“I have never seen a blind trader on Wall Street. I can’t guarantee you’ll get a job but you’ll definitely be better off with a Wharton degree,” the Director of Admissions at Wharton Business School wrote in Ashish Goyal’s application form in 2006 when the visually impaired Mumbaikar sought admission to the prestigious MBA course for a future career on Wall Street.
Goyal’s resolve paid off when two years later, he became the first blind student to graduate from Wharton Business School. Impressed with his understanding of Asian interest rates and the forex markets, JP Morgan Chase hired him to manage their forex portfolio. It was the first time any Wall Street firm had hired a blind trader.
After a successful career at Chase in which he rose to the rank of Vice President, Goyal is now a portfolio manager at London-based Blue Crest Capital Management, a macro hedge fund.
Goyal’s strength is analyzing macro trends with a special focus on Asia.
“It is just the passion and love for macro economics and financial markets that I have been able to do this, and obviously with help of technology,” says the 34-year old Goyal in an interview to CNBC-TV18. Afflicted with a retinal disorder, he gradually lost complete eyesight by the time he was 22.
Goyal credits JP Morgan for their faith in him and the support. He is quick to add that he made the most of the opportunity that came his way.
With the help of a screen-reading software, Goyal was able to read e-mails, research reports and presentations. As for graphs, he had to imagine them in his head since there were limitations to the software.
Goyal says Indian equities will see a time correction (in which prices can languish for a long period instead of declining steeply in a short period).
But he rates India as the best among emerging markets and in Asia.
“I think this year is going to be the transition year,” says Goyal, who is down in Mumbai for the three-day Association of Technical Market Analysts (ATMA) enclave starting Friday.
“You are seeing underlying growth pickup already if you look at production data, you look at capex, you look at consumption,” he says, adding that it would be difficult to forecast an inflexion point.
That’s because India is getting increasingly linked to the global cycle, and a pick up in corporate earnings is likely only when the global cycle changes for the better, he says.
He does not expect a scenario win which Indian equities crash 20 percent and the rupee hits 70 to the dollar.
Goyal is a keen investor in start-ups and has also raised around USD 50,000 for various charities over the last three years.
Below is the transcript of Ashish Goyal’s interview with Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Sonia: You have got the National Award that you have received for empowerment of persons with disabilities and you have been trading as well for so many years. How do you manage to do it? A: It is just the passion and love for macro economics and financial markets that I have been able to do this and obviously help with technology. Technology has enabled for someone like me to be doing a job that no blind person had ever done before. Along with that the trust that my first employer internationally JP Morgan showed in me and then how I managed to make most of what I was given. So, that is how I have been doing this job. Latha: How many years have you been a trader? A: Overall 10 years; three years in India with ING Vysya Bank and then seven years abroad. Latha: Would your disadvantage be an advantage, does it shut out some kind of noise?A: That is what everybody wants to believe. However, for me what is crucial is that I am very focused on the fundamentals. For me intraday price action doesn’t matter because I am on the investment side so I can ignore price action intraday. I do believe that focus on reading things and listening to things, I do remain focused much more. Sonia: On the Indian markets itself what is your own prognosis? How has trade been so far? It has been flat year for us with so much volatility but what is your own expectation?A: If you put India on a relative basis as compared to what has happened across the world in emerging market (EM), India is a clear outperformer. You can leave China aside because Chinese equity markets do their own things most times. On the bond side, on the currency side, on the stock side India has clearly been the outstanding trade for the last year and a half with all other emerging markets being quite significantly weaker. There are two things, one, India cannot stand alone if there is a massive global anti-EM sentiment beyond a point and secondly the transition that people were hoping for takes time because we have come from a very long period of poor performances both on the government side and on the economy side and that takes time to turnaround. Yes, we have priced in a lot but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. So, I am still pretty positive on India. Latha: Which will be the inflexion quarter as far as earnings growth are concerned? Since you track fundamentals, the slew of earnings that we have got and we haven’t got, we have just got maybe one fourth of the earnings due, all of them show very poor topline growth even those that have shown margin improvement. A: I am a macro person, I look at growth as a whole and I am not an equities specialist. However, I think this year is going to be the transition year. I can’t give you a specific quarter but you are seeing underlying growth pickup already if you look at production data, you look at capex, you look at consumption. That has started to pickup on the ground. With the macro factors improving like inflation being under control or current account coming in quite a lot, I think things are ready and the government is trying to give the right impetus. Pointing out to specific quarter and when stocks will stop selling off and start going up, I will not be able to pin-point. Latha: I am not looking at stocks being sold off, there will be a lot of technical reasons for that, I am only pointing to fundamental performance of corporates where revenue growth is either flat or shrunk for most of the companies that reported numbers so far. A: This year is going to be the year where the US economy took off. Today is going to US gross domestic product (GDP) data in a few hours. We are going to be talking about 1 percent US GDP growth which far from the 3 percent that people are looking for in Q1 this year. So, the thing is global growth per se is very weak. Euro zone is just trying to come out of this massive three or four years of sluggishness and weak growth through the quantitative easing (QE) program. So, India is also linked and is getting more and more linked to the global cycle. So, growth is already bottomed in India, that is evident very clearly but topline and actual better Indian growth will happen as the global cycle turns as well. Sonia: I wanted to ask you what were the initial challenges that you faced before you started trading and how much time did it take you to convince people that you were good at what you do? A: It took a lot of time to convince one bank in India to give me a job. I was the second ranked student in my MBA program at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), I was shortlisted by every company that came to campus but I was dropped on the basis that I was blind without being given an interview and ING Vysya was the only bank that actually offered me a job. I became a trader with them in Bangalore and then I realised after three years of working with ING that I still had no takers in the Indian market. So, Vijay Sarathi from UBS Singapore, he recommended that I should go and study abroad in the US at Harvard, Wharton or Stanford. I took his advice and even there because I am the first person to be doing what I am doing in my situation, it took a lot of time convincing Wall Street and then it was few good leaders at JP Morgan that said we are ready to take an chance on someone like you and let us see how it works. They were the only people who judged me on merit and gave me a chance. After that it was pure performance. As you know, in our business if you perform you are okay, if you don’t perform you are fired. Latha: By how many percentage points will the GDP rise in FY16 over FY15; I am putting this question in this fashion because I know there is a confusion over what base to use?A: I think the market consensus seems fair to me. Anywhere between 0.6-1 percent is what the GDP growth should be over the previous year whichever GDP number you want to take. However, more than that, you need to be focusing on the underlying fundamentals that are changing. This whole ‘Make in India’ campaign seems pretty good to me because it is something that will allow India to not only substitute the imports to a certain extent, technology transfer as well as become a global exporter which is what India needs to transition to a certain extent. However, all of this again takes time and market needs to be patient. Latha: Can you give us your view on the rupee as well; do you see it depreciating enough to be able to make that cut in global markets? A: The fundamentals point towards a very strong rupee. It is trading where it is trading because of the regulators or the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) accumulating reserves which is very well known to the markets. The RBI is doing a very finely balanced job because at one point they don’t want rupee to be extremely over valued and they don’t want hot money to be flowing into India but on the other side they know that once rupee starts weakening, sentiment in India turns south. We have seen that in 2013 so that is a very fine line that the RBI is treading. They are doing an excellent job but I don’t think the rupee would weaken if things go as we expect. Sonia: It is quite a stressful environment when you trade. Is a lot of what you do based on your instinct, based on your gut? A: I think instinct is based on knowledge and experience. The most important thing for me is awareness and that comes from the spiritual side that I believe in. I believe to take down stress you need to meditate and you need to trust that there is someone looking out for you which I have experienced in my life all the way through. I don’t think it is just pure instinct, it is a lot of knowledge and experience and the awareness that you need to be on top of every piece of information that is coming out and your views could change as facts change on the ground.
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