Sunday, 30 October 2016

CONTRARIAN STRATEGY A CASE OF SATYAM COMPUTERS

Kirubakaran Rajendran
Kirubakaran Rajendran, Stock Market Trader,Founder - www.squareoff.in
I still remember the day, it was 7th Janurary 2009. At that time, I was working at Infosys, I dont exactly remember the time news came out, I was about to start to office.
I was watching CNBC, Satyam, ICICI and Yes Bank were list of stocks i was trading for short term during that time. But i booked some losses and exited satyam when the maytas news was out. So I use to keep watching the price of these stocks often. All of a sudden there were flash news in all channels and Satyam was the reason. All the anchors were reading out the letter written by Raju. And the stock price started falling rapidly.
I did not understand anything what the anchor was talking about, at that time Satyam Computers were in Futures and Options, so there are no circuit filters for this stock.
I was in state of shock, since i never witnessed such a fall in stock price before, the put option price was soaring like anything. But still I couldn’t come out of this shock, i couldn’t make any trading decisions.
In another few mins, other than business channels all other channels including regional Tv started telecasting the news. I was thinking how could this happen to Satyam Computers? Because during my college days, many of my friends have attended campus interview and got job placements at Satyam, i was thinking whats gonna happen to them and what would happen to 1000s of employees?
By the end of day, the stock has fallen from 188 to 40, it has lost 78% in just one day. The next day it even went down further and reached Rs.6.
I still remember, the talks I had with my team lead at food court. “Even a single Tea at Infosys food court cost Rs.12 which is higher than Satyam Share price” For that complete week, where ever i go, the tea master, parota master, bakery guy, everyone said the same thing.
“Today its Satyam, tomorrow it could be Infy or Wipro or TCS”
Once the dust settled, by the time when Mahindra acquired Satyam, the stock moved from Rs.6 to Rs.130 in less than one year. More than 2000% returns in less than a year.
All great investments or trades always happens when there is a great Panic in the markets!

No comments:

Post a Comment