InvestorInsights: Jatin Khemani

Jatin Khemani is Founder & CEO at Stalwart Advisors, a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser. He has seven years of experience in investment analysis and portfolio management. In his last stint with a Delhi-based brokerage house he was solely responsible for the research activities of the organisation right from picking new ideas to tracking the existing portfolio thereby assisting the directors in managing the proprietary book. He is a CFA (US) Charter holder, earned his MBA in Finance from Christ University, Bangalore and graduation in Commerce from Delhi University. Thanks to his admiration for Peter Lynch & Philip Fisher, Jatin has over the years become proficient in scuttlebutt, a primary research method to find out truth about a company or an industry. On weekends, he teaches finance to MBA students and is an active volunteer with The Art of Living since 2006, where he leads state level fund-raising campaigns.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Could you tell us a little about your background, how you got interested in value investing?

Jatin Khemani (JK): I had a decent exposure to how businesses operate since a very young age. My family used to run a manufacturing setup which I often visited, and later on I studied commerce in high school and graduation. But my perception towards equity markets was bad then. I had seen my father trade and lose money. The lesson that got passed on to me was that individuals do not stand a chance in this market, which is manipulated by ‘operators’, dominated by institutional investors, and its nothing less than gambling.

However, that completely changed during my MBA days, when I met my mentor Mr. SG Raja Sekharan. He was a very senior IT professional who had left his fancy job as soon as he became financially independent and started following his passion of teaching and helping others get financially independent. He could do that by smartly investing in real estate as well as great businesses like HDFC Bank, Asian Paints, Pidilite etc. and holding on to them for years, and in some cases decades.

The nirvana moment for me was when I read ‘One Up On Wall Street’ by Peter Lynch and later on was introduced to the writings of legends like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Philip Fisher. That’s when I decided to pursue investing as a career and enrolled myself for CFA (USA), which I eventually cleared in the first attempt and was awarded the charter. I worked two jobs, first at an independent investment research firm, and second as an analyst and later head of research at a Delhi-based brokerage house.

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