1 yr bonds is about 7.5%, so why bother investing in risky stocks to generate 6.2% when you can earn 7.5% in the bank risk free?

So despite the recent correction the market is still overvalued and will most likely fall further in the near term.

Earnings Yield Suggesting Nifty Overvalued http://t.co/6UAZyDoKWH pic.twitter.com/RYZlugF9Z5
— samuelR (@RajveerRawlin) September 4, 2015

Economic Calendar

GMT-4		Event	Actual	Consensus
Wednesday, May 14
21:30	AU	Full-Time Employment	59.5K		Revised from 15.0K
21:30	AU	Part-Time Employment	29.5K		Revised from 17.2K
21:30	AU	Employment Change s.a.	89.0K	20.0K	Revised from 32.2K
21:30	AU	Unemployment Rate s.a.	4.1%	4.1%
21:30	AU	Participation Rate	67.1%	66.8%
Thursday, May 15
02:00	UK	Gross Domestic Product (QoQ)		0.6%
02:00	UK	Gross Domestic Product (YoY)		1.2%
02:00	UK	Manufacturing Production (YoY)		-0.5%
02:00	UK	Manufacturing Production (MoM)		-0.5%
02:00	UK	Industrial Production (MoM)		-0.5%

Economic Calendar >> Add to your site

My Asset Allocation Strategy (Indian Market)

Cash - 40%
Bonds - 20%
Fixed deposit - 20%
Gold - 5%
Stocks - 10% ( Majority of this in dividend funds)
Other Asset Classes - 5%

My belief is that stocks are relatively overvalued compared to bonds and attractive buying opportunities can come along after 1-2 years. In a deflationary scenario no asset class does well other than U.S bonds, the U.S dollar and the Japanese yen, so better to be safe than sorry with high quality government bonds and fixed deposits. Cash is the king always. Of course this varies with the person's age.