Monday, June 11, 2012

Be wary of S&P ratings

Here`s an extract from a news item dated Feb 2009 :
"S&P lowers India’s sovereign rating : MUMBAI: Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Tuesday revised the outlook on the long-term sovereign credit rating on the Republic of India to negative from stable”


Two months later, in April 2009 markets did a breakout move. And since then India GDP has grown by nearly 30% (Rs 1.08 lac crore in Dec 2008 quarter to 1.39 lac crore in March 2012 quarter)


S&P is Lehman tainted. They were assigning Triple A ratings to real estate CDO`s and other derivatives even as the housing markets were crashing. In the grand jury hearings, one of the excuses they gave for unjustifiably high ratings - Excel error !


If you are interested in some solid long terms analysis, the right source are Rakesh Mohan`s interview on Moneycontrol , Rakesh Jhunjhnwala interview on ET, RBI research papers and other such sources, not the reports from S&P`s, Morgan Stanley`s and Goldman Saches of the world.