In an interesting take, Corporate finance and valuation expert Aswath Damodaran shed light on where would world leaders US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi stand if they were stocks.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV Profit, Damodaran compared Donald Trump with Tesla. He called Trump “a high-risk stock and extremely volatile.”
“It is a Tesla on a global stage because Elon Musk has many of the same thing, right?,” Aswath Damodaran said.
He believed that Trump is “absolutely unpredictable”.
‘Normally, you can take a look at a person’s history and look at their mindset and say this is what they’re probably going to do. And Donald Trump – it’s almost impossible to figure out what that next step is,” Aswath Damodaran said.
He added, “I would not want to be negotiating with Donald Trump because I have no idea where he is coming from the next minute.” He further analysed that what Trump used to do in the real estate was playing out on the global stage.
If PM Modi were a stock…: What Aswath Damodaran said
Aswath Damodaran – also known globally as the “Dean of valuation” — said PM Modi is the “lead seller of the India story and he’s done a pretty good job of selling the India story.”
“The stock in mind, it would have to be a growth story. So it would have to be Palantir… The story has heft, but lots of things have to fit. So it is still early in the game,” Damodaran said.
“Potential is out there…and a lot of other things have to happen for that potential to be delivered in terms of numbers,” he said.
“It’s unlike the Amazon where the story has been told,” he said.
What about Xi Jinping?
About the Chinese leadership, Damodaran said Xi Jinping was going to be a “very predictable stock in many ways” . He believed that Jinping was “very ruthless” about the end game and he would play that end game.
“If Xi Jinping were a stock…he would be a stock that would be more predictable than Trump. But if you got on this wrong side, God help you, right?” Aswath Damodaran said, citing the example of Amazon and equating it with Thanos from the Avengers series.
“Amazon is like Thanos…it’s gonna get you at the click of the fingers…for me, that’s what comes to mind when I think of China,” Damodaran said.
What about Putin? What stock would he be?
Aswath Damodaran said Russia does not have the power it used to have, except for its military. He called Putin a survivor.
“If he were a stock, who would he be? May be some kind of Chinese martial arts…he’s very good at keeping his enemies close and knocking them down,” he said.
Aswath Damodaran is an Indian-American academic. He teaches corporate finance and valuation at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Putin, Aswath Damodaran, Donald Trump, PM Modi, Xi Jinping
#Aswath #Damodarans #analogy #Trump #highrisk #stock #AmazonThanos #Modi #Putin