The accompanying piece on the highhandedness of Indian revenue and law enforcement authorities may seem shocking to many ordinary citizens but not to those who have a ringside view of the hurdles faced by Indians, especially Indian businessmen. India ranks pretty low in world ranking of freedom. We may pride ourselves on our economic growth rate but, according to the 2008 assessment of...

A short-term relief rally may be round the corner

Last fortnight, I said that there was nothing to celebrate in the rally that gripped the world in the week ending 19th September. Maybe we will have a tradeable rally in oil, gold and equities but such adventurism will end in tears for all except the most nimble traders. Indeed, while gold and oil went up and down, the monster global rally in...

In August 2000, Fortune magazine published an article titled ‘10 Stocks to Last the Decade.’ The sub-head read ‘Here’s a buy-and-forget portfolio,’ created out of the contributions of some ‘top stock pickers’, as well as due diligence by the staff of Fortune. The fabulous 10 were: Broadcom, Charles Schwab, Enron, Genentech, Morgan Stanley, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Oracle, Univision and Viacom....