Thursday, November 22, 2012

Thinking about Thinking


The brain has a amazing ability to contemplate based on the sensory stimuli that it receives which it then matches with the memories that it has stored to arrive at a suitable response to the stimuli. This is common across all species and with us homo sapiens. The human mind however differentiates itself with other species in its ability to contemplate itself contemplating over something. This particular repetitive quality or as we popularly call it second order thinking, is to quote Prof Ramchandran’s talk on Ted the “Holy grail of  Neuroscience”
One of the interesting aspects of second order thinking is its ability to have a slightly more rational approach as it analyses the relatively emotional reaction of the first order thinking.  But to quote Yogi Berra “In theory there is no difference between theory and practise. In practise there is”.
So let me come to a practical experience that I went through last month. I had bought Hero Honda about a year and half back at around Rs 1400 . This was the phase post the break up with its erstwhile partner Honda and the market had turned bearish on the stock with the outlook for the company appearing bleak. I had at that point tried to sit back through the clutter, think through what were the key success variables in the two wheeler business and what value did Hero bring to the table. Though the market was focussing on the technology front, my thoughts led me to believe that the key differentiator ( beyond the brand/ positioning etc) that Hero bought on the table was the distribution strength that it had and the associated mindshare. Having looked at the past instances and examples of Bajaj  & TVS, technology was available off the shelf, maybe costing 400-500 crores which could be acquired and a product portfolio built in 2-3 year horizon. But building distribution especially rural distribution was a challenging task.
Fast forwarding and having collected about Rs 150 ( 70+35+45) of dividend along the way and missed opportunities to sell the stock at 2200 ( I got greedy :-)), I started pondering last month over how the business environment had evolved over the last one year. The company had moved forward on executing the technology gap by acquisition/ tie-ups and has progressed on taping the export markets. Couple of things have happened which made me start looking at a exit. The domestic market had slowed down and Hero was finding it difficult to grow on the large base that it had, coupled with slowdown in the export markets resulting in a relatively delayed launch in the export markets. But most importantly its erstwhile partner Honda has been making progress and gaining marketshare at a pace which to be honest I had not anticipated. 
This is where something interesting happened. As my brain started formulating this line of thought, I began to notice from my comforts of my car that more and more newer bikes and scooters that appeared on the road were largely from Honda and to a certain extent Bajaj. My scanning eyes would rarely notice a Hero bike or scooter.
My second order thinking was telling me that this was clearly availability bias coupled with reinforcement bias playing out where the brain was scanning for data to confirm a decision that was already taking shape in my mind. It knew that Hero’s strength was largely in 100 cc segment and it never had a strong foothold in the urban landscape where the competition was stronger. So logically the second order thinking should have prevented the first order thinking from garnering any fresh data points. But to the surprise of my second order brain, I was still not able to stop looking out of the car window trying to notice the increasing number of Honda vehicles on the road. Though I was rationally able to think that I was being irrational, it didn’t help take away the irrationality.
I did finally sell Hero Motocorp around the 1950 levels and exited the position. Till date my third order thinking is not able to reconcile the inability of the first and the second order thinking to merge together. If all this sounds confusing, well it reflects the confused state of my mind :-).

7 comments:

Kabir said...

"We have found in a long life that one competitor is frequently enough to ruin a business." - Charlie Munger

Vidyanshu Pandey said...

Hi Ninad,

Excellent article and good humor too! I agree that one get caught in a circular logic trap when one tries to break up thinking into primary, secondary, tertiary ....and associated biases/heuristics/fallacies and other labels. It can all become quite confusing and you can end up second guessing yourself. What do you suppose the answer is to this dilemna? abandon such psychological self analysis? or keep it simple and depend more on security analysis/business analysis for buy/sell...I would be interested in knowing your thoughts.

Best, Vidyanshu.

Ninad Kunder said...

Kabir

Hopefully that wont be scenario here. I m in no way writing off Hero Motocorp here. My decision was based on a combination of variables.

Cheers

Ninad

Ninad Kunder said...

Hi Vidyanshu

If it was all about numbers then accountants would have been the best stock pickers :-). Put differently a bunch of software programmers could do this job as well by churning out decisions based on data models.

I m sure you agree that there is a huge element of human intervention which separates the men from the boys. Keeping the same value investing framework, same data points, there have been instances that some of my fellow value investors and I, have reached diametrically opposite viewpoints on a stock.

To summarise " Repeating what Buddha said does not necessarily mean we will achieve Nirvana. Nirvana needs to be self discovered". I hope you understand what I mean.

Cheers

Ninad

Kabir said...

You are not JUST rooting for hero at this point. You are betting that the return on capital in two wheeler industry stays far higher than the cost of capital. AND that hero is one of the guys earning it. Let me ask you this ... Imagine that the industry still grows at gdp+inflation+whatever. Imagine that neither hero nor honda wants to give up on mkt share. Imagine hat they keep outspending each other on ad, mkting, distribution. Imagine they undercut each other on price. Now 2 questions for you ...

1. Do any of these things were difficult to imagine? Most of these are already happening so its a rhetorical q maybe.
2. What will hero do if all this does happen?

Ofcourse all this can come true and there might still be a higher re-rating because of sheer randomness or irrational exuberence. Is that one of the variables you're considering?

Anonymous said...

Hero breaking up with Honda is the worst thing that can happen to Hero and Bajaj.
Now thy have third formidable competitor to fight it out.

Ninad Kunder said...

Kabir / Anonymous,

I think there is some confusion here. I have exited my position in Hero and am not justifying buying into it. The variables that you mentioned in terms of the competitive environment is one of the reasons which led to my decision.

The Indian players have had competition from Suzuki and Yamaha in the past but have managed to hold their ground. Honda clealry is making inroads so it would be wait and watch.

Cheers