After long time

Sorry for not posting anything for a very long time. Truly I was really busy with my office work.
Hope to get sometime to devote here :-)

Budget is out and congrats everyone who has benefited from the tax exemptions. People in IT industry gearing up for lower salary hikes can get a little cushion from this exemption.

Short Term Capital gains tax has increased from 10 to 15%. Hope this helps in people investing for a longer time to avoid this tax.
But I doubt this will happen because of human tendency of earning faster without patience.

In current scenario that might happen because people are just holding on to recover their losses and not sell stocks at loss.

Most of you would have done your tax savings for this year.

Markets are volatile for past 1 month and half. Instead of avoiding the stock market completely people should continue investing in smaller amount and build a good portfolio for 2-3 years time frame.

Lot of stocks are available at attractive valuations.

Do you homework and be on track of your financial planning.

Happy Investing :-)

Cement and Steel Sector

Cement and Steel Sector

Both these sectors can outperform index in 2008.

Companies having backward integration with raw materials in Steel industry are set to benefit .

Steel prices are rising and will rise more in 2008. Raw material prices are also on the rise.

Biggest consumer China has also seen production cost go up significantly.

Indian Steel demand is robust and focus on infrastructure will keep it that way.

Gujrat NRE coke,sesa goa, Tata steel looks good in this sector.


Cement sector is going in for huge expansion to cope up with the demand, but the new capacities will start coming in from first quarter of FY09. Demand and price realization will remain firm in these scenarios. Some government has tried to curb the price rise in cement saying they will import cheap cement from outside. But cement prices are high across asia and so poses no immediate threat to local cement makers.

Till the monsoon kicks in around june-july. These 2 quarters can see huge construction activity.

India Cements, Grasim Industries , Shree Cements looks good if one want to enter this sector.

Value Buying in GE Shipping

Through mail from Abhay.

CMP 437
P/E 5.17
Market cap 6654.37
MarketCap/Sales 2.20

Financials for last 12 months( Jan 07 to Dec 07)

Net Sales 3012.13(2186.31) Up by 37.74%
Net profit 1298.31(825.91) Up by 57.19%
EPS 84.86(54.24) Up by 56.45%

Other players in this segment with their net sales for FY07 (i didn't calculate last 12 months sales for all) & their P/E

Company NetSales NetProfit MarketCap current P/E

ABG Shipyard 704.36 116.29 3717.29 25.06
Essar shipping 1024.30 134.04 10,227.98 60.45
GE Shipping 1990.6 883.31 6646 5.12
Shipping corp 3703.44 1014.58 6405.44 7.54
Among these companies only ABG shipyard is growing at faster rate but on smaller base & has P/E of 25.06 almost 5 times that of GE. Shipping corp also looks cheap but growth has been slow compared to its peers.
MarketCap/Sales ratio of 2.2 & P/E of 5.12 with potential growth of 50% plus makes it very cheap.
Also after the fall in stock price in January it has shown momentum back from 330 levels.