Knowledge Corner – Newsletters

Asmayu: Rays of Light (sanskrit)

At Tamohara, we take reading seriously, and go through a variety of analyses, perspectives and news from across the world. What you see here is a distillation of the insights that arise as a result of all that reading. We hope you enjoy these newsletters that our team puts together and give you a different perspective of thinking about investing and on certain industries!

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Investing Lessons From Failing To Run A Marathon

December 21, 2018

Sheetal, Portfolio Manager at Tamohara, recounts his marathon training in this month's newsletter. Specifically, he narrates the irony of how some training quick-fixes, instead of working as short-cuts, resulted in him having to pull out of the marathon. Looking back, he turns his wounds into wisdom by drawing some investing lessons from this failure to run the marathon.

Three Different Stories On The Same Page

November 26, 2018

In the past, we’ve spoken the various type of businesses and those we invest in, our investment philosophy and mental models among other topics. In this edition of our newsletter, we rewind a bit and delve into the investing journey of our colleague and the lessons learned therein

Three Year Annivesary of TLES

October 12, 2018

On October 06th 2015, Tamohara launched its first strategy in the form of Tamohara Long Term Equity Strategy (TLES). On its third anniversary, we discuss the performance of the strategy and, more importantly, the philosophy underlying the creation of the said portfolio.

Lifecycle of an Economic Moat

September 27, 2018

‘Moat’ is amongst the most commonly used terms in the world of investing. Signifying the quality of business, it is usually associated with high returns on capital. In this note and through future follow-ups, we argue that this is an incomplete understanding of concept of moat. In our view, there are better ways to find moat, than simply seeking high returns on capital.

Focus on the ‘Knowable and Important’: That’s the Strike Zone

August 24, 2018

In ‘The Secret to a Peaceful Investing Journey’, we touched upon information overload and the need to differentiate between signal and noise. We take that idea further this month and present some tools to demonstrate how an investor can differentiate between the two.

The Fallacies of Our Mind – V

July 20, 2018

This month, Tejas Gutka recounts his experience of the 2006 bomb blasts, and the lessons he learnt from it (what doesn’t kill you, makes you smarter!!). These lessons pertain not only to the bomb blasts, but are relevant in everyday life, especially in investing.

The Secret to a Peaceful Investing Journey

June 25, 2018

Recent surveys suggest that spending more time on the internet leads to lower happiness amongst teens. Access to unlimited data, counter-intuitively, is not good for people’s well-being, as per the survey. We believe that similar challenges lead to higher discontent amongst investors. In this note, we elaborate on two of the biggest challenges faced by investors in the age of free information, and provide some remedies for a peaceful investing journey.

12 Learnings from 12 Years in the Capital Markets

May 15, 2018

There is no better teacher than experience, they say. No matter how many degrees we have or what kind of education we have received, there are some things that only life can teach us. This month I reflect upon some of my own learnings from over a decade in the capital market. I present these not as a blue-print of success or a definitive means to a desired outcome. In fact, I believe that as the process of learning continues, these values will undergo modification and refinement over time. What follows is more of a ‘note-to-self’, rather than hard-coded tenets to live by; but I do hope that you find some use in them.

Reinvestment Compounders

April 30, 2018

Last month we argued that Buy Cheap, Avoid Expensive is not necessarily the best strategy. We illustrated this by showing that some of the best wealth creators were not cheap in the past, based on traditional valuation parameters like P/E. Most of the names that we had illustrated, had one thing in common – they were all high quality businesses, based on their returns ratios (RoCE). This month, we posit that many businesses that currently do not report high returns on capital, but are valued richly on earnings, can also be long term wealth compounders.

The Fallacies of Our Mind – IV

March 19, 2018

‘Mythbusters’ is a popular Australian-American TV show which, for 16 seasons, investigated various myths or science-defying scenes from TV shows, movies, or from around the world. Ultimately their findings were labelled as ‘Confirmed’, ‘Plausible’ or ‘Busted’. On similar lines, under the ‘Fallacies of Our Mind’ series, we have been investigating heuristics that are hard-coded in our minds. In the current chapter of this series, we test a long-lasting convention – Buy Cheap, Avoid Expensive.

The Power of Focus

February 20, 2018

The power of focus cannot be over-emphasized in the distracting world that we live in today. The concept of focus, however, is not a new idea, but one that has been well documented from ancient mythology (Arjuna’s singular focus in the Mahabharata) to modern day management theory. It is a concept that has stood the test of time in an ever-changing world and is fundamental to achieving success in any area of human endeavour. We discuss how the power of focus helped a fast bowler become the best in his league and then extend the idea to the world of business. We argue that while diversification if often looked as a de-risking strategy, it often destroys value. Focus, on the other hand, has helped businesses in creating far larger shareholder value.

On New Year Investment Outlooks

January 22, 2018

The New Year brings with it opportunities to make new beginnings. Part of the exhilaration that accompanies every January is the optimism that new beginnings can create new and successful outcomes. Thus, the new year brings new investment outlooks.

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