Saturday, September 19, 2015

Read, Learn, Improve - 19-Sept-15

Read, Learn, Improve - 19-Sept-15

Is Silicon Valley in Another Bubble . . . and What Could Burst It? – Link here

Some Thoughts on Coal Companies and Railroads – Link here

How a cheap Indian whiskey beat Smirnoff to become the world’s largest spirits brand – Link here

What's in a name? Of Umlauts, The Alphabet and World Peace! – Link here

The Long Road of Proving Yourself as an Investor – Link here

The concise encyclopedia of economics – Crime – Link here

The siege of Herbalife – Link here

We Need the Right to Repair Our Gadgets – Link here

The Two Types of Knowledge – Link here

The slumps that shaped modern finance - Finance is not merely prone to crises, it is shaped by them. Five historical crises show how aspects of today’s financial system originated—and offer lessons for today’s regulators – Link here

If print media is dying, why are moneybags investing in it? – Link here

The Not-So-Surprising Truth About Gold Bugs – Link here

The safe, user-friendly way to be a little drug lord: economic secrets of the dark web – Link here

Why An Interview With A Top Pharmaceutical Executive Left Me Alarmed About The Industry – Link here

Humans need not apply (Video) – Link here

How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck (infographics) – Link here

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Paying attention to isolated incident

This conversation took place sometime around Mar/Apr-15 not sure about exact time

Analyst Friend (AF) – So which company you looking at?
Me – Info Edge
AF – what’s so good about it apart from Naukri.com, that’s only cashcow.
Me – true, rest all are loss making
AF – exactly my point, why to look at it?
Me – zomato seems interesting play, info edge has 50% stake (now it’s down post raising new capital)
AF – ya true, but have you seen FoodPanda? They are giving huge competition to them.
Me – not exactly, given zomato is only restaurant listing and FoodPanda is into delivering of food.



AF – ya but you need menu for ordering & delivering which ideal should have been done by zomato and they seem to have missed the bus.
Me – Naah…I don’t think so…they are moving slowly and steady…they can launch it tomm as they already have relationship with restaurants.
AF – then why have they not launched it yet?
Me – there are challenges with that business, have a look at this – Food Panda or Fool Panda , I think their systems are not in place and zomato is still working on it or has willfully chosen to ignore it. They are bunch of smart guys just check out back ground of founders – Link here.
AF – what challenges are you talking about?
Me – how to confirm delivery of order? Making sure none of the party is lying or faking?
AF – hmm….true…I will wait and watch how this space develops
Me – same here, it looks interesting, let see.



So this is pretty amazing, MINT newspaper (The BEST Newspaper in the town) has put out a story on Foodpanda.com and scam carried on by company insider. Here is link , article is long but very insightful, hence make sure you read it and give full attention.

If you are planning to be Analyst/Investor/Fund manager make sure you develop a good reading habit, from variety of sources. Most of the analyst & related fraternity would have glued their eye on pink newspaper & magazine and would have missed one isolate incident (Food Panda or Fool Panda ) that gave me signal there is probably something wrong with FoodPanda or help me wonder why is Zomato not doing it?

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Read, Learn, Improve - 12-Sept-15

Hey, Advertisers. It's Serena Time! – Link here

Man with almost-perfect poop donates it to help patients with C-diff infection – Link here

The Absolute Return Letter - Doodles from an eventful summer – Link here

Transplant Surgeons Revive Hearts After Death – Link here

Google Play solves for PPP (Purchasing power parity) in Apps! – Link here

The banker who helped give the world credit-default swaps wants to upend finance again—this time with the code that powers bitcoin – Link here

Brad Katsuyama’s Next Chapter (Guy from The Flashboys) – Link here

MCX: Out of the Jignesh Shah shadow – Link here

The Fed, Interest Rates and Stock Prices: Fighting the Fear Factor – Link here

We can Decongest our Jails , if our Governments are willing – Link here

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Why are babies smart / intelligent?

Why are babies smart / intelligent?



If you are new parent or are observing kids, many times you are caught in awe of their intelligence. New parents offer / share stories how their kid did particular thing or how they responded to a particular question or situation, which they can’t fathom a kid would behave in certain way. It has happened with me too and have seen few such incidence and I would be like “yeah, they are definitely smart” and be that’s about it.

So one fine day I was reading newspaper and came across article on DNA profiling bill that Indian govt is thinking of making as law. Here is the full article link, makes for interesting read. However it was one diagram/ pic that described DNA that caught my attention.



To be precise it was “genetic code” para at bottom that sent me a striking thought. If you read it carefully it says, “DNA is a double helix structure in which the backbone is made of sugar and phosphate and Information is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases…” Key word is “Information”. So what it essentially means when couple makes a baby, they pass on their knowledge & experience through their genes. So let say male & female both of 25 years make a baby, their genes will carry all that experience and pass it on to baby. Of course it won’t be 100% pass-on, but many of those, hence intelligence. This is what I thought and spoke to another analyst friend who happens to be B.Pharm and loves pure science, he concurred with my thought process. Of course this is not a new invention, rather a new discovery for me. I dug around deeper into internet and found some amazing insight. Like as per one Harvard bioengineer and geneticist – single gram of DNA has capacity of 5.5 petabits or 700 terabytes (1 –terabytes = 1000GB), you can read it here . So now I know part of the reason why babies are smart or intelligent

Monday, August 31, 2015

Debt is alway safe...really?

One thing every MBA student & RM & Financial adviser and every other tom, dick & harry involved in business of investing will tell you is - Equity = risky and Debt = safety. However, if recent event with regards to one JP Morgan Scheme are to go by, you would be in for some shock.



So JP Morgan Asset Management Company put out notice/press release on 28-Aug-15. here is copy Link here or below is the content copy paste

"In the general interest of the Unit Holders of the JPMorgan India Treasury Fund and JPMorgan India Short Term Income Fund, JPMorgan Mutual Fund India Private Limited, the Trustee Company, has decided to limit the redemptions in the above referred two schemes effective August 28, 2015. Accordingly, the Redemptions in these two schemes will be limited (“gated”) to a percentage limit not exceeding 1% of the total number of Units outstanding on any Business Day as mentioned in the Paragraph III. Units & Offer, Section B. Ongoing Offer Details ‘Right to limit Redemptions’ of the Scheme Information Document of each scheme and the Trust Deed. Any Units which consequently are not redeemed on a particular Business Day will, subject to the further application of the Trustee Company’s right to limit Redemption, be carried forward for Redemption to the next Business Day. Redemptions so carried forward will be priced on the basis of the Applicable NAV (subject to the prevailing Exit Load) of the Business Day on which Redemption is made.

Investors should note that Redemptions shall include Switches, STPs and SWPs also.

Each capitalized term herein has the meaning assigned to such term in the Scheme Information Document.

This notice must be read in conjunction with, and forms an integral part of; the Scheme Information Document (SID) and Key Information Memorandum (KIM) of the JPMorgan India Treasury Fund and JPMorgan India Short Term Income Fund and may not be distributed without the SID or KIM"

In simplified word it means, if you have invested in this particular debt mutual fund scheme, you just can't sell/redeem it. rather it is restricted to 1% of total outstanding units on any day. Now one of best thing about MF is liquidity, one can get money pretty easily. but above thing seem to go against very characteristic of MF. so question arises why? well its to do with paper/securities that scheme had invested in. One of the security/paper turned out sour or of not that good quality or they gave money to company as loan and company is now unable to pay....meaning your money is gone.....poof.

I am not sure what happens to investor money, whether they will lose it or probably global parent JP Morgan may bail out to protect its reputation. However henceforth you know if anybody says debt fund are safe how much it really is.

Read, Learn, Improve - 29-Aug-15

(Must Know/read) You probably missed out on watching one of the greatest feats in athletics, ever – Link here

Why is it so difficult to be happy? – Link here

Why Waiting Is Torture – Link here

What is love? – Link here

10 Underrated Charlie Munger Quotes – Link here

Observations From a Decade in the Investment Business – Link here

This Fund Manager Picks Stocks by Watching Bonds, Beating 99% of Peers – Link here

Why Do Colleges Give Out “Honorary” Degrees? – Link here

Mir Sultan Khan: The errand boy who took the chess world by storm – Link here

16 Startup Metrics – Link here

Uber Offers 109% Returns for Chinese With $500,000 to Spare – Link here

Amazon Underground – Amazon gets it right! – Link here

How Silver Wrecked China – Link here

This is how NASA used to hire its astronauts 20 years ago—and it still works today – Link here

Monday, August 24, 2015

Green for Bull or Bear?

Since there is mayhem in market, I wont indulge you in too much gyaan except "Buy quality stocks and sit tight"

Here is something interesting i notice on BSE website. In market parlance colour Green is associated with Bull or market being up, while Red is bear and indicates markets are down. so If markets are down font colour reflect the same, however today I noticed for a moment it was not. Like when sensex was down by 1000 odd points, fonts were actually in green colour

IMG-20150824-WA0013

however it changed after sometime

bse-red