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Friday, December 28, 2007

Suzuki may cut Maruti 800 prices to compete with Tata`s 1 lakh car

Suzuki Motor, facing growing threats to its 50 per cent share of India’s car market, may cut the price of its cheapest car in the country to counter Tata Motors’s proposed Rs 100,000 ($2,500) car.

“We will have to do at least that,” Shinzo Nakanishi, managing director of Suzuki’s local unit, Maruti Suzuki India, said in an interview at the company’s head office in Hamamatsu, Japan, yesterday. Suzuki’s cheapest car in India, the Maruti 800, now costs from Rs 192,124 in New Delhi showrooms, according to Maruti’s website.

Cutting prices may help Suzuki maintain dominance in its biggest market as the company faces greater competition from Tata and foreign rivals including General Motors and Hyundai Motor. Other automakers including Renault have also proposed selling ultra-cheap cars in India, the world’s second-fastest-growing major auto market.

“By cutting prices, the profit margin will drop, and it may also hurt the brand image,” said Koichi Ogawa, who helps oversee $28 billion at Daiwa SB Investments in Tokyo. “Investors care more about profitability than market share.”

Suzuki fell 2.3 per cent to 3,370 yen at the 11 am close on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Topix Transportation Equipment Index declined 1.4 per cent. Today is the last trading day of the year, and the exchange closed after the two-hour morning session.

Concern about instability after the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto may have contributed to today’s share decline, Ogawa said. Suzuki’s Pakistani unit, Pak Suzuki Motor — the country’s largest automaker — plans to increase production capacity to 250,000 vehicles by 2009, from 120,000 now to meet rising demand.

India sales
In India, automakers are spending $6 billion to increase capacity as economic growth and rising incomes make cars affordable to more people. Vehicle sales may triple by 2015 in the country, where only seven in 1,000 people now own an automobile.

Suzuki, which started selling cars in India in 1983, is relying on growth in the country and in Europe as demand wanes at home. Sales in India of the company’s Swift, Alto and other models rose 18 per cent to 336,758 in the six- months ended September 30, surpassing Suzuki’s sales in Japan for the first time.

The country’s annual passenger-car sales more than doubled in the past five years to 1.08 million in the 12 months ended March 31, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. The total is likely to reach 3 million by 2015, the government estimates.

Renault, Volkswagen
Aiming to tap the growth, Renault and Volkswagen began selling cars in India in the past two years, while Honda Motor — Japan’s second-largest carmaker — plans to unveil its first hatchback model in the country to take on Suzuki.

CSM Worldwide estimates Suzuki’s share in India may drop to 24 per cent in 2013, as cheap cars increase competition. “So far, it’s been easy to maintain a 50 to 55 per cent share, because there weren’t strong competitors,” Nakanishi said yesterday. “But from now on, it won’t be the case.”

Tata Motors, the country’s largest truckmaker, will unveil its $2,500 car in New Delhi on January 10. The yet-to-be-named model would be the nation’s cheapest car and target motorcycle buyers. India is the world’s second-largest motorcycle market behind China.

Suzuki won’t sell a car as cheap as Tata’s because it will be unprofitable, Nakanishi said.

“Demand for both Tata’s car and the Maruti 800, when prices are cut, will be immense,” said Amit Kasat, an analyst at Motilal Oswal Securities in Mumbai, who recommends buying shares in both automakers. “We need to see how much the price will be reduced and how Tata’s cars will be accepted.”

Nissan, Bajaj
Renault and Nissan Motor, Japan’s third-largest automaker, are planning to build a $3,000 model with Bajaj Auto, the country’s second-largest motorcycle maker, to compete in India. Renault, based in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, owns 44 per cent of Nissan.

Spending on expanding factories in India will bring down Maruti’s net income margin, Nakanishi also said. The profit ratio will fall to “7 or 8 per cent” beginning next year, compared with 10 per cent this year, he said.

Suzuki will spend 200 billion yen ($1.75 billion) to expand capacity and to build a research facility in the northern state of Haryana, already home to Maruti’s factories. The research facility will develop cars designed for the Indian market.

The company will invest an additional 200 billion yen by 2010, to raise factory capacity to build the new A-Star car. It will boost output capacity by 300,000 units, increasing total capacity in India to 960,000 by financial year 2009.

Suzuki will start exporting the A-Star to Europe next year. The automaker is counting on the new model to boost annual European sales to 420,000 vehicles from 310,000 last business year.

Maruti Suzuki will use its cash to fully-fund the investments, said Nakanishi. Suzuki will build 1.2 million vehicles in India in financial year 2009 — 1 million for India and the rest for exports, he said.

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Understanding Short Term Trading

Before I begin, this blog is not for intraday traders. My definition of short term implies duration of around 2 to 3 months.

Short Term stock picking is no rocket science, but rather a visual interpretation of technical charts. A basic moving average on a time frame chart will show the direction of the securities movement.

Moving averages is a mathematical results calculated by averaging a number of past data points. Moving averages (MA) in it's basic form is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of a given set of values on a rolling window of timeframe. Once the value of MA has been calculated, they are plotted onto a chart and then connected to create a moving average line. Typical moving averages used for short term trading are 50 MA and 100 MA.

Types of Moving Averages

1) Simple Moving Average (SMA)

SMA is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of a given set of values on a rolling window of timeframe. The usefulness of the SMA is limited because each point in the data series is weighted the same, regardless of where it occurs in the sequence. Critics argue that the most recent data is more significant than the older data and should have a greater influence on the final result.

2) Exponential Moving Average (EMA)

EMA overcomes the limits of SMA, where more weight is given to the recent prices in an attempt to make it more responsive to new information. When calculating the first point of the EMA, we may notice that there is no value available to use as the previous EMA. This small problem can be solved by starting the calculation with a simple moving average and continuing on with calculating the EMA.

The primary functions of a moving average is to identify trends and reversals, measure the strength of an asset's momentum and determine potential areas where an asset will find support or resistance. Moving averages are lagging indicator, which means they do not predict new trend, but confirm trends once they have been established.

A stock is deemed to be in an uptrend when the price is above a moving average and the average is sloping upward. Conversely, a trader will use a price below a downward sloping average to confirm a downtrend. Many traders will only consider holding a long position in an asset when the price is trading above a moving average.

In general, short-term momentum can be gauged by looking at moving averages that focus on time periods of 50 days or less. Looking at moving averages that are created with a period of 50 to 100 days is generally regarded as a good measure of medium-term momentum. Finally, any moving average that uses 100 days or more in the calculation can be used as a measure of long-term momentum.

Support, resistence and stoploss can be infered by referring the closet MA below or above the market price. The other factor that is used in short term momentum is the trading volume. The moving averages along with the trading volume can provide a better insight to short term movement.

Markets are moved by their largest participants - I believe this is the single most important principle in short-term trading. Accordingly, I track the presence of large traders by determining how much volume is in the market and how that compares to average. Because volume correlates very highly with volatility, the market's relative volume helps you determine the amount of movement likely at any given time frame--and it helps you handicap the odds of trending vs. remaining slow and range bound.