Venky's India: Profiting from changing Indian Food Habits

Traditional Vegetarian fare lover Indians are transforming their Foods habits, and at what pace! India has had a strong culture of vegetarianism, but is seeing a sharp rise in consumption of meat. Per capita consumption of meat is now at 5.5 kilograms a year, and is growing year on year. There are several reasons for this growth in meat consumption: strong domestic economic growth, increasingly affluent consumers, affinity for protein rich diets and variety in offerings.  Eating non-vegetarian food is no longer a luxury for affluent middle class Indians. 

Is Facebook IPO signalling end of S&P Bull?

Large IPOs are decidedly bearish. We just need to go back a few years in 2008, when Reliance Power IPO hit Indian markets and was overly hyped as the largest IPO ever to hit Indian markets. The 11,600 crore IPO was subscribed in under a minute! Within one day, it was oversubscribed by over 10 times. And most of this was on margin money and borrowed money that investors borrowed to cash on the hype! And what was the end result?

The Irrelevance of S&P Ratings

India’s sovereign credit rating was downgraded recently to BBB- by elite rating agency S&P. S&P also threatened to move India to category of junk rated countries. The stock bourses pretty much ignored this threat and continued with business as usual without any anxiety or crash whatsoever. Market and Price are best rating judges of a country or a business, and do not need an external agency to certify its credit or solvency status. In this article we try to look deeper within S&P’s ratings and its history and figure out if such rating agencies are relevant at all or they have reached a permanent state of irrelevance and obsolescence for investors and traders.