Dons of Indian bourses

Jhunjhunwala grew up in Mumbai, India where his father is posted as an Income Tax Officer. He graduated from Sydenham College and thereafter enrolled at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Jhunjhunwala is the chairman of Aptech Limited and Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. and sits on the board of directors of various Indian companies such as Prime Focus Limited, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Limited, Bilcare Limited, Praj Industries Limited, Provogue India Limited, Concord Biotech Limited, Innovasynth Technologies (I) Limited, Mid Day Multimedia Limited, Nagarjuna Construction Company Limited, Viceroy Hotels Limited and Tops Security Limited.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala Success Story from 5k to 1.8$ Billion

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, the name that needs no introduction. The legendary investor who is known as the Warren Buffet of India. Lets check out the success story of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and his journey from 5000 Rs to 8000 Crore.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala was born on 5th July 1960. He father was an Income tax officer. His father was interested in stocks and used to discuss about the stock market with his friends. Rakesh as a child would listen to them. Once he asked his father why the price fluctuate. He told him to check the news, it makes the price to fluctuates. This was his first lesson of stocks market. He got fascinated by stocks and found it interesting. He expressed his wish to get into stock market to his father. He told him to do whatever he wanted in life but at least get professionally qualified. Rakesh then took up chartered accountancy and completed his CA in 1985.

After completing the CA he told his father that he wanted to go in the stock market. His father reacted by telling not to ask him or any of his friends for money. Earn and trade with your money. He started his career in 1985 when the BSE Sensex was at 150. He made his first big profit of Rs 0.5 million in 1986 when he sold 5,000 shares of Tata Tea at a price of Rs 143 which he had purchased for Rs 43 a share just 3 months prior. . Between 1986 and 1989 he earned Rs 20–2.5 million. His first major successful bet was iron mining company Sesa Goa(now Sesa Sterlite). He bought 400,000 shares of Sesa Goa in forward trading, worth Rs 10 million and sold about 2-250,000 shares at Rs 60–65 and another 100,000 at Rs 150–175. The price rose to Rs 2200 and he sold some shares.

Jhunjhunwala bought 6 crore shares of Titan in 2002-03 at an average price of around Rs 3. The stock is currently trading at 390 Rs level and his investment value is now 2100 crore, which made around 35 lakh per hour for him. In 2006 he bought lupin around 150 Rs which is now trading at 1100 levels. He bought crisil around 200-300 levels which is now at 1800. Likewise there are so many stocks in his portfolio that made huge money for him.

His philosophy

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala believes in power of mistakes. He says its the mistakes that made him to learn and become a better investor. he says. “If you don’t believe the markets are supreme, you will never admit that it was your mistake. If you don’t admit that it is your mistake, you will never learn. To succeed in the stock market, not only is the ability to learn from one’s mistakes vital, he says, but also to blame only oneself for it. “I don’t blame the promoters of companies. I blame myself. The promoter is what he is. I have to recognise that. He is not what I expect him to be.” Jhunjhunwala says what he has learnt in life is to try and earn money in trading and to invest it in stocks.

His believe on India

Jhunjhunwala says he is bullish on the country growth since he entered the stock market. He insists the Indian economy will grow by 9-10 percent, though that may need a transition of two to three years. Jhunjhunwala’s thesis is that Indians will save $1 trillion a year, and even if 10 percent of that money—$100 billion —flows into the markets, there will be a tsunami on the bourses. “So I remain bullish that, for the next 20 years, we could see a bull run like the one Wall Street had from 1987.”



His daily routine

He wakes up at 7.30 and does some exercise. At 9 am he watches TV to get update about market opening. At 10 he gets ready for work after having breakfast. Around 11.30 he reaches his office talks to his people, checks mails, reads articles and watch the trading screen. 4 PM onwards he meets the people at the end of the trading hours. At 7.30 he leaves for home, after reaching home he plays with his children and looks into his daughters homework. At 9.30 he takes dinner and after 10 goes to bed.

Radhakishan damani

He is a low-profile stock market veteran who invests on his own account. His portfolio includes a string of blue-chip stocks that he has been accumulating over the years. Notable holding is a 26 percent stake in cigarette maker VST Industries, an affiliate of British American Tobacco. A big chunk of his wealth also comes from hypermarket chain D-Mart, which he set up and grew into a chain of more than 70 outlets, mostly in western India. He has pledged $8 million to a Bangalore institute and $1.8 million to the new Ashoka University.

Fast Fact: His close friend is fellow investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (ranked 51) who refers to Damani as his 'guru'.

Mr Damani started his career as a trader in ball bearings, far from the battlefield of bulls and bears. Following his father’s death, he shut shop and joined his brother’s stock broking business, inherited from their father. Just 32 and lacking knowledge of market dynamics, Mr Damani’s only asset was his keenness to learn.

“He was not a value investor to begin with; he began his career in the stock market as a speculator,” says a Damani watcher. Mr Damani was quick to realise speculation was the not the best way to grow capital. Inspired by the legendary value investor Chandrakant Sampat, he started playing for the long term.

Often, his strategy was simple. When he bet on Indian Shaving Products (now Gillette), his reasoning was, “People will shave no matter what.” It took Mr Damani some time to gain a foothold, and several of his initial bets flopped. But he steadfastly refused to follow the herd, and concentrated on evolving trading strategies of his own.

Gradually, he began getting his calls right, and within the next couple of years he had joined the ranks of the big boys on Dalal Street. “Few players possess the kind of patience he does. But when he is convinced about any stock, he would buy his desired quantity in one sweep. And if he felt that a stock had run its course, he would dump his holdings at one go,” says an associate.

Also noted was his promptness in cutting losses. “Unlike many other players, ego would never get in the way of his booking losses,” says the associate. Mr Damani himself once said, “Cutting your losses is like performing a surgery on one arm with the other; painful, but it has to be done, otherwise the arm may have to be amputated.”

Mr Damani likes to keep a low profile. “He is not very articulate and does not communicate much, but he is a great listener. He patiently hears out everybody and never scoffs at any idea. It is a different matter that at the end of it all, he would back his judgement and instinct,” says the associate.

All along, Mr Damani made some great calls both on the long and short sides of the market. Yet, many players viewed him as a bear rather than a bull. “In India, anybody who is skilled at short selling is frowned upon, the general perception being that short sellers destroy value,” says a close friend of Mr Damani.

His limited circle of friends is said to include Dalal Street’s latest cult figure Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. Often, the market believed they hunted as a pair. Even if one of them was active at a counter, broking circles would say the duo was in it.

A string of successes notwithstanding, it was the epic battle of 1992, in which he emerged victorious, that would mark Mr Damani as a stock market legend. It was the battle with the Big Bull, Harshad Mehta.

Reining in the Big Bull

The flashy Harshad Mehta shot into prominence thanks to a daring rally that lasted the better part of 1991, only to eventually fizzle out in April 1992. Mr Damani, on his part, was bullish on the market only till February 1992. Even as the Big Bull was pumping up the shares, Mr Damani began to go short.

He reasoned blue chips had already run up a lot and fundamentals no longer justified the rally. What Mr Damani had not bargained for was the seemingly limitless supply of funds to Harshad Mehta. The market kept rising, but rather than cutting his losses, Mr Damani rode on his conviction and doubled up his short positions. “The market took off vertically between February to April, and RK was trapped badly,” recalls a veteran broker. “His losses were huge, and if the rally continued for a few more weeks, he may even have had to shut shop.”

But then, it emerged that Harshad had been siphoning off funds from the banking system and using them to buy stocks. When the scam got exposed, the market went into a tailspin. Mr Damani not only regained the lost ground, but walked away with a tidy profit.

Harshad Mehta was to lock horns with Mr Damani once more in 1998, but this time with fatal consequences for the Big Bull. Harshad now focused on three stocks, BPL, Videocon Industries and Sterlite. The prices of these shares touched dizzy levels even as the broader market fell. It was as though Harshad’s picks were defying gravity.

All the time, Mr Damani was biding his time on the sidelines. A disciple of the old school of investing, his assessment was that the stock price had run far beyond fundamentals. At the time he thought was right, he started building short positions.

Prices continued to climb and he had to square off some initial positions at a loss. But soon, signals came that the Big Bull was having trouble financing his positions. And Mr Damani moved in for the kill. He simply doubled his short positions, under the weight of which, the market caved in.

Panic set in. The prices of the three chosen stocks plunged 60%. Some brokers say exchange authorities even tried to bring together Mr Damani and Harshad for a compromise but the talks failed. “It would be wrong to say that RK’s call was motivated by a desire for revenge,” says a market watcher who once worked with Mr Damani.

“It was all about the price… He would have short sold those stocks irrespective of whoever had a bullish view on them,” he says.

When Mr Damani came to know that some small shareholders were left with positions they could not exit, he covered up a part of short positions by buying shares from these investors at a negotiated price. This was not the first time he had done such a thing. In the early 90s, Mr Damani had accumulated a pile of ACC shares.

When a payment crisis loomed, Mr Damani responded to a request from authorities and offloaded a part of his holding at a discount. He was among those probed by regulators for suspected price hammering, but was eventually given a clean chit.

Towards the fag end of 1998, the overall market sentiment began to improve. Before long, the market was in the grip of a bull run led by technology stocks, which would peak out in February 2000. RK continued to trade, but those close to him say he had already begun scaling down the number and size of his bets.

Was he preparing for a self-imposed exile from the market beginning somewhere in 2001 for the next few years? Friends say he was always passionate about retailing, but were there other factors also that influenced Mr Damani to retreat from Dalal Street?

After the stock market crash of 2001, bear operators were once again under the regulatory scanner, the allegation being that they had colluded to hammer stock prices. Needless to say, Mr Damani also figured on the list of suspects. “Like any other operator, RK made most of his money being on the long side of the market,” says a broker who knows Mr Damani for long.

“He had a finger on the pulse of the market and would not hesitate to sell short if the situation called for it. Unfortunately, his short (selling) calls attracted more attention than some of his long (buying) calls,” he says.

Some players say that Mr Damani found himself a bit out of depth during the technology boom of 1999-2000. He stuck to the classic rules of trading, short selling shares that he felt were over valued and going long on the under valued ones.

But stocks from the sectors that he had an sound understanding of, cement, automobile, steel, were out of favour. Technology was the buzzword at the bourse, and irrespective of whether those companies were making money or not, investors were falling over each other to buy into them.

And Ketan Parekh had now taken over the as the reigning Big Bull, and carved out a reputation for himself as a champion of new economy stocks. Mr Damani’s old school strategies did not work well for him in this period.

The comeback

If anyone had not noticed, Mr Damani’s right calls on Tata Steel and State bank of India made them aware of his return to the stock market this year. But this time, it has been a mixed bag of hits and misses, those close to him say. “Over the last one month, he has been as successful or unsuccessful as other players in his league,” says a Damani watcher.

It may be premature to judge the old fox when the markets have not shown a clear trend. India, like other equity markets around the world, has been volatile over the last month as a result of the crisis involving sub-prime loans in the US. It is anybody’s guess how things will go from here.

The market has also undergone a sea change during Mr Damani’s absence. The number of participants, stocks and liquidity have risen manifold. If there is greater transparency, there is also more volatility to contend with. Admirers or critics, everyone is impatient to know whether and how Mr Damani is going to pull it off this time.