Featured On Forbes - Why An Investment In Snap Is Fraught With Risks

Snap Inc's early days as a publicly listed company have been a mixed bag. If stock returns are the barometer of success, you'd have to say Snap's IPO has arguably been a success. The stock trades at just over $20.2 a share, implying a near 19% return for investors who bought into the IPO. Annualized, these returns look even better, given that Snap debuted on the NYSE just about three months ago, in early March. For most investors, these are returns you can't complain about. However, for those who bought shares of the company at levels closer to $30 a piece, the experience hasn't been as pleasant, with buyers at the peak now down by over 31%. And as things stand, the narrative doesn't look great for the company, even after such a big correction.

To be fair, a big part of the correction took place prior to Snap's disappointing earnings release, and you could put that down to profit booking. However, poor quarterly results have played their part as well, and the stock is still down by about 12% since May 10th, when the company reported earnings. Snap missed expectations on most counts, be it bottom line numbers or user growth. The biggest disappointment, though, was the miss on top line numbers. Companies that are valued at close to 24 times projected sales (FY17 estimate at $1 billion) can't afford to miss revenue estimates, and Snap's top management knows that.

Shoring Up Top Line Growth - Are Discounts A Bad Thing? Read the whole post on Forbes.

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The RBI’s ‘operation twist’ – A sign of bigger measures to come, or a tweak to bandage the fiscal deficit?

If you’ve read financial dailies lately, it’s unlikely you’ve missed the term ’operation twist’, describing the RBI’s recent announcement that it will buy long-term Indian government bonds while selling short-term Indian government bonds through special open-market operations. A little trivia While the RBI didn’t officially come up with this name, the move reminded market observers of a similar policy move adopted by the US Fed back in 1961 (and later in 2011, under Fed Chair Ben Bernanke), dubbed ‘operation twist’, apparently inspired by American songwriter Chubby Checker’s popular number, ‘The twist’. In the context, it may be tempting to imagine RBI Chairman Shaktikanta Das grooving to yesteryear-actor Mehmood’s ‘Aoo twist karein’ from the 1960s, but this ‘twist’ isn’t probably quite as entertaining. What this is all about and the story so far On 19 December 2019, the RBI announced that it would conduct special open-market operations, buying long-term government sec...

What is smart beta, and how does it fit into the larger scheme of things?

Keeping pace with terminology in the world of investing can be daunting for most investors, so before we dive right in, let’s spare a few moments to grasp the backdrop and context that have led to the emergence of the term ‘smart beta’, after a quick look at what it is. In a nutshell, smart beta sits at the intersection of active and passive investing. While active investing is an ideology that advocates cherry picking and monitoring investments, passive investing most commonly involves investing in a portfolio of securities that replicates an index, without trying to take advantage of ‘mispricing’. For those unfamiliar with these terms, the following sections should help. The reality of active investing – it’s a mixed bag While both – active and passive – approaches have their merits, they also have drawbacks, and to understand this in a bit more detail, let’s start with active investing, the older and more traditional style of investing, with a focu...

Featured On Seeking Alpha - Amazon Could Double Its Market Cap By 2020

“Only 1 company on earth can buy grocery chain, be rumored to buy enterprise software company & in both cases be lauded for strategic vision.” That’s how LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, summed up Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods. And few could have put it better. It is this brand of strategic vision that has propelled Amazon past the valuations its brick and mortar rivals command, despite their huge lead which spans several decades in some cases. Arguably, it is what recently powered Amazon’s stock price past the $1,000 mark. And it’s this very brand of strategic vision that looks set to take Amazon past the $1 trillion market cap milestone by 2020. Read the whole post on Seeking Alpha .

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