ICICI Direct Muhurat picks 2011

1. Bharti 

2. Biocon

3. HDFC Bank

4. HPCL

5. ITC

Voltas

As soon as I think of this company, I think of air conditioners. Is this company worth current market capital of 3500 Cr just for selling ACs?

A - Electro-Mechanical products and services

B - Engineering products and services

C - Unitary Cooling products (ACs)

This company does more than that. 

More than 50% of the business is from EMP or MEP services - Voltas is still seen as a HVAC player in India. HVAC contracts would be offered by airports, metro train stations, malls, IT parks, hospitals, industry floors, games stadias, etc. Voltas would essentially have to design and implement heating, ventilation and air conditioning contracts. Voltas may get other parts of the project as well such as plumbing, electrical work, fire and safety, environmental control system, etc. Full fledged MEP contracts are still not common in India, but are common in developed countries. The company has been winning and executing waste water and air quality projects in environmental engineering. Middle east is a major market for Voltas' MEP projects.

Around 10% of the revenues come from the engineering services. Voltas manufactures textile machinery - spinning, weaving, knitting and dyeing. The company also manufactures mining and construction equipment - crushing, screening, mining loaders, crawler cranes and large excavators. Materials handling equipment are also manufactured by Voltas.

The remaining 35% of the revenues for Voltas are from ACs. They have all types of models in the market and a very good distribution network. This is a very competitive market, esp from foreign brands.

Gold - Who sells gold?

In India, everyone I know only buys gold. No one sells them. Glitter of gold is always invigorating to the average Indian female. From my pea brain, I also know that women from Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malasia, Philipines and African countries such as South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe are also gold crazy. 

Governments, banks and even some huge organizations hoard gold assuming gold is a safe haven. What do they even do with that? they just spend on a huge security system and an strong vault which would keep the value locked in it. What happens if gold price falls a bit - they still hold it.

More than women and governments, there are these ETFs which buy gold on behalf of many investors (investors are both people and organizations). This is the category which really manipulates the price of gold. The ease which with you can buy or sell ETFs make this crazy market even crazier. 

So, when I sit back and read that Marc Faber expects prices to go down to $1500 or even lower to $1100, I am angered at the ETF investor who has both been pumping in money when gold was lower and sell when gold was higher.