The Joys of Mumbai Traffic

The spectacular rebound in the Nifty on Friday left me dumbfounded. There was no apparent reason for the rally. But the need of the market to attribute a reason for everything is so great that by the end of the day some kind of consensus was reached that this rally was due to the Govt's utterances about P Notes. These statements were assumed to be comforting!!!. I was not aware that the market was uncomfortable about the P-Notes issue in the first place. Be that as it may, there was nothing that I could do but cut my short positions and go long on the Nifty.

In the evening of Friday, the S&P ended negative. The Dollar Index rallied above 75.75 which according to my way of looking at things means that we could have started a rally in the Dollar that has the potential to currently take it to 77.7-78.0. If the Dollar actually reaches that level (because my predictions are no better than the many made by other esteemed analysts) then we will reassess to see whether Dollar can actually head higher.

The problem with this view is that the other asset classes like Equities and commodities will need to correct along with the rally in the Dollar. However the trend in these asset classes remain up till now and I am long the Nifty. So either I go wrong about the Dollar prediction or I lose money on my Nifty trade. I do not know which of the two options is better!!!

Finally, I am not going to office today and will really miss my morning bumper to bumper traffic. All of us crib about the bad traffic in Mumbai. But I thank God for the problem. Without it I would reach the office in just 30 min instead of the one and a half hours that it takes me now. No, I have not taken leave of my senses. I have perfectly good reasons for this statement. But for this extra one hour of travel time, I would have to spend one more hour at the office. Can you imagine that?. And also what about the "Me Time"? The time I get to myself?. Away from the office and the family? Time to be spent with the one person I really love to be with?. I love the time spent in the bumper to bumper traffic. It stands to reason that I am waiting for the day when the traffic worsens so that the commute increases to 2 hours each direction!!!.

Despite this there is one thing I hate. Finding a two lane road that is relatively empty and then getting stuck behind two disciplined drivers---driving side by side at a sedate speed. Give me the normal pests of the road anyday- not the disciplined driver. It is then that I break down and wish for an atomiser!!!

P.S Will remain long on the Nifty until 4920 is broken. That is some 150 points away.