IT Software Freelancing - Choosing a right buyer

We see numerous articles, blogs over the internet where people have written how to choose and select the right provider for the job.

Here is something opposite, its from the provider perspective on how to choose right buyer and their projects. I have been freelancing for over 5 years now and have applied and got projects from number of freelancing sites like odesk, guru and rentacoder.

If you have done your homework well, have good skill set and bid competitively and selectively then there a good chances of success in this fragmented world of software freelancing.
Speaking of success, what is general success rate?
My experience on bidding on project shows that if you qualify as a good freelancer, good success rate would be anywhere between 5 - 10%. Now that seems low, but actually it is not, here is a bit of breakup on where you bid goes:

1. Buyer selects you 5 - 10%
2. Buyer selects someone else 10 - 25 %
3. Bid goes waste 70 - 80% (yes that is right!!!)

The third includes - job expired, project itself canceled or project itself did not start after buyer selecting a provider.
There has been lot of profiling done on providers, their demographics, their competence, but seldom or never has the buyers been profiled (also because buyers profile unlike the providers is not publicly available).

Who is this typical entity on the other side of the fence (whom we would never meet, as most of the projects are transacted online with people in different geographies)?
Possible answers:

1. Would be a small company how does not want to go through the troubles of having physical presence in a different geography.
2. Would be a startup (but incorporated) company working on a new concept and has plans but not enough cash to hire full time employees.
3. Would be a stealth startup (not incorporated), taking a long shot on something, would be a one man show who is still busy in his full time job.
4. Would be a middle man trying to hire someone cheap for the local market to work on his clients projects.
5. Would be an individual like the provider, trying to get something done or taking a long shot at some concept.

As we see that 70 - 80% of the bids go waste, so unless buyer belongs to first two categories described above, there is a pretty good chance that your bid would end up in waste.

Freelancing market is still fragmented, there is still no sign of organized biggies of the IT and software world (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook etc.) entering this market. They either have their captive units in local or offshore markets or enter into defined contracts with offshore vendors for their IT needs be it support or development or services work.

I continue to believe that the startups that would be big tomorrow would still be the ones that have an energetic team physically located and working together at one place. Something like Google or even Facebook or Twitter cannot happen using offshore freelancers. So we as providers cannot hope for many long term, big budgeted projects and would have to bid regularly on small to medium size projects. Thus with all this background there comes a need to know where to bid, as actual projects are scarce and competition is high.

Here are some pointers that may help to choose the right buyer or project:

1. Every good freelancing site has steps to verify or review a buyer, like the payment verification, contact details verifications to know the entity is real. They usually stamp such buyers along with the projects they post. Look for these. Usually buyers under category one or two would have these.
   
2. Next comes the project description itself. There would be well defined scope of the project or well defined criteria for providers needed for that project. This shows they have plan and again buyers under category one or two would fit these. Ignore projects with clone of this or clone or that or where from the project description it is not clear what the buyer wants. Avoid projects with generic descriptions, which are so general that there would be many bids and in the end project would never take off.
3. Projects have clear guidelines on the time estimate i.e. duration, hours per week, no of providers needed or tentative budgets. Again buyers under category one or two have to go through this process for every project because they are incorporated and budgeting is needed for planning. Avoid projects with open or unsure budget duration. These would seldom take off ending your bid in waste.
4. Many freelancing sites give a brief work history of the buyers posted projects. Like how many projects he posted, how many got started, size of the projects etc. If someone has posted many projects but none took off you can assume he falls under the category 3 - 5. No point wasting your bid on that.

Thus by understanding the online freelancing world better and profiling the buyer better, you can improve your strike rate and spend more time working on right projects than bidding on waste projects.

Hope this helped!

Sachin

Easy solution to strip certain HTML elements using XSLT with Groovy

I won't waste much time explaining XSLT or Groovy. Refer the links associated with each to know more about these.

Problem in our hand is that we many times scrape html for existing sites to create one mashed up html. Many times we don't want certain html elements to be included in the resultant html. How do we do that? Fortunately XSLT comes to our rescue. Also on the implementation of XSLT engine I would be using Java based Groovy scripting language. Scripting languages are best to use when you want quick results. You can bootstrap the scripting engine quickly from your server and get the job done. Groovy is a very useful scripting language and now a web framework GRAILS based on Groovy has come up to help you develop web applications with minimal effort. I think in future this is going to be a serious competitor to much popular Ruby based RAILS framework.

So lets jump to the problem and its solution:
Problem we have is that from the html defined in input variable we don't want certain div elements to be included, in the resultant html.
We simply define a valid XSLT pattern for same.
Here it is: div[@id='ad*']
This simply means that exclude all divs whose id starts with 'ad'.

The solution is described in the Groovy script below.

import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource

def pattern = "div[@id='ad*']"
def input = """
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<div id="ad1x1">
this is NOT OK!
</div>
<div id="ab1x1">
this is OK!
</div>
<p>
this is OK!
</p>
</body>
</html>
"""

def xslt = """
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
  <!-- By default, copy all nodes unchanged -->
  <xsl:template match="@* | node()">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>
  <!-- but strip the matched ones -->
  <xsl:template match="${pattern}" />
</xsl:stylesheet>
"""

def factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance()
def source = new StreamSource(new StringReader(xslt))
def transformer = factory.newTransformer(source)
transformer.transform(new StreamSource(new StringReader(input)), new StreamResult(System.out))

So as you can see defining pattern is so simple, all you need is some html element and its attributes to match for exclusion.
The resultant html after transformation would have the same input html minus the excluded elements.

Hope you found this useful.

Any comments feel free to contact me.

Sachin

Always invest for future but don't forget the past

Investing is always done keeping future in mind. When today I invest in any business I am mostly interested in what the cash flows would be in future. Based on these estimated cash flows I come up with my intrinsic value of the business and then based on what market is offering me I decide on my buying decision. The business may have done great in past, however if I somehow feel that the past performance can no longer be replicated I won't buy into that business no mater how attractive its current price is relative to its past earnings.
As Mr. Warren E. Buffet rightly puts: If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

P/E or price to earnings ratio is one of the commonly used yardstick to evaluate any business. The question here is what P/E we should use trailing or forward. Most rookie investor blindly follow trailing P/E. This is very easy to calculate and can be calculated fairly accurately. Business may (deceptively) look very attractive on this parameter, however when there is no visible earning potential in future, soon it turns out to be very expensive. What mostly happens is that earnings fall sharply and then even with little or no fall in price the P/E ratio becomes very high and same business which looked cheap a year back now looks very expensive and all we are left with is holding a dud business.

So should we use forward P/E? Math isn't simpler here too! Forward P/Es are not easy to estimate and each analyst comes up with his own estimates of same business. Whats even more dangerous is that every month depending upon cheer or gloom in the market, they continue to revise their own estimates of P/E. Investor ends up even more confused with all these flip/flops.

Evaluating individual business based on P/E does no good. One should not pay too much attention to this parameter at the time of buying a business. What one can do is look at the business you 'really' understand and use your own experience and judgment to estimate future cash flows of the business. Discount them at an appropriate discounting rate to come up with intrinsic value of that business. This exercise has to be done in complete isolation from market. Don't do such a thing like if market price is 100 and then you say that my acceptable entry price would be 80, this way you are nothing but a slave of market moods and all you would end up is speculating and not investing per say. If your honest valuation comes to 50 even if current market price is 100, stick to that and one day you would find that same business quoting below your valued price. Buying a business quoting a discount of your estimated intrinsic value and not at a discount of current market price is a better way of making expected returns from the market.

What I have so far mentioned has lot of subjectivity attached to it like 'business you really understand', 'honest estimation of cash flows', but again investing itself is subjective in nature and not objective or algorithm driven like many people assume it to be.

As I mentioned at start that past numbers don't translate to same for future, you should still look at a business's or company's past. A business which acts like a black hole for capital would continue to do so in future too and keep on raising or sucking more capital year on year to survive. A business which hasn't gone anywhere in past 10 years is unlikely to go somewhere in next 10 years too. A business run by dishonest management would continue to churn out fraudulent numbers in future too in order for growth to appear real. So if a business has done good things in past there are good chances that good things would happen in future too, provided surrounding conditions are still favourable for that business to survive (which your understanding of that business should tell).


The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.

Sachin

Would Opera's new move take browsers and eventually WWW to a new level?

I have long been big believer of peer to peer type of network model than client-server or cloud based model. Reason I think so is that unlike before there is not much difference between client and server. Client i.e. you personal computer today has sufficient CPU and memory capacity to act like a server. Also with advances in communication technology we get high speed broadband right at our doorstep. The difference between client and server is narrowed down a lot as compared to what it was two decades back. Same machine acts as server at some places and is used at client at some places. Thus every machine is essentially a peer to others.

Most of the current and new web 2.0, is still working on a client server model and now a new buzzword called cloud model. Do we really need some centrally located servers or cloud of servers for our basic needs of networking, when same can be done right from our desktops or now even from mobile and other hand held devices. All we need is that these machines should be uniquely identifiable or have an IP address. We then can run a server right where we are and then these servers do the job of connect to other such clients and in a way build a peer to peer network. Skype is a good example of same and torrent based file sharing another. They all run on this peer to peer logic and are fairly popular.

Next step is to make general www peer to peer. I think first step here is taken by Opera. They have come up with a concept called opera unite. What opera has done is that it has placed web server at every client. This way everyone runs their own host device, with their own applications running on their own hardware, which can then be accessed from anywhere using any web browser. All this is to be rolled into their web browser. Opera is also providing extensive documentation to developers to create their own 'unite' applications and make it available www wide. Only drawback is that all peer to peer connection would be routed through the unite proxy. I think with time this limitation would be circumvented and internet would really be peer to peer they way it was originally envisioned.

Would other browsers particularly Mozilla's firefox join the bandwagon. If they do so then there would really be a need to standardize a p2p protocol to enable cross browser communication. Is this next step towards web 3.0 or semantic web, I don't know, but sure something to look forward.

Some of the web transactions still need to be client server, however much of the social networking which we do today can easily be done peer to peer (after all this is what social networking is about - peer to peer interaction). Would this change or endanger the current social networking platforms, I don't know, users would decide that.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken!

Sachin

JQuery combobox plugin fixed for IE7

A useful JQuery plugin to display HTML Select element has been developed by Sanchez Salvador and team. Latest version can be downloaded from here (0.1.2.7). The plugin is good and fulfills the need of having a uniform select boxes across browsers.
However the latest version when tried on IE7 was causing page to jump whenever we selected any dropdown box. The reason was that the implementation was done by using focus and blur events of Javascript on the div wrapping the select box. In IE7 what happens is that when we focus any div, it cause page to auto scroll to the view where div is located causing page jumps. The same used to work fine on earlier versions of IE namely IE6. The same also works fine on FF2 and FF3. It seems that as MS upgrades the version of their IE they make many fundamental changes, which causes developers like us to rewrite certain parts of our applications to support them on their newer versions.
IE infact has few other bugs too, namely handling on z-index of CSS, which I think they have fixed it in IE8 (making it W3C compliant). For fix of this we had to patch using IFrames. There are some more issues like setting min/max-height/wdith is not possible in IE. For these too there are some custom fixes of patch available. Maybe thats the reason why browsers like FF are more popular with development community. I hope IE sticks closer to w3c standards in their coming versions.

Anyway coming back to the issue with the JQuery combobox plugin on IE7, this issue of page jump has been fixed, by changing the implementation of dropdown show/hide using mouse click events instead of using focus/blur.

The latest package can be be download from here (0.1.2.8). I am calling this version 0.1.2.8.
So if you are a user of this plugin and have been facing this problem in IE7, this version may help you. If you have any problems feel free to contact me.

Thanks
Sachin

update: Please download this link for a bug fix.
update: The JQuery combobox plugin made compatible with jQuery version 1.3.x. Please download it again from this link for the latest copy.
update: The JQuery combobox plugin made compatible with jQuery version 1.7.x. Please download it again from this link for the latest copy.

How big can Indian IT services market grow

Today I was reading an interesting article. This is by our own NASSCOM. Some of the key numbers in this article are:
1. We exported $47 Billion worth IT software and services in this fiscal year.
2. Domestically we consumed around $13 Billion worth of IT software and services this fiscal year.
3. That makes current size of our IT software and services market to be around $60 Billion.
4. This sector now employs around 2 - 3 Million workers, which today is still a very tiny fraction of around 200 - 240 Million non-agricultural workers we have to feed.

We have big hopes from this sector. Some pundits have said what Oil did for middle east and Manufacturing did for China, IT is going to do that for India.

As I scroll down the article, I find global IT software and services sector to reach $1200 Billion by year 2012. Assuming some growth after that too, it should reach around $1500 by year 2020.
Assuming outsourcing to India is still a preferred option by then and we capture 10% of the market, our size of IT market is going to more than double to $150 Billion. I think that is a reasonable estimate of size of Indian IT market in next decade or so (a decent long term view point).
We are employing around 2 - 3 Million workers now, it may generate maximum employment for say 10 Million workers by then, which again would be a tiny fraction of some 300 Million non-agricultural workers at our hand.

If we ascribe this size to our Indian IT market, then lets look at a valuation of one of the leading listed Indian IT company.
It has a market cap of $20 Billion and revenues of $4 Billion. So it has a share of around 6 - 7% of total IT revenues in this sector. If we grow to $150 Billion by 2010 and this company maintains same percentage share, it would have revenues of $10 Billion by then. What would be its profit margin. That depends a lot on following factors:
1. Labor cost
2. Rent of Land cost
3. Last but not the least value of Dollar against Indian Rupee.

Would the exchange rate stay at around 45 Rs/$ or reduce to a lower level. With so much of dollars printed recently its hard not to justify a lower rate.

Assuming a liberal 20% margin by then it would earn around $2 Billion. So we are today valuing a company at 10 times what it may earn more than 10 years from now. Is this something justified. Well all depends upon our risk perception. Also depends with how much confidence you can predict a long term earning profile of a company. Given a lot of risk factor to exchange rates and also given a liberal estimates for the size of IT industry and this company's revenues, I might not like to pay more that $5 - 6 Billion for its entire business. Today its valued at $20 Billion.

Certainly Indian IT industry has a long way to go forward. I am very positive on Indian IT sector in general. However I also feel that valuation of many companies are done with a lot of optimism.

To conclude by a quote from Mr. Warren E. Buffet:
It is optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.

Sachin

Its just mean Baby!

Any trend usually tends to converge to its mean. In stock markets the index which represent weightage average of basket of stocks is no different. Indexes are made of individual stock prices. Stock price is a measure of valuation of the company's business. It simply says what investors are willing to pay for an equal pieces of residual interest in that company's business. Residual interest is the value left for common shareholders after all the debt and other obligations are paid to respective holders. So its a value of the company's business and sum total of all such companies businesses give an indication of what economy of a country is worth, or at least the trend of that economy. That is, if in long run companies are more profitable than previous years, economy would more or less be positive and these companies would attract increasing valuation or higher stock price as time goes. So in a nutshell the trend of economic growth and stock markets growth should co-relate in long term.

Our country's economy is usually measured by GDP numbers. GDP comprises of agricultural sector, services sector and industrial sector. Most of the companies listed in stock exchange are in services or industrial sector which today comprises 80 - 85% of GDP numbers. Thus any trend of stock market index should match the trend of GDP growth. However we all know this is far from true. Stock marks gyrate from huge bullish rallies to great bearish depression. How can we use this gyration to our advantage in making investments decision. Answers lies in 'return to mean'. Any significant deviation from the mean is followed by reversal which converges towards that mean.

Before showing on how this is valid or how we can use it, first let us approximate the mean growth of business of companies which would translate to growth rate of stock market's index. Our GDP would grow at an average rate of 7 - 9% for foreseeable time in future. Even long term average of past 15 years of growth is around these range. We add to that 4 - 5% of average inflation. That makes growth in business of companies around say 13%. Which is roughly the rate at which one should expect stock market indexes to grow.

Now lets see how as our Stock Market's most prominent index, BSE - Sensex has performed since start of 1991.
Blue line is the index value and red line is what index should have been if it strictly followed the 13% growth.
So you can see at times it was greatly above this red line and at times was much below it. However every time is crossed this mean, it eventually reverted.

1992 - 1994 were bullish times followed by a bearish market 1997 to 1998. Markets again turned bullish briefly during 2000 (dot com bubble) and then engulfed in a prolonged bearish market during recession of 2001 - 2004. We again saw economic revival post 2004, thanks to trillions of dollars pumped into the market by central banks across the world. This money trickled into India via FIIs and then we saw an unprecedented bull market which lasted till 2008. During this time markets deviated from its mean like never before. What was the result, as markets deviated from its mean like never before, they fell towards that mean like never before. The recession of later half of 2000 caused panic worldwide. If somehow we could have avoided the temptation to commit ourselves at start of 2006 when this frenzy began and had lot of patience then we would have again had the oppertunity to make some wonderful investments three years later. Anyway hindsight is always 20/20, but does offer some lessons.
Come start of 2009, we were at last seeing some sanity towards valuations of companies. However they were still not at those juicy level witnessed in 2002 - 2003 (just look how low below mean markets fell that time). However this sanity lasted only few months, thanks to next round of even bigger chunks of money pumped by the very same central banks. Much of this money was pumped in to revive the economies worldwide and now this money is moving into the emerging markets like India. As you see markets have again bounced back away from the mean. So when would they return back to the mean, no one knows, but as history has shown they eventually would.

As an investors what we can do is, be wary of lofty promises and projections made by some companies to eat up this new pumped in capital. You would get a chance in future where once again you could buy pieces of wonderful businesses at attractive prices. There are good businesses around even now, however your returns from investments are largely dependent on the price you pay. If you are paying too much price for a piece of good business you may still loose money or better still your recovery horizon may last far longer than hoped for. So by stretching the time, why lower the rate of return.

I think what has been mentioned so far is nothing new. It has been iterated many time before and is something very simple to understand. So is investment, its simple but needs lot of temperament and patience. Its very easy to be swayed by next bull market, by looking at your neighbor making pile of money by dabbling in worthless stocks, but that's not a winners strategy. What would lead you greater wealth is stay clam, have a realistic expectations and do your homework right.

Remember:
It is more important to say "no" to an opportunity, than to say "yes".

Sachin

Investing - the web 2.0 way

We are using web 2.0 to collaborate, network and share ideas increasingly in our lives. We would be members of some or other social networking sites, registered to some or other groups and forums based on our interests. These activities may or may not help us in our professional and personal lives. All depends on how effectively we use the tools provided these platforms. Here is a look through on how web 2.0 can help us in making investments decision.

Firstly, join few forums or groups that have active discussions related to stock markets and investments in general. These may be found on some or other social networking platforms or sites that hosts forums and groups (like Yahoo and Google) or sites dedicated to stock markets itself.

Next, start screaming your stock tips in these boards, luring investors or traders to invest in your stock tips. This would lead to run (up) in the prices of the stocks you recommended. When they have sufficiently run (up) offload your holdings making a decent profit. (Ha Ha, just kidding)

Markets are usually gripped with excessive optimism or excessive pessimism. There are times when investors are ready to pay anything to get a piece of that worthless stock, and at times they are ready sell for anything to get rid of that blue chip stock. Market's behavior is very erratic and sudden. It takes no time to reverse the sentiment. If somehow we are able to watch and measure this very behavior we stand to make right investments decisions.

So how can web 2.0 help us here. In this connected world, news and sentiments travel quickly. By being part of right forums and groups, you can get access to information about markets. This would include personal views and opinions of fellow members, links to new articles mentioning what experts are saying that time and then many research reports by various investment houses. These give you holistic view point of what market mood is. Key lies in measuring the market mood. Its very much like thermometer is used to measure the body temperature, these forums and groups measure the markets temperature - how heated or how cold market is.

If you would have paid attention from start 2006 to end of 2007, views were generally optimistic in these forums and groups:
1. There were more board members participating.
2. There were more and more personal opinions and so called stock tips.
3. The links which posted (so called) experts take on market were generally positive.
4. Research reports in some or other twisted way project much higher growth and optimistic targets.
In short the good times were here to stay forever. This was different (was the undertone)
Such signs usually indicate market temperature is running high and time is to stop making further commitments (without much deliberation) into the market.

Come later half of 2008 to couple of months back, views were almost pessimistic now:
1. There was declining to the point absolutely nil participation from board members.
2. Every one was predicting doom and you could hear sad stories of they portfolios.
3. The links which posted (so called) experts take on market were now revised to new (further) lows.
4. Research reports in some or other twisted way project everything to a lower level than what currently was.
In short it was like end of the world has come and we are going to stagnate forever.
Such signs usually indicate market temperature is running low and time is to start making further commitments (with deliberation of course!) into the market.
So those who gauged the market sentiments correctly and did invest when no one was investing sure must be feeling lucky and happy today.

Also you would notice that now market temperature is slowly rising as the activities in these groups and forums is coming back to previous highs (so are the markets!). Whereas economy has still not recovered.

So being glued to right piece of information on web 2.0 and using that information in making investments decision helps (or not), only time would tell. In my personal opinion this does help. You don't need to watch those TV channels or spend time and money on countless seminars and workshops, just the ubiquitous web 2.o is enough to bring everything to your screen. Whats important is how you like to use that information.

I end by famous quote by Mr. Warren E. Buffet:
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

Sachin

Raise, don't Earn - seems to be the motto of the street

Indian stock market's sentiment turned bullish from (a prolonged) bearish one in the month of May. Single event responsible was the Left parties failure to gain any significant seats in the parliament to influence government formation or its policies. The 'Dalal' street was euphoric with this development. They perceived it as a major boon to our economy. Now government would be able to implement privitisation in many select sectors (even upto 100%), and disinvestment of many Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs). This would eventually lead to more foreign money in form of FDI and FII coming into Indian markets. So far they have not been wrong. Awash with fresh capital, thanks to trillions of dollars pumped into the system by developed countries, insitutional investors (FII) brought in record 3 billion dollars in just 2 weeks, with 1 billion dollar in a single day. Result was obvious, major stock market indexes have run up 25 - 30% in this time.

With so much of 'hot' money sloshing in the markets, everyone is racing to grab it. After over one and half years of severe winter we have seen spring. No one knows how long it would last till next winter sets in. So just get your hands filled with whatever you can! Raise, don't earn is the new motto of the street these days. Today no one is talking that are going to earn this much in coming season or if companies earn this much then markets would rise these many points. All the talks are in the lines of we are going to raise this much or market pundits saying if markets can raise this much then it would rise these many points. Suddenly it looks like future earnings no longer play any role in valuation or growth of a company.

Around two years back, some promoters of some companies were raising capital, today these are the very ones who are once again back to raise more. That time taking advantage of bull market, these shameless promoters sold worthless papers to gullible and greedy investors. When tide turned these promoters went into hibernation, nothing was heard from their companies in announcements as what their future plans are. What happened to the capital raised - no clear answers were provided. Meanwhile the investors holding their paper scrambled to dispose it. Now when (it seems) that market is out of woods, these very promoters are coming out of their hidings, again making the same old lofty announcements and using same old cheap tricks out of their dirty bags to once again raise the money.

We all remember these promoters issued themselves warrants worth millions of dollars when the market was bullish. Their 'purported' argument was that they believe in long term growth of the company and are committed to invest their money at some future. When market tanked and the price fell below the warrant issue price, they let it lapse. Talking about long term investment horizon of these people! They were just interested in cashing in the bull market, believing that market price would be higher than issue price at the time of conversion. Just after a month of getting their warrants lapsed, they are again issuing themselves these warrants albeit at a lower price. Who are they kidding! With so ease they let these warrants lapse (and then re-issue, like a library book) that some time I wonder that do they really make the upfront payment of 10% at the time of issue. No serious investor would let his hard earned money go down the drain this way.

So trick is so easy, claim to invest some by issuing warrants to themselves, then bring in more money by QIP and hope market price remains high. It mostly does in a bull market as issue price is higher than the current market price. If things don't go as planned then renounce the warrants and start the exercise all over again.

I think issue of warrants to promoters should be banned. If money is to be raised then it should be done the right way, i.e. let all shareholders participate via 'rights issue'. In many ways, I see these warrants are much worse than stock options scheme.

Well, till there are loopholes in the system which lets promoters take their company and rest of the shareholders for a ride, all we can do is be more watchful of events happening around us. With all focus shifted to raising money and earning none, be wary of such companies and promoters. We burnt our fingers once, but lets not do it twice.

Earning growth may remain muted for some years to come, as lot of trash piled up in the street has to be cleared first, which would take time.

So till then remember:
The higher they rise, the harder they fall!

Sachin