Breaking News from the Delhi Political Stock Exchange

The most favored capital in currency in an election season is sympathy and all politicians bank heavily on it. Traditionally, Indian voters have a lot of sympathy capital and it is for the political parties to lure them with an appropriate Initial Public Offering.

According to investment managers based out of Janpath Marg, Congress traditionally has an edge over mopping up the sympathy capital. And its 2014 IPO will be no different. “We expect the people to feel pity for the PM. ‘Poor fellow, Manmohan Singh, he is so powerless. Let us vote for him’ people will say and we are hoping on a sympathy wave for our PM.”

What of the BJP? Unfortunately, they have no Prime Ministerial leader for the people to sympathize with. There is of course Narendra Modi, but he is too strong a leader and investment managers are strategizing on how to invent a trade-off between strength and sympathy.  

Some venture capitalists suggest that Modi’s stock will soar the moment he goes to jail on account of Godhra riots. Then the voters will queue up for investing their sympathy capital in Modi. There is the danger that minority investors who don’t like Modi’s political model may choose to disinvest in BJP, but that is an investment risk.

The investment pattern of how people invest their sympathy capital has seen a paradigm shift. Earlier, for example, if Mom died, people voted her son. Today the voters have become more bullish, more risk-savvy and are willing to spread the sympathy capital much wider. Here are two examples of how sympathy capital was invested recently:

In AP, Jagan goes to jail for amassing wealth. But his party sweeps the Assembly By-elections. Reason: People sympathized with him.

In Karnataka, BSY is in and out of jail for amassing wealth. His party tolerates him, because the Lingayats sympathize with him, and they form a large investor base.

In Delhi, a lot of people go to jail but Delhi is a big buy investment and too big a market for a single IPO. However, market reforms like deregulation (Resort Politics), institutional investments (bulk buys), strategic alliances, debentures (power sharing), etc have widened the scope for the political investor class.

According to Standard & Rich rating agency, Congress has been downgraded from Negative to Sub-Negative that is just below junk bond status. The BJP is s yet to make the grade for ANY rating purpose, but still it is expected to give a run for the Congress’ junk bond ranking. However, new money is on regional parties like Jagan’s YSR, Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party, Mayawati’s BSP, Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK, and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U).

Though the Congress and the BJP are rated poor, investment gurus are betting their money on either of the two since they feel the regional players may not be able to come up with their own IPOs. The word on Parliament Street is that these regional parties might resort to investing in the mega UPA or the NDA IPO through the institutional investor route (bulk buying), or through strategic alliances.

Within the NDA, the BJP is willing to offer a convertible debenture (power sharing) to the parties supporting its IPO, while the Congress would prefer to lure them with a suitable Cabinet Portfolio Management. One advantage the Congress has is to leverage its CBI (Central Bureau of Intelligence) Resource though there is another contrasting view that its stock has actually crashed because of too much leveraging and therefore there is value now only in deleveraging the CBI.

Political trade analysts predict a lot of turbulence in the IPOs hitting in 2014 due to institutional investors changing their preferences, left, right and right-of-centre. Astute players like Ajit Singh are expert in gaining from arbitrage, viz. buying into UPA and selling out to NDA.

Speculators expect Narendra Modi to be a blue chip (he is already carrying a chip on his shoulder, viz. Godhra) but that could be overpricing his stock.

The TRS is keen to trade in derivatives. If it can derive a separate State for Telengana, it will subscribe to any IPO.

Sharad Pawar is inclined to hedge his subscription for all the IPOs, and then disinvest his stock in all but one IPO ruling at the moment.

Analysts have warned the investing public from falling into the traps of Psephologists saying too much insider trading will make any prediction impossible.

Small then could be the new Big by becoming a holding company for an agglomerate entity, like UPA, NDA, Third Front, etc.  The ordinary shareholder voter though finds himself squeezed between Big IPOs which are rated junk and Small Subsidiaries that are yet to be quoted in the Delhi Political Stock Exchange.

Hi,
Back from the dead literally - it is been such a long time since I posted. But I'll be doing it regularly from now. Here's something to lighten up...

How will I look when I die?

Who will cry when you die, Robin Sharma popped this question at me from one of his paperbacks. But first of all, I am wondering, how will I look when I die. My mom died with a smile. Honestly, I don’t know how she did it. My dad wore a reserved look – like always. What will I wear? I would prefer to look intellectual, wise, successful, famous – in short, all the things I am not. So what if I get caught? I won’t be there anyway. I am looking forward to see some of the most ghastly people I have come across at my funeral, the people who stopped me from being intellectual, wise, successful and famous. They will be intrigued! And I would have avenged them all at last.

One person I would like to see in particular is the idiot who said the more rejection slips you accumulate, the greater you will become as a writer. I have enough rejections to my credit (or rather, debit) to be deservedly known as Mr R (Rejected) among the editors. Many newspaper offices started ordering for paper shredder machines as my thoughtfully written and well read (by me) articles were pushing up their inventory costs.

Like Abdul Kalam, I always think big. I wanted to make a few crores in a few weeks. I knocked on all political parties seeking ANY ticket promising to make a big scam in the very first day of my taking office. I promised to defect, deny, run away to a resort, lie, cheat, watch porn in assembly, rape my maid if need be, rob, kill, loot, and also break all my promises without thinking half a nanosecond about them. They were impressed, but they said, “Show me the money first” and my dream of making rich died in a nanosecond.

I then worked as an attendant in a petrol bunk, dreaming of making it big like Dhirubhai Ambani. One day when I was striking a billion dollar deal with Ambani in one of my dreams, I accidentally set fire to the bunk. I did not die, but my friend did. I cried – as my dream went up in smoke.

I then wrote a crime novel with a self-addressed envelope for readers who wanted my free advice. Two copies got sold out (one by my best friend, and second by my worst enemy) after it hit the leftover roadside stands and they mailed the envelopes to the publisher with their own advice. For some mysterious reason, the publisher started publishing comics.

I requested Aamir Khan to audition me for a lead role in any of his films, or his pal’s films, or if he was in the mood for revenge, recommend me for his enemy’s films.  He politely set his six dogs after me.

I approached Rajnikanth and said I would like to give him a chance to donate a few crores to an ordinary man in need, since I had heard he was generous. Rumors! Never believe in them.

I then tried my hand as a motivational speaker like Dale Carnegie. After my stirring speech, no one turned up later. I thought they had had enough of motivation to hear more. My partner thought otherwise and his company folded up. I think all his clients must have had more than their fill of motivation.

I published a magazine which was eagerly awaited by my neighborhood paper dealer. I posted a fine article in my Facebook account and waited for millions to follow me from all over the world, but Mark Zuckerberg called me and demanded that I remove the post immediately for it was the only post that did not have a single follower for the past several years, even when people were paid to see the post. He said he would even pay me $100 dollars to remove it as it was hurting Facebook.

After sincerely having tried to do everything humanly possible, I then got the idea to simply look the rich-and-successful part. I can’t do it when I am alive, for that would be faking it. The only way to get away with doing it is when I am dead. I think only my doctor can suggest a way out. Is there a facial for the dead?