Anil Kumar Goel Latest Portfolio & Holdings

Updated: 18th December 2022

Anil Kumar Goel‘s portfolio and holdings are presently worth Rs 1915 crore.

His profile is nicely explained in an article in the Business World.

He always loved the feel of money. Even, when he was a teenager, he helped his grandfather run the family’s flourishing steel trading business. “It was a nice feeling. I was just 16 years old but was handling lakhs of rupees. I liked being in business,” he recounted.

Anil Kumar Goel was originally from Amritsar and shifted to Chennai in the mid-60s at the behest of his grandfather, who wanted a family member to take care of his business.

At 13, Goel struck his first deal when he sold “slow-moving” steel angles to grape farmers from Hyderabad at a decent profit. “My first test came in 1974-75, when steel prices fell from Rs 6,000 to Rs 1,200 a tonne in six months. I somehow had the sense to buy more stock at lower prices and average out.”

Goel became interested in the stock market in the beginning of the 1990s which witnessed the first wave of retail participation in the stock markets. Flashy brokers, rags-to-riches stories and unprecedented euphoria drove people to exchanges like never before.

“I had no idea about markets at that time. I was actually an accidental entrant. Our company, at the behest of an auditor, first invested in a couple of IPOs to get some tax exemption. Market was the point of discussion at every gathering,” Goel stated.

Goel invested Rs 50 lakh in September 1992, when the index was around 2200. He held on to his investments even when the market plunged. He invested Rs 5 crore in May 1993, when the index was trading at 1850 levels. A rally started in mid-1993 with the entry of foreign institutional investors (FII). By July 1993, FIIs actually started investing in Indian companies.

By January 1994, Goel’s Rs 5 crore investment had become Rs 20 crore.

Goel also started buying stocks which were not in favour of foreign investors. He bought Arvind Mills, which issued GDRs at Rs 360, but corrected to Rs 180 a few months later under selling pressure from FIIs.

“The price decline did not stop there. I bought Arvind Mills at Rs 180 but a few months later, it was trading at Rs 7 per share. My other investments had also fallen to about 1-5 per cent of the invested value. I lost all the money I had made till then,” says Goel wistfully. But the desire to succeed in the stock market was stronger than ever and Goel exited his steel business to concentrate on the market full time. He had to sell six acres of land along Chennai’s East Coast Road to emerge from the mess.

Goel re-entered the market in 1998 with a portfolio that included EID Parry, Carborundum Universal, SAIL, Tata Steel and Tube Investments. Stock prices trebled and quadrupled by 2000. Goel never invested in IT companies because he didn’t understand the business. That saved him from the tech crash of 2000. “There’s no visibility in IT businesses. And during 2000, they were trading at obscene valuations. The market-cap of computer education chain, SSI Ltd, exceeded the combined market capitalisation of the Murugappa Group, TVS and Amalgamation Group at that time. There was something terribly wrong with IT stocks.” The IT meltdown happened soon thereafter.

According to Goel, the period between 2001 and 2007 offered the best window for investors to make money from the markets. He expects a similar opportunity in 2016. “I am a believer of the 8-year cycle. The market throws up one euphoric bull phase every eight years. I think we’re very near the next big rally.”

“Goel does not believe everything that a company’s management claims. He does his own analysis. Over the past 15 years that I’ve known him, Goel has developed an intuitive feel for good businesses. He makes mistakes, but his error rate is much lower than that of others in the market,” says Sanjay Bakshi, managing partner, ValueQuest Capital.

Goel remains invested in a stock till it delivers returns of at least 3-4 times. He likes to invest in dividend-paying companies. His advice: Don’t read a lot to make money in markets. A successful investor is one who understands the business well.

Latest Portfolio & Holdings of Anil Kumar Goel