SEBI RIA - INA000022321 Talks about: Investing, Behaviour Finance etc. No reco. PNQ/ESTONIA Substack: https://teapaw.org/t.co/iDgzUxnIMK
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Want to learn Fundamental Investing?
I am committing to teaching basic fundamental investing, which will include a balance sheet, cash flow statement, income statement and all ratios revolving around them.
I will add one ratio every day to this thread🧵🧵:
One of the hardest truths:
“Every culture is a different answer to the same questions: how to work, raise children, treat time, money, death. As long as you only know one, you mistake its conventions for laws of nature.”
How to maximize your singularity in the age of AI
A language model is the average of everything humanity has ever written. Ask it for an email, a business plan, a strategy: it gives you the version a thousand competent people would have produced, instantly, for almost nothing.
The direct consequence: anything average is now worth nothing. Decent, clean, meets-expectations work, the kind that guaranteed a career five years ago, has become a commodity.
What keeps its value is what the average can't produce: deviation. An idea nobody expected, a combination nobody had made, a judgment nobody dared to make.
And this is where a lot of people are going to have a problem, because we spent decades manufacturing the opposite.
Left-wing thinking trains minds to conform. It's built into its logic: when the goal is equality, every difference becomes suspect. Whoever stands out is a privilege to correct, whoever thinks differently is a problem to re-educate. You learn to hold the right opinion long before you learn how to build one.
Girard called it mimetic desire: we want what others want, we think what others think, and we call that having convictions.
That conditioning produced excellent employees for the old world. In the world that's coming, it produces replaceable people. Because creativity is the product of a singular mind: experiences, readings, and obsessions that exist in nobody else in the same order. The more you look like everyone else, the more you look like the model.
We are entering a world where the singularity of the individual is king. And the good news is that it can be trained. Here's how, with the eight texts to read.
Go back to first principles
Most people reason by analogy: we do it this way because others do it this way. Reasoning from first principles means taking a problem apart down to what is certainly true, then rebuilding from there.
First Principles, by Farnam Street, is the best synthesis on the subject. The idea to keep: once you understand the why, you can change the how at will. And AI now executes the how better than you do. Your value is entirely in the why.
fs.blog/first-principles/
How to Think for Yourself, by Paul Graham, breaks independent-mindedness into three traits: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity. All three can be cultivated.
paulgraham.com/think.html
Hold no fixed ideas
A conviction you've never attacked is a conviction you inherited. The test is simple: can you state the opposing position better than the people who hold it? If not, all you know is which camp you belong to. Start with your biggest convictions, they're the ones you've checked the least.
Keep Your Identity Small, by Paul Graham. Once an idea becomes part of your identity, you can't revise it without feeling like you're betraying yourself. The fewer labels you carry, the better you think.
paulgraham.com/identity.html
Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman. The reference text on intellectual honesty. First rule: don't tell yourself stories, knowing that you are the easiest person for you to fool.
calteches.library.caltech.ed…
The Fine Art of Baloney Detection, by Carl Sagan. A skeptic's toolkit: how to test an idea, and the fallacies that make you believe it passed the test.
openculture.com/2018/03/carl…
The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger. The standard causes of our errors in judgment, starting with the power of incentives. Apply it to yourself first: what do I have an interest in believing?
jamesclear.com/great-speeche…
Aim at the real problems
You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming, starts from one question: why do so few brilliant people do work that matters? His answer: because most of them don't work on important problems. Thinking differently isn't enough, you also have to go after what others consider too big.
fs.blog/great-talks/richard-…
Write to think clearly
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell. Vague language produces vague thought, and it works in reverse too: clarifying your sentences clarifies your ideas.
orwellfoundation.com/the-orw…
This is exactly the dividing line with AI. It can be a crutch or a lever. A crutch when it thinks in your place, a lever when it amplifies a thought that already exists. If you delegate the writing, you delegate the thinking.
Build your taste
When producing costs nothing, choosing becomes everything. AI generates a thousand versions, and someone has to know which one is right. That someone has taste, and taste is the last advantage the machine won't take from you.
Taste isn't learned in a course. It settles in, through repeated exposure to what is beautiful. Consume beauty the way others consume content: architecture, painting, cinema, typography, music, well-made objects. Go see the best of every field, including the ones that are useless to you. Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class that was useless, and ten years later it became the typography of the Mac.
Change cultures
Every culture is a different answer to the same questions: how to work, raise children, treat time, money, death. As long as you only know one, you mistake its conventions for laws of nature.
Travel, learn a language, read authors from other civilizations, live elsewhere if you can. You come back with proof that your certainties were local. And it's at the border between two cultures that ideas are born that neither would have had alone.
Become impossible to average
First principles give you thinking that belongs to you. Doubt keeps it alive. Taste tells you what to do with it. Other cultures bring you material that nobody around you has.
Add it all up and you get a cross-disciplinary polymath, someone no model can approximate because only one copy exists.
AI knows what everyone knows. Become what no one else is...
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$AMZN just reported the best operating margin in its history, 13.9%.
Over the last 12 months it also spent $42.4B more cash than it generated. A year ago that was a $14.8B inflow.
The stock fell 5.6% across 28-30 Oct.
ALT Bar chart of Amazon's cash from operations versus gross capex, 2016 to the 12 months to September 2026. Capex rises from $7.8B in 2016 to $215B, while operating cash flow reaches $168B, so capex now exceeds operating cash flow by about $47B.
The business side is strong.
AWS revenue rose 39% to $46.0B, its fastest growth in nearly five years, at a 38.7% margin.
North America retail operating income went from $4.8B to $8.7B.
ALT Stacked bars of Amazon's Q3 2026 segment mix: AWS is 23% of net sales but 63% of operating income; North America is 56% of sales and 31% of operating income; International 21% of sales and 5% of operating income.
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Is there a study on how this affects the brain since it’s so close?
Would like to know that before buying!
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Within 2 years since 2024:
Futures STT cost is almost up 4X, while options is up 2X
If FII must return, we need:
Either lower taxes (reduce/abolish STT/LTCG)
Make taxation for FII 0 - like most countries Hong Kong (move from source based taxation to destination based taxation)
I love him. Sonia being Sonia, tried to ask the right questions about markets and valuations and AI etc - but what I love about the best finance guys is they never say they know it all, and give you a straight answer.
@AswathDamodaran has been at the forefront of finance. But the humility continues to amaze me, and maybe the entire world.
Let me spare you from watching this - if you want an answer till anything related to finance - skip it.
But if you want to understand life - watch it.
“I have left cash on the table now because it makes me uncomfortable to invest every dollar in this market which has run up so much, especially the AI trade”
Professor Aswath Damodaran spoke to me about how the US market valuations make him uncomfortable.
Full chat out now with @AswathDamodaran
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SBI pays 6.25% on a 1-2 year fixed deposit.
In the 30% slab you keep 4.30% of that after tax and cess.
The RBI expects inflation of 5.2% this year and 6.0% this quarter.
For a top-slab taxpayer, the real return on that FD is below zero.
ALT Bar chart: SBI 1-2 year FD pays 6.25% before tax and 4.30% after 31.2% tax. A one-year AAA corporate bond pays 8.11% before tax and 5.58% after, per Dezerv. Dashed line marks the RBI CPI forecast for FY27 of 5.2%.
Rs 4,451 Crore Went Into Gold ETFs in September. Then a Door Shut.
Indians put Rs 4,451 crore into gold ETFs in September, according to AMFI data reported by 5paisa. That was 71% more than August's Rs 2,597 crore and almost three times July's Rs 1,559 crore.
On the evening of 15 October, fund houses started sending out notices. By 16 October, new money could no longer get into the gold fund of funds of at least seven fund houses.
I think this is the most useful money story of the month for a salaried investor, because it is about access rather than price. Gold kept trading all week. What closed was the route that lets you run a monthly gold SIP without a demat account.
WHAT CLOSED, AND WHAT DID NOT
A gold fund of funds (FoF) is a mutual fund that buys units of a gold ETF. You can buy it straight from the fund house, without a demat account, and you can run a SIP in it. That is its whole appeal.
Cafemutual named seven fund houses that paused their gold FoFs on 15 or 16 October. They are Tata, UTI, ICICI Prudential, HDFC, Aditya Birla Sun Life, DSP and Invesco. Upstox's round-up adds LIC and Baroda BNP Paribas. The Core newsletter counts 17 fund houses and 20 schemes.
The notices stop fresh lump sums, switch-ins and new SIP or STP registrations. Several also stop SIP top-ups.
Existing SIPs registered before the cut-off keep running at the applicable NAV. Redemptions continue. HDFC's notice says "there will be no restrictions on redemptions."
Gold ETFs themselves were not restricted. Cafemutual put it plainly: "The restriction applies to Gold Fund of Funds, not Gold ETFs." No notice I read gives a reopening date. Tata and UTI call the pause temporary, "till further notice."
WHY GOLD, AND WHY NOW
A gold ETF has to hold physical gold for every rupee it takes in. Business Today points out that the dealers who supply it buy gold in the international market, in US dollars.
That is the link to the rupee. The rupee was at 96.72 per dollar on 9 October, per Business Today. India's gold imports reached a record $71.98 billion in 2025-26, according to a TBS News report from May. That same month the government raised the import duty on gold from 6% to 15%.
A fund manager quoted by Business Today described the FoF pause as "a soft signal, don't go towards gold." The duty hike made gold dearer to bring in. The FoF pause made it harder for new retail money to reach it. Both moves reduce the dollars leaving the country through gold.
The scale explains why someone cared. Gold ETF assets were Rs 90,136 crore on 30 September 2025 and over Rs 1.86 lakh crore a year later, per AMFI data cited by Business Today. Part of that is the gold price. Part of it is flows like September's.
WHO ASKED FOR THE PAUSE
Here the reporting disagrees, and I think that matters.
Cafemutual reported on 17 October that fund houses acted "following instructions from SEBI." Business Today, a day earlier, wrote: "There has been no official circular from the regulators on this matter so far." I could not find a published circular either.
So an instruction may well have been given, but nothing public sets out its terms, its scope or its end date. The fund houses' own notices give no reason at all.
For an investor, that means you cannot plan around a reopening date, because nobody has published one.
WHAT THIS MEANS IF YOU HOLD GOLD THROUGH A FUND
If your gold SIP in a FoF was registered before 15 or 16 October, it is still running. Check your fund house's notice, because some have stopped top-ups and step-ups.
If you were planning to start one, the FoF route at these fund houses is closed to new money for now. Gold ETFs are open, but they need a demat and trading account.
If you want your money back, redemptions are open. This pause is about money going in.
The idea I would keep from this week goes beyond gold. A fund structure is a wrapper around an asset, and the wrapper can be closed for reasons that have nothing to do with the asset. In this case the reason was the rupee. The next time a product is sold to you on convenience, it is worth asking who can switch that convenience off.
SOURCES
AMFI gold ETF flows via 5paisa (10 September and 13 October 2026). Business Today, 16 October 2026 (gold ETF AUM, rupee, "no official circular", fund manager quote). Cafemutual, 17 October 2026 (fund houses, "following instructions from SEBI"). Upstox, 19 October 2026 (scheme-level restrictions). TBS News, 13 May 2026 (import duty and FY26 gold imports). The Core newsletter (17 fund houses, 20 schemes).
This is analysis, not investment advice. I am not recommending any security named here.
The full piece, with the sources and the fund houses that paused new gold FoF money, is on Advisoira Insights: open.substack.com/pub/adviso…
Join 1300+ investors to receive timely insights for free: open.substack.com/pub/adviso…
Partha Deshpande, SEBI Registered Investment Adviser, INA000022321. Registration granted by SEBI and certification from NISM in no way guarantee performance of the intermediary or provide any assurance of returns to investors. Investments in the securities market are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing.
ALT Banner: Gold funds, paused. Rs 4,451 crore went into gold ETFs in September. In October, the fund-of-funds door shut to new money.
ALT Bar chart: net inflows into gold ETFs in 2026 were Rs 1,559 crore in July, Rs 2,597 crore in August and Rs 4,451 crore in September. Source: AMFI via 5paisa.
ALT Bar chart: gold ETF assets were Rs 90,136 crore on 30 September 2025 and over Rs 1.86 lakh crore on 30 September 2026. Source: AMFI via Business Today.
Spencer's Retail at ₹14.8 looks "absurdly cheap" at 0.1x sales.
It isn't. Here are 6 things the bull case misses-
P/S is the wrong lens for a levered retailer.
Net debt was ~₹883 Cr even before lease liabilities. Add that and EV is ~₹1,000 Cr+, about 0.5x EV/Sales.
Cheap? Yes. A 10-paise rupee? No.
EBITDA doesn't cover interest.
Q1 FY27:
EBITDA: ₹9.4 Cr
Finance cost: ₹37.5 Cr
Net loss: ₹60 Cr
That's ~₹240 Cr of annual losses on a ~₹133 Cr market cap. And post-Ind AS EBITDA excludes rent.
Liquidity is the real constraint.
Filings flag a ~₹999 Cr consolidated current-liability shortfall.
Promoter support is likely, but a pref issue at ₹15 dilutes minority holders. That's not a re-rating trigger.
Watch out for SOTP double-counting.
Jiffy's GMV already sits inside standalone sales. You can't value "core retail" and then add Jiffy on top.
The parts may be worth ~₹900 Cr. Subtract ₹900 Cr+ of debt and equity is near zero.
The stock went from ~₹35 to ₹14.8. Find out why before calling it mispriced.
Dilution? Rights issue? A big holder exiting? The market usually knows something.
How to frame it: a high-risk turnaround option, not a value stock.
Track:
• EBITDA after rent
• Interest cover
• Net debt per quarter
• Terms of any promoter infusion
The growth is real. The equity math isn't yet.
Not investment advice.
Spencer retail : Cmp INR 14.8
Our View
Extreme Valuation Dislocation: Spencer’s Retail Limited (SRL) is priced for terminal distress at ~0.1x Market Cap-to-Sales (INR 131Cr Market Cap vs. ₹1,878 Cr annualized Q1 FY27 revenue), despite having completed its toughest operational cleanup.
Inflection from Restructuring to Growth-Led Operating Leverage: Having exited cash-burning North and South India clusters to fortify East India and UP, SRL delivered 13% YoY / 8% QoQ consolidated revenue growth (₹469.5 Cr) and doubled consolidated EBITDA YoY to ₹9.4 Cr in Q1 FY27.
Three Embedded Value Engines: At ~131 crore equity value, institutional investors acquire a ₹1,630+ Cr core regional grocery leader, a ₹236 Cr annualized Quick-Commerce engine (Jiffy) that has turned contribution-positive, and India’s premier luxury grocery franchise (Nature’s Basket) at zero implied standalone value.
1. The ~0.1x Price-to-Sales Re-Rating Math & Asymmetric Payoff
Deepest Discount in Indian Organized Retail: Indian grocery and value retail peers trade at 1.5x to 6.0x+ Price/Sales (and 1.2x–4.5x EV/Sales). Even accounting for consolidated debt and lease liabilities, SRL’s equity value represents a sliver (~10.5%) of its annual top-line.
Operating Leverage Math on Equity Value:
On a ~₹1,950–2,000 Cr FY27E revenue base, every 100 bps expansion in consolidated EBITDA margin generates ~₹20 Cr of incremental EBITDA—equivalent to ~10% of the company’s entire current market cap.
A normalization of Market Cap-to-Sales from 0.10x to a distressed turnaround multiple of 0.30x–0.40x implies an equity valuation of ₹585–780 Cr (3x–4x upside) without requiring heroic top-line assumptions.
RP-Sanjiv Goenka (RP-SG) Group Backstop (58.81% Stake): Strong promoter backing ensures working capital continuity; any balance-sheet deleveraging, promoter pref issue, or strategic monetization of Nature’s Basket serves as an immediate equity re-rating trigger.
2. Sum-of-the-Parts (SOTP) Valuation Framework
— Core Spencer’s Brick-and-Mortar Cluster (East & UP): ~₹1,400+ Cr Offline Run-Rate
Standalone Revenue: ₹407.9 Cr in Q1 FY27 (+18% YoY, +8% QoQ; 14% offline SSSG).
Volume-Led Recovery: ~70% of growth driven by transaction bills/footfalls and ~30% by Average Bill Value (ABV), lifting Sales Per Sq. Ft. (SPSF) to peak festive levels (₹1,850/sq. ft.) in a non-festive quarter.
Implied SOTP Value: Valuing the stabilized East/UP offline cash-register at a conservative 0.5x EV/Sales (or 0.25x P/S post-debt adjustment) alone justifies ₹350–400 Cr in enterprise value.
"Jiffy" Asset-Light Quick Commerce: ~₹236 Cr Annualized GMV Run-Rate
Rapid Scale at Zero Dark-Store Capex: Q1 FY27 GMV jumped 47% YoY to ₹59 Cr (~14.5% of standalone sales), fulfilling sub-30-minute orders directly from existing large-format neighborhood stores.
Unit-Economics Turnaround: Swung from -₹18/order loss (Q1 FY26) to +₹18/order positive contribution (Q1 FY27), supported by a ₹780+ ABV, 66.9% customer retention rate, and an Order NPS of +84 (4.62-star rating). Marketing burn in the digital subsidiary (ORIPL) was slashed from ₹11 Cr to ₹6 Cr YoY.
Implied SOTP Value: Pure-play quick-commerce platforms command 3.0x–5.0x GMV. Even at a 70% conglomerate discount (1.0x GMV), Jiffy represents ~₹235+ Cr of embedded value—exceeding SRL’s entire current market cap.
"Nature’s Basket" Luxury Gourmet Franchise: ~₹237 Cr Annualized Run-Rate
Scarcity Value in Metro Gourmet: 31 prime stores across Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, and Kolkata generating ₹59.3 Cr in Q1 FY27 (+8% QoQ recovery post inventory/assortment reset).
H2 FY27 Growth Catalyst: With high-margin gourmet categories (~28–29% gross margin band) restored, management guides for double-digit YoY growth from Q3 FY27.
Implied SOTP Value: Acquired for ₹300 Cr in 2019; at 1.0x–1.2x Sales, Nature’s Basket commands ₹240–285 Cr in standalone strategic/brand value.
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