Samir Arora, whiz-kid fund manager with the Billion-dollar Helios Capital Fund, has two unique personality traits.
The first is that he is permanently bullish about Indian stocks. In fact, Samir gets mighty irritated at the fact that people are not investing all of their funds into stocks. This is best exemplified by the classic, sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek article that Samir Arora wrote in Outlook Business during the depths of the stock market crises in 2012. In that, Samir mocked retail investors for buying Enfield motorcycles, gorging on Jubilant Foodworks’ pizzas and watching movies in PVR Cinemas instead of buying stocks of the respective companies.
If we would have listened to Samir Arora’s wisdom at that time and bought stocks of the companies referred to by him, we would today be basking in untold riches!
Samir Arora’s second unique personality trait is that he is very blunt in his talk. He does not hesitate to speak his mind and let loose a barrage of criticism, no matter what the status or stature of the victim is.
Eminent film maker Ram Gopal Verma learnt this the hard way a few months ago when he became the victim of an acerbic tweet from Samir Arora for making a silly comment about cricket.
Whiz-kid Mohnish Pabrai is the latest to fall foul of Samir Arora’s vigilantism.
In his latest interview to valuewalk, Mohnish Pabrai was asked why he had not invested in Indian companies so far. Mohnish said “I had stayed away from India as most of the companies tend to be family owned and lots of them have governance issues and hence we didn’t prefer to invest in family controlled businesses”.
This comment got Samir Arora’s goat and he was quick to slam Mohnish:
Had stayd away fm India as most cos tend to b fmly owned & lots of them hv governance issues
Pabrai's pathetic excuse 4 not investing in IND
— Samir Arora (@Iamsamirarora) July 3, 2015
(Had stayd away fm India as most cos tend to b fmly owned & lots of them hv governance issues Pabrai’s pathetic excuse 4 not investing in IND)
Samir Arora continued ranting that Mohnish is “giving wrong reasons to run down” and “Why is bottom up investor giving such random excuses”. He added that Mohnish ought to have admitted that he “made a mistake” and not give “random excuses”.
Samir Arora was pacified only when someone reminded him that it is a good thing that heavy-duty investors like Mohnish Pabrai come in late and buy stocks when they are already 10x up. “i forgot that- yes i like that thought” Samir conceded.
To Mohnish Pabrai’s credit, it must be said that he appears to have realized his folly. He is trying to make up for it by going on a buying rampage and scooping up huge truckloads of quality stocks like South Indian Bank, J&K Bank, GIC Housing Finance and Rain Industries. Fortunately, some stocks like Rain Industries have also given Mohnish Pabrai handsome gains in the short period that he has invested in them.
This will undoubtedly have boosted Mohnish’s confidence level about Indian stocks and we can expect him to go into another buying binge soon.
At that stage, we hope to see a tweet from Samir Arora complimenting Mohnish Pabrai for his sensible action.
Looks like Samir Arora has found a new business. Of criticizing people on twitter. He better focus on his analysis rather than doing this nonsense else its just a matter of time before people start criticizing him
not just that. Pabrai has Invested in india in the greatest bargains. He is deep value and WB type, what can a childish, full of ego, over bloated manager who works for money understand…. Pabrai funds are going for IPO too, thats his level. Samir comments on others business, he is narrow in brain….help him, dont make him a big guy just because his interviews are interesting to watch on CNBC
He btw. is frustrated and is doing what Lalit Modi is doing in cricket using twitter. He never made money in this bull run, as he was adamant and stuck to few high quality shit like HDFC’s and the likes, he calls Indian market a copy of US market and that there is nothing original here. He mocks Ram Gopal Verma who is a genius and this guy know nothing abt. value investing……My god, this fellow seems a perfect jerk in our professional work, his attitude is also bad. He never got into cyclical I guess.
oldtimes know samir ver y very well!!
also he is too fond of that casino co what is the name
ya delta
Mohnish has bought a lot of J&K Bank. You think its a “quality” stock ?? 🙂
It is. We will see the movement soon. I agree he might have misjudged the downside. But who doesn’t. Pabrai is a type of investor who will go against the crowd and he will go very aggressively. Look at his investment in Chrysler. It consist of 35% of his portfolio. have you heard anyone in India going on with such concentrated portfolio? Forget Samir Arora, we don’t even know what stock he holds. He is more of a tv anchor nowadays. He seems to be a guy who will buy the ITCs, HDFCs, L&Ts, Infosys of India and will call himself value investor. Remember, it need tonnes of guts to buy the J&K banks, rain industries etc of India.
He didn’t just “misjudge the downside”, he misjudged the CHOR mgmt at J&K Bank.
Pabrai got slammed in 2008 not just by “concentrating” but by buying crap. Probably was overconfident.
As suggested by Sri Daljit Singh Sir from India Nivesh, I had purchased 1000 shares of Sharon Bio Medicine @45/- each share.
Shall I ever get my money back or exit in loss?
Bharat Banka
Dear Bharat
Do not imagine of getting your money invested even in your wildest nightmares from sharon.
One can understand where Samir Arora is coming from and why corporate governance does not bother him. He himself was booked for insider trading by SEBI.
Do we really need an article for such a small tweet by some samir Arora?
I second your feeling
Make it three 🙂
Hello Arjun, Please lets have fewer articles but of good quality which most of them are. Don’t’ succumb to cheap tweets by loose cannons like samir arora and make them into articles – this is probably the worst article on your blog! Samir is not a patch on Pabrai. Just compare the track record of Samir with Pabrai!!
Very well said, “cheap tweets by loose cannons like samir arora”
“some” SA. Brilliant :-). His followers may get offended but people who have been tracking him since long know he is just average not a genius. He is most bearish on Govt owned companies today but watch that sector till 2019.
PAbrais funds have beaten US indices by a huge margin. Thats what matters. Arora seems not have checked his consistent performance.now pabraifunds has Aum of $1 billion
For folks who do not know, Samir was booked by SEBI many years back! The least he can do is not to criticise others. Everyone has their own investing philosophy and he should learn to respect that. Unfortunately this moron has a loose tongue and he lets go on the twitter. Pension funds and other clients should think twice before giving their money to a person who has no self-control.
I don’t know what this SA is, Mohnish has the vision and I like his philosophy that “Head you win and Tail you don’t lose much!!” and he’s NGO firm Diksha foundation is doing great work in India by providing great education to poor and brilliant students. Mohnish is the Gem.
Rajiv Khanna holds 30,000 shares in Dai Ichi
Dolly Khanna Holds 80,000
Source: 2015 Annual Report
Warren Buffet’s answer to the same question during his interview in IIM was “I made a mistake!”
That shows his greatness.