Would Bahubali spill Blood on D-Street? This Probabilistic Model says so…

Indian Movie Industry(combination of Bollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood and few other woods) is among the most vibrant content creator industries serving to a very smart and astute customer. The Indian movie fans take the movie business very seriously. Its a very competitive field both for the artists and actors as well as the production houses, the directors and cinema halls. With a very short shelf life, movies are a very interesting and extremely fast paced product. Of course this makes movies a market of choice for lot of studies and when mega events happen, we watch them closely.

One such event is happening on April 28th with release of the concluding part of the 2015 mega period blockbuster movie Bahubali.

Ever since its release in 2015, the word Baahubali (meaning the liberated soul with strong arms) is used in everyday conversation to emphasize greatness. It is a classic David vs. Goliath story. There are even a number of jokes and whatsapp forwards going around over why Katappa, one of the loyal slaves of the protagonist Bahubali kill his master as was left shown – but reason untold – in the first version. The conclusion part will answer this question.  When such events happen, the whole society is on a lookout.

Now stock markets are no exception to such events. After all, behind all the algorithms and terminals, it is the human being operating them. People feel good when there are such mega events happening, just as sorrow and fear grips the markets when any bad news arrives. There is euphoria with what we call as the ‘Adrenaline Rush’.

So what is Adrenaline Rush?

As per my own study from various sources, during adrenaline rush along with secretion of more hormones, there is a spike in the blood pressure. This is to support the brain’s need to move the blood from frontal lobe (the one that takes long term analytical decisions) to the motor cortex, the part of brain that pushes us to take action immediately. It is this redistribution of blood that leads us to take action. This biochemical sequence leading to ‘rash decisions’ is of interest to us.

THE STUDY

My keen interest in both the fields of movie industry and trading,  led me to do some quick analysis of SENSEX and specifically the NIFTY Media index to see the impact of such mega releases to the markets.  The data sets I used are following:

1. List of all hit movies from 2011 to 2016
2. Sensex performance on the day of release of a particular movie
3. NIFTY Media Index performance from August 2011 (could not find data for dates before that).

METHODOLOGY

1. Collected data for All Major blockbusters from 2011. Below is the list of all the major blockbusters in the consideration set. Here is the list of all the movies used for the consideration set. Bahubali Analysis Data Set
2. To see any apparent patterns, I plotted the historical data for visual inspection
3. Next, the’Expected Value’ of the ‘On the day of Release’ changes in SENSEX were determined. For Expected Value, the following was done:
   • Continuous random variable over range of SENSEX movement on the day of release
   • Computing Probability Distribution of the  SENSEX change on the day
   • Computing the Expected Value with a caveat that this is a solitary event. Expected values work better with long term ranges and multiple future data points. This was done here only for 1 instance.
4. For NIFTY Media Index, following was done:
   • Collected data of percentage changes for NIFTY Media Index on day of release
   • Plotted the NIFTY media Data and built correlation with Blockbuster movies from the last 5 years

The fundamental assumption of this study is that Bahubali 2 would be blockbuster. The movie has already raked up more than its production cost, even before the release.

FINDINGS

Bahubali and the NIFTY Media Index

The NIFTY Media Index is barometer of performance comprising of select Media stocks. Below is a snapshot of the NIFTY Media Index.

Company Name	Industry	Last Price	Change	%Chg	Mkt Cap (Rs cr)
Den Networks	Media & Entertainment	98.75	-0.20	-0.20	1,916.01
Eros Intl	Media & Entertainment	252.45	-3.05	-1.19	2,366.23
INOX Leisure	Media & Entertainment	297.55	4.80	1.64	2,870.10
JagranPrakashan	Media & Entertainment	191.95	-6.70	-3.37	6,275.07
Network 18	Finance – General	45.50	3.95	9.51	4,763.62
PVR	Media & Entertainment	1,555.85	-3.10	-0.20	7,271.82
Siti Networks	Media & Entertainment	37.90	0.05	0.13	3,305.08
Sun TV Network	Media & Entertainment	936.75	39.55	4.41	36,915.88
TV TodayNetwork	Media & Entertainment	272.45	-1.75	-0.64	1,625.26
TV18 Broadcast	Media & Entertainment	42.00	1.35	3.32	7,200.36
Zee Entertain	Media & Entertainment	528.60	-4.85	-0.91	50,769.32

Source: Moneycontrol.com

As is clear most of the stocks in this are media related. There is going to be a direct impact of Bahubali 2 box-office performance on movie distribution stocks like PVR. Also, the media rights provided to various channels have a bearing from the outcome of the movie’s performance.

 

The average drop in NIFTY Media Index is 0.04% on the day of release of the blockbusters in the past. This can be explained with the fact that most of the times, the growth and gains in this index are already made in the run up to the movie in the preceding weeks. So, while the movie is being released, there is a marginal change in the index.

• Unfortunately, the average bias on this marginal change is also negative with maximum loss of 3.29%, as was seen with the release of Rowdy Rathore.
• The maximum gain possible in this index as was seen on the day of release of Bodyguard and Dirty Picture is in the range of 2.20%.
• It is clear from the chart above that the NIFTY Media Index is making more losses than gains on the movie release day, though the frequency of losses is lower than the gains.
• One just hopes that the gains are there in the same magnitude as Bodyguard and The Dirty Picture i.e. > 2.00%.

Expected Value Calculation of Sensex

We identify Bahubali as a blockbuster movie i.e. it is going to rake up collections of more than Rs. 100 Crore (Rs. 1 Billion). This makes it part of an elite group of movies such as PK, Dangal, 3 Idiots, Dhoom etc.

Sensex on the other hand does not paint a very rosy picture on the day of release for these mega movies. About 60% of these movies have led to losses on Sensex on the day of release, with movies like ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani‘ seeing a SENSEX loss of 2.16% on their release day.

 

 

About 60% of these movies have led to losses on Sensex on the day of release

If the above patterns continue, SENSEX is expected to dip on the day of the release of Bahubali.  What we have further tried to assess here is the probable drop that we can expect on the day of release.

To do this, the data has been arranged in a Continuous Random Variable for all the mega releases for the period of 2011-2016.

MOVIE	CHANGE IN SENSEX
Dangal	81
PK	79
Bajrangi Bhiajaan	-18
Sultan	-8
Dhoom 3	287
Krrish 3	38
Kick	-130
Chennai Express	48
Prem Ratan Dhan Payo	-114
Happy New Year	-207
Ek Tha Tiger	-95
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani	-426
Bang Bang	-216
Dabangg 2	-153
Tanu Weds Manu Returns	108
Bodyguard	-142
Bajirao Mastani	-245
Singham Returns	267
Rowdy Rathore	-252
Dilwale	153
M S Doni – The Untold Story	58
Airlift	314
Rustom	232
Agneepath	33
Ready	-178
Jab Tak Hai Jaan	-110
Ra.One	-48
Ram Leela	280
Jai Ho	-156
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil	-42
Housefull 2	-186
Holiday	192
Barfi!	180
Don 2	-125
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag	208
Housefull 3	149
ABCD 2	108
Son of Sardaar	-110
2 States	120
Ek Villain	-32
Race 2	158
Bol Bachchan	-25
Shivaay	107
Singham	157
Grand Masti	-12
Baby	89
Welcome Back	-571
Talaash	110
Singh is Bliing	406
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara	-132
Gabbar is back	-231
Fan	-17
Aashiqui 2	-89
The Dirty Picture	353
Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania	-465
Baaghi	-6
Special 26	-92
Rockstar	5
Delhi Belly	-212
Mere Brother Ki Dulhan	-323

Source: Wikipedia and Yahoo.com

Given the Random nature of the SENSEX change values on the day of release of these mega movies, these were grouped together in 100 point intervals for Continuous Random Variables with the range starting from -500 and going all the way to +500.

Consequently, probability distribution as given below was prepared

Some highlights from the above distribution chart:

1. The SENSEX changes have maximum density in the -99 to 0 range.
2. The SENSEX never gained more than 500 points but it lost more than 500 points at least once.
3. The probability of big sways are low while the chances of reasonable sway are very high in the distribution.

Next, the Expected Value of SENSEX change was calculated as below:

Expected Value = x1*Probability of x1 + x2*Probability of x2  + x3*Probability of x3….

So Our Expected Value Formulation Looks like this:

Sensex Change	Probability	Range High	Range Low	Mean Value	xi*p(xi)
<-500	1.67%	-500		-500	-8.33
-499<X<-400	3.33%	-400	-499	-449.5	-14.98
-399<X<-300	1.67%	-300	-399	-349.5	-5.83
-299<X<-200	10.00%	-200	-299	-249.5	-24.95
-199<X<-100	18.33%	-100	-199	-149.5	-27.41
-99<X<0	20.00%	0	-99	-49.5	-9.90
1<X<99	13.33%	99	1	50	6.67
100<X<199	18.33%	199	100	149.5	27.41
200<X<299	8.33%	299	200	249.5	20.79
300<X<399	3.33%	399	300	349.5	11.65
400<X<499	1.67%	499	400	449.5	7.49
X>500	0.00%	500	0		0.00

Given this, the Expected Value of SENSEX on release day of Bahubali is -17.39.

While this may not be true as this is just a Probabilistic Model for Expected Value of Sensex Movement on day of release, it is surely something to watch out for.

More importantly, as the trend suggests, the mega blockbuster movies actually DO NOT pump adrenaline rush into the system, with more people taking risk. On the contrary, it leads to normal Epinephrine. In contrast to the rush, normal Epinephrine does exactly the opposite, it smooths body and brain during the activity and saves us from taking any rash decisions.

Happy watching and happy trading 🙂

UPDATE 1: The markets spooked by over 100 points in opening trade.