Stock Picks: Top 20 Indian Stocks to own by Forbes India

The following is the list of 20 stocks that were recommended by Forbes India in their recent release

Page Industries: A small company that makes a small product with big margins

Pidilite Industries: Pidilite has brands like Fevicol, M-Seal, car polish Motomax and other assorted consumer art materials and specialised home paints

Dabur: This company has focus. Five years ago, Dabur got out of the pharmaceutical business and put all its effort, like the best brand companies, behind five of its brands

Procter and Gamble Hygiene: Over the last three years, the money that P&G invested did not translate into market cap gains

Marico: Till 2008-09 came by, the company’s sales and profits had grown for 30 consecutive quarters, indicating a stable track record

Blue Star: Two decades to reach Rs. 1,000 crore in sales; two years to reach Rs. 2,000 crore in 2008

BHEL: For 2009-10, the company is increasing its capacity from 10 GW to 15 GW

Power Finance Corporation: At about 25 per cent, the company’s net profit margin is close to what the best software companies earn at half their price-to-earnings ratio

Mahindra & Mahindra: Rural India is earning well because of infrastructure boom. M&M’s SUVs are selling briskly and its market share in the SUV space has gone from 51 per cent to 57 per cent in the last two years

Allcargo Global Logistics: This stock was one of the earliest to recover after it fell dramatically in October

Crisil: The 800-pound gorilla of rating agencies, it rates 1,000 firms today

ICRA: There is room for both Crisil and ICRA in the space

HDFC Bank: A cautious and solid bank, it is safe because its government bond holdings are 3 per cent over the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) requirement

Kingfisher Airlines: The company has a debt-equity ratio of 3:1

Oracle Financial: It suffered when foreign banks went broke

Suzlon: Debt is high and so are the receivables.

Ranbaxy: The last 12 months have been bad. Sales are down, research hasn’t paid off and US FDA is after it for manufacturing lapses

NIIT: As IT crashed so did the IT trainer. Its stock fell 85 per cent to Rs. 14

Wockhardt: Its core business is in fine fettle. Its problems are foreign loan repayments and derivative losses

Hindalco: The acquisition of Novelis tripled Hindalco’s sales but caused an 11 per cent decline in net profits

RK

Nifty adopts Free Float market cap calculation methodology

Nifty has moved on to free float method for calculating the weights of the companies in the index. I just checked on investopedia for the definition of free-float methodology and this is what it says

Free-float methodology market capitalization is calculated by taking the equity's price and multiplying it by the number of shares readily available in the market. Instead of using all of the shares outstanding like the full-market capitalization method, the free-float method excludes locked-in shares such as those held by promoters and governments.

Calculated as:

And it also goes on to say that "The free-float method is seen as a better way of calculating market capitalization because it provides a more accurate reflection of market movements."

And what was the impact of this?

"stocks that will lose their weightage in the index have seen sharp falls in share prices in the past few days," says a report from business line. It also points out that the selling is from the index funds who have to realign their portfolios based on the new weights assigned. Some of the companies that have lost weightage are NTPC, ONGC, Power Grid, SAIL and Bharti Airtel.

In general I think this is a move in the right direction for NSE and Nifty.

rk

Warren Buffet's funny and sensible quote

Warren Buffet is supposed to have quoted the following during an interview on US economic recovery

"You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."

it does make sense, doesn't it?

Top 10 challenges for India to overcome!!

Goldman Sachs Economic Research has come out with a list of challenges that India needs to overcome if she has to achieve her true potential. The paper titled Global Economics Paper contains the following list

1. Improve governance
2. Raise basic educational achievement
3. Increase quality and quantity of universities
4. Control inflation: Try Inflation Targeting?
5. Introduce a credible fiscal policy: a medium-term strategy
6. Liberalize financial markets
7. Increase trade with neighbors
8. Increase agricultural productivity
9. Improve infrastructure
10. Improve environmental quality

Well, there are no surprises in this list. They are more or less obvious and they are definitely the areas to invest in.

RK

Indian Mutual Fund Investors can rejoice!!

There is GOOD news for the Indian Mutual Fund investors. Sebi decided yesterday that there will be no ENTRY LOAD for any of the mutual fund schemes AND the distributor commission is to be paid by customers themselves and it wont be deducted by the fund anymore. What needs to be done now is to make sure that this message reaches the general public. Here is the snippet taken out of the news report on CNBC

The board considered the question of the existing manner of payment to the mutual fund advisors by investors and decided that there will be no entry load for any schemes. The investor will decide the commission that he is to pay to the distributor directly. It will not be deducted by the fund and then paid to the distributor. If the investor is making an application for Rs 100 that means the entire Rs 100 will get invested. There will be no deduction from that because there is no entry load. The board also decided that if the distributor is selling different schemes then he must disclose to the investor as to what commission he is getting for different schemes. This will avoid the conflict of interest and will allow investors to understand why a particular scheme is being recommended to them.