Travis Johnson

Goodbye India Fund, Hello India Note

Sorry, that's an embarassing mistake -- you're right, of course, it's Blackstone, not Black Rock. Apologies.

Travis

Goodbye India Fund, Hello India Note

Thanks Mahesh. And FYI, I had a typo in the share price -- my buy point was $51.32, not $53.02 ... sorry (hasn't yet crested above $53 this week, though the index had a nice bump today).

Cheers,
Travis

Lightening Up on the India Fund

Sounds like a good idea, though I have never heard of it and don't know any of the particulars. If you have data about the fund (premium, expenses, composition, trading symbol) please link.

Thanks,
Travis

Lightening Up on the India Fund

Sorry ... that's a bit of an exaggeration ... the two-day profit would actually be about 15%.

Cheers,
Travis

Lightening Up on the India Fund

As you can see, the premium has returned to IFN in a big hurry now that the rights offering is over and the transactions are going through. I'll hold the shares that I picked up in the rights offering (looks like the official price was $33.90 -- which means essentially a 20% two day profit for anyone who wants to sell this evening) for a while to see how things develop, but if we continue to see the premium accelerate back to the levels we saw over the winter I'll be very tempted to sell those shares, too. Again, I can't predict where the Indian economy is going, though it's certainly hot, but I can predict that the high management fees and high premium make this a risker investment than some others I have in mind.

Lightening Up on the India Fund

To tell the truth, I didn't pay that much attention to the details of the premium over the winter when it really ballooned -- switching to IIF may have been a plan a while back, though it has had its troubles as well. I regret not delving into the details earlier, and frankly I don't quite understand why IFN is so different from IIF, premium-wise.

And the Powershares ETF is just about worthless, in my opinion -- an index of the US-listed shares and ADRs gets you only those shares that are already themselves trading at a big premium to their domestic counterparts, and it really reduces exposure to the non-tech-outsourcing parts of the Indian economy. I'd like an actual representative, lower cost index ETF of the Indian market, much like I own for Korea or can get through Ishares and others for dozens of other countries.