Caveat Emptor ….is of course Buyer Beware…for the readers of this blog…

Subramoney.com is a blog run by P V Subramanyam a graduate of Mumbai University. That is the only qualification he has…of course he has passed a few exams on accounting, cost accounting and secretarial functions. He is also trained as a lawyer. This has allowed him to be invited to be a member of one accounting body. That of course is not a qualification. It is a membership. Not sure if he pays the membership fees. He rejected one new institute which offered him membership. He felt paying $ 80 a year does not make economic sense (see he is a value investor).

He is an investment professional and like all investment professional he has got somethings right and many things wrong. Happily for him (and luckily as Taleb would say) his rights have been better than his wrongs. Actually it is more of compounding than spectacular success that has worked for him. So start early is not only a good thing to do, but if you follow subramoney, almost mandatory.

This is not an investment advice portal, nor is this blog an income creator or a client driver for him. To that extent he encourages you to analyze, experiment, and then invest. He has a fetish for risk control – and you can consider him a risk freak. His worst day will be when he thinks he understands risk.

Regarding markets – debt and equity – he understands that he does not understand them. He also concurs with Ken Fisher that the market is a great humiliator and finds newer ways of fooling you.

He knows that India is the most over researched market and he cannot add any value in armchair research. His research therefore restricted to reading about 40 balance sheets in a year….and understanding 5 or 6. He understands cash flow – thanks to the Gujjus and Madus in his friend circle. Most of his understanding of markets have come from talking and listening – and some theory from the 200 odd books that he claims to have read. I have no proof of his having read – so one more caveat. He knows whom to call for which balance sheet. His telephone book is awesome. He has at least one friend with a net worth in excess of Rs. 10k crores.

He is biased towards equities – but he has had fantastic runs in the debt market with debt funds, as well as bonds. In the past few years he has got upwards of 16% p.a. – and thinks it is not sustainable . He has a reasonable sized portfolio, a decent dividend, he trades, he sits with friends over Angel funding projects, is friends with a few Venture capitalists, trains at banks, mutual funds, does open workshops, and reads a lot. Reading leads to writing.

Please do not take anything on this blog as an invitation to buy, sell, short, leverage in equities, debt, real estate, gold….This is just his views, and are subject to market risks and Subra understanding risk. You must read all that he has written about the content on his blog before you can claim to understand what he writes. There are times when he wonders what he has written. So if you understand ALL that he has written, he himself would be surprised. He reads some of his stuff after a year and chuckles

‘did I really write that piece of shit’……….but is too lazy to delete them I guess. So caveat emptor.

He takes very aggressive calls with a small portion of his portfolio, but major part depends on ‘n’ of the compounding formula and not ‘r’ . For those who have forgotten the formula is  (1+r) raised to N.

so do read subramoney, do your own research, then invest. Mutual funds are good, but still needs understanding and research.

Investments of course are subject to market risk.

Reading is subject to understanding risk.

– a well wisher of Subramoney.com

PS: I like the fact that he has promised not to edit this.

Who am I: a fund manager….but subra hardly listens to me. So I am not one of the famous ones…My AUM is a digit less than what Naren manages, but I have 3 digit lesser number of clients than what he has.