Stilltitled

Proclivity
Social Graph Symposium

The sector had just gotten stupidly cheap. And on any kind of loss-adjusted basis, stuff is still really cheap. If you didn’t know about the last few months, you’d never know how it’s gotten here. You can run some pretty draconian scenarios and get awfully high yields still.

You’ve seen some healing, you’ve seen risk-taking come back, you’ve seen balance sheets improve. Just the fact that stock markets are up as much as they are, you’ve recreated a tremendous amount of equity in the world, so I think you’ve started to see people in a position where they can actually put funds to work.
—Scott Simon of Pimco

It’s a more constructive market. What we saw last week was only a necessary pause, not the beginning of a retracement. The worst of the economy is behind us and it’s hard to see earnings getting any worse from here.
—Hank Smith, who helps oversee $5 billion as chief investment officer of Haverford Trust Co. in Radnor, Pennsylvania

While profit shrank 37 percent from a year earlier at the 445 companies in the S&P 500 that reported quarterly results since April 7, Bloomberg data show they beat analysts’ estimates by an average of 9.3 percent.
—Bloomberg

roughly 420m Indian voters have produced the best possible outcome for India in the largest election of world history.
—FT: Ashutosh Varshney, Professor at Brown University

Markets are euphoric. The focus by federal and state governments on development will lead to a structural re-rating of India. We needed a stable government especially in the context of the global environment, which is still challenging. We need the government to kick-start the economy.
—Rahul Chadha, Hong Kong- based head of Indian equities at Mirae Asset Global Investment, $46b AUM

The election result is extremely positive and very, very bullish.This will provide a government which is stable and has powers to take decisions. Bull markets are back, unless we see complete chaos in global markets. India will outperform over the next one to three years.
—Madhusudan Kela, head of equities at Mumbai-based Reliance Capital Asset Management, the nation’s largest money manager, with $18b AUM

will hold for some while, but then the question will be what does the government do. [The overwhelming victory] has suddenly made people build into valuations a possible structural reform in all sorts of different sectors.
—Nicholas Field, a London-based emerging-markets money manager who helps oversee about $12 billion at Schroders Plc

::Bloomberg on India’s stock market, following the election

We can form the government without the Left. We’re not looking at the Communists at the moment…they do carry an ideological baggage and sometimes that is a problem, which is a deterrent to economic reforms. Of course, if we have to do business with them, then we will have to negotiate with them the terms of business. They left. We did not throw them out.
—Kamal Nath, Indian Trade Minister, May 15

I don’t think Congress will make the mistake of wanting to form a government with the Left again unless all other strategies have been exhausted.
—Prem Shankar Jha, an independent political analyst and former aide to former prime minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh

This is an absolute game changer. It can truly move India in a much faster pace to where it deserves to be in the global economy. There were so many major initiatives that were sidelined. It will have a phenomenal boost on the Indian economy this year and next.
—William Nobrega, the co-author of ‘Riding The Indian Tiger’

This is good for India and good for the world.
—Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Pune-based Bajaj Auto

We’re going to be looking at everything in the light of the current economic recession worldwide. [policies that] generate employment and that do not displace people. [government is not bringing any] unfinished reform agenda [into its new term]
—Kamal Nath in the WSJ, May 18

We will have to be cautious about financial sector reforms. Some of the icons of the financial world who were advocating financial reforms have closed shop. We have to be cautious this time…With the global economy in recession and the western economies in disarray, India has to focus on a domestic demand and domestic investment driven economy. We believe that it is even more important to conclude the Doha round as one of the measures to extricate the global economy from going into a tailspin and India is willing to play a leadership role in this.
—Kamal Nath’s interview from Reuters

We will take the reforms agenda forward, but not at the cost of development and not at the cost of state firms
—Congress leader Prithviraj Chauhan

There’s a real sense of urgency in taking this event and translating it into tangible results. If we don’t see some positive signs on an improving fiscal deficit in relatively short order, we could end up again with a weaker equity market, a weaker rupee and reduced confidence in the government’s ability.
—Nick Chamie, global head of emerging-markets research at RBC Capital Markets in Toronto

They’ll have a honeymoon of six to eight months. As long as they’re delivering on some of the expectations, the markets will hold the gains. They have to make the right start.
—John Praveen, chief investment strategist at Pramerica International Investments Advisers, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc. in Newark, New Jersey

Among the key reforms will be disinvestment now – the new government will focus on fiscal responsibility. The key issue will be for the government to balance the need for additional fiscal stimulus with a credible plan for fiscal consolidation.
—Rajeev Malik, an economist at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Singapore

Now the Congress party can rule with a minimum number of coalition partners and with a mandate for reform. This is exceptionally good news for India.
—Rory Medcalf, an India specialist at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney

Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually. It has both moral and spiritual dimension.
—Obama at Notre Dame

The rise of the casual entrepreneur and the pursuit of the unconventional

People think entrepreneurs are risk-loving. Really what you find is successful entrepreneurs hate risk, because the founding of the enterprise is already so risky that what they do is take their early resources, the small amounts of capital that they have, whatever assets they have, and they deploy those resources systematically, eliminating the largest risk first, the second-largest risk, and so on, and so on.
—Jeff Bezos