Man up, brokers....

Warren Buffet said “You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out - and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight." He was referring to Wall Street I-Bankers pummeled by liquidity crisis.

Closer home, we've got something brewing of the sort... Some of India’s leading brokerages that suffered huge losses in the recent market crash are postponing declaration of Q4 results. Why do they hide behind legally permissible extensions...? Is it not the same tribe that talked down many a stock and businesses that delayed publication of quarterly numbers? Now how ugly they look in the mirror?

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It's time the big boys learned to man up!

Here are some of the big names (Motilal Oswal, Edelweiss, Religare and so on…) struggling to cover their asses :)

Here you have some of my takes on their analysts.

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The in and out economy

First we raced to globalize. Then we hurried to decouple. But did we…? If so, why this…?

Will someone please give me a new expression…?
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As long as it lasts

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep. Don't worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no control over them. Don't worry about things that you have control over, because you have control over them. This seems to be the credo of global markets that are either behaving as if the worst is over for credit and housing problems or they remain convinced that the central banks can offset whatever bad news may unfold.

I say the credit squeeze is much centered around mortgage finance that resulted from subprime crisis in the US. Other sectors are pretty much insulated. After strenuous effort, banks have managed to find buyers for $9.4 billion of the $24 billion needed to finance the takeover of First Data, a payments processor, by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a private-equity firm. According to JPMorgan, even the structured products that caused so much disquiet during the summer are moving again—$6.2 billion of collateralized-debt obligations were issued in the last week of September.

Somehow that flies against other theories that float around. Who knows? Markets have their own logic.

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Kirana choice

Indian market research consultancy Market Pulse spoke with close to 350 consumers in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai to understand their attitudes to modern retail and their spending patterns.

The typical Wal-Mart customer earns less than the US national average income. And some reports say that one in five customers does not have a bank account; that’s twice the national average.

The Indian approach to big-box retail is slightly different. The less affluent still walk down to the corner store and call the bania (shopkeeper) to deliver their month’s groceries. Despite all the hype around malls, Kirana (corner store) accounts for 94 per cent of the $320 billlion organised retail trade in India. That ratio isn’t going to change anytime soon, so manufacturers would do well to pander to the convenience stores.

More on those interesting findings, here.

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