ExpertDabbler

http://jeyamohan.in/?p=3120

Makes sense. Corraborates well with what I’ve heard about this from other friends.

The only thing i knew about ‘Pop’ was Popcorn, until i listened to your ‘Dangerous’.

No other icon had the masses in his control from Los Angles to Hudco Colony in CBE the way you did.

I am sure cardiac arrest will get more popular now, and will get the kind of attention it deserves, thanks to your death.

Saying ‘Bye’ is not appropriate. So I shall stand and think about you and your music for a minute, and move on with my life.

Here’s one story by a famous man. Totally loved it

An oil inspector, moving to his heavenly reward, was met by St. Peter with bad news. “You’re qualified for residence”, said St. Peter, “but as you can see, the compound reserved for oil men is packed. There’s no way to squeeze you in.” After thinking for a moment, the prospector asked if he might say just four words to the present occupants. That seemed harmless to St. Peter, so the inspector cupped his hands and yelled, “Oil discovered in hell.” Immediately the gate to the compound opened and all of the oil men marched out to head for the nether regions. Impressed, St.Peter invited the prospector to move in and make himself comfortable. The prospector paused. “No,” he said, “I think I’ll go along with the rest of the boys. There might be some truth to that rumor after all.”

Myself and my friend visited Suruttupalli (Palli Konda Eeshwarar) and Nagala puram (Vedha Narayana Swamy).

The folks have done such an excellent job in collecting all facts that I thought I am better off linking their posts.

I liked Nagalapuram better for the following reasons:

- It’s maintained better, less crowded.
- The temple has not lost its ancient touch in the name of ‘renovation’ though I did find some rooms cropping up usng the old stone pillars. The phenomenon of ‘Surya Puja’ is amazing, a testimony to the architectural brilliance of our ancestors.

‘Suruttupalli’, for all its uniqueness among the Shiva temples is sadly too ‘modernized’ for my liking. It kinda sucks when old temples are filled with granite, painted with all sorts of Ramarajan colors, and made a marketplace by purohits.

Both temples are very accessible from Chennai and definitely worth a visit.

When Lehman became HDFC

My Mom: ‘Inga paaru.. indha book la IT company la velai poradhu pathi nalla potrukaan’ my mom gave me one old issue of ‘Kumudham Snehidhi’.

I started reading reluctantly - too depressing a topic nowadays. The article starts like this ‘Veetu vasadhi kadan kudukkum niruvanam Lehman Brothers…Surukkuma solvadhendral(the writer starts elaborating after this)’.

The writer had added one table spoon of ’some housing matter in US’, 2 table spoons of Lehman’s demise, 2 green chillies, some salt and water and whirred the combination in her Philips blender and lo, here’s one article about the financial crises and the consequent slowdown in Indian IT vendors, in a form very palatable to ‘Kumudham Snehidhi’ readers.

She had even consulted some big ‘kanippori engineers’ working in TCS about what they think and they had given their gyaans like ‘Bigger IT companies will be hit, but smaller companies will thrive….BPO will suffer but KPOs will have future… etc’

I coughed a few times, drank a glass of water after consuming this. Mudila….Epdi ivangalukku mattum mudiyudhu?

No, not the one who acted in Maine Pyar Kya, and who is usually seen without his shirt.

Check out this Salman Khan’s site - Khan Academy. Awesome. I was so seriously impressed that I just clicked on that PayPal ‘donate’ button and made my first online donation ever. This guy deserves a lifetime achievement award just for this site.

If you had never studied in school (like me), then this site cannot be recommended enough.

I had the rare privilege of browsing through ‘Dhina thanthi’ in the neighborhood saloon on Saturday. Needless to say, the paper was full of KKK news. For dummies, KKK stands for Kolai, Kollai, Karpazhippu but may also include fatal road accidents, suicides, etc.

I was promptly reminded of a Gladwell essay about a study on teen suicides which rises to alarming proportions in a small country called Micronesia. The essence of the article was that there was a perceptible increase, a kind of multiplier effect, in suicides (or similar deaths) once news of a prominent teen member in the community committing suicide is known. The article says the effect is not direct but this works on a subtler level.

Now that we might have PhDs in topics as useful as ‘Kalaignarin podhu vazhkai’, ‘Pa Vijay in thiraipada paadalgal’ etc. I wish someone does a study on the correlation of Dina thanthi readership and the number of suicides, thefts, accidents, crashes, fatalities in their families/known circles compared with normal folks. Personally, it freaks me out to imagine people consuming such ‘heavenly’ news everyday. Is it not a case of Garbage in, garbage out?

If that sounds too ambitious, maybe we can start with the number of deaths (suicides, people recklessly crossing the roads, homicide, dangerous two-wheeler riding) on the next two weeks when Silk Smitha, Simran’s sister, GV, committed suicide with ordinary weeks to see if there was any multiplier effect.

Ennadhu Ramachandra la, Jegadrakshagan college la capitation fee vangarangala?
(OR)
Ennadhu Gandhi sethu poittara?

I find it weird when long established tradition and practices is covered as news. Ennamo!

I think Jegadrakshagan is being targetted by TOI for some reason. All will be fine and good once Jegad starts giving Ads to TOI. All is well that ends well in politics.

It’s been a long time since I wrote a post. I did nothing special in the meanwhile. Visited a few temples - Siruvapuri and Thiruvanai kovil and did some reading.

The most interesting of the reading was ‘Fortune’s Formula’ by William Poundstone. The book talks about Kelly criterion, Edward Thorp, and Claude Shannon (we owe a lot of things we take for granted in our daily life to Shannon).

This month also completes my 16 month experience in active stock market investing. The whole idea started since some of my folks were spending 100 USD per month on playing poker. ‘If they can afford to lose 100USD per month, they might as well give me that money so that I can lose money in the stock market’ was my thought.

How about the experience? ‘Well it depends’ would be my answer. We definitely made some small money but that did not happen easy. This 16 month time forced me to read lot of stuff which I was not exposed to. I’d like to think I am wiser for it.

I learnt that even average investing (forget market beating investing) requires lot of effort, reading boring annual reports, boring magazines, boring business dailies, boring balance sheets, boring books authored by Graham, Buffett, Munger, Mohnish Pabrai. I would not have bothered to read any of those if only I had not invested my own hard earned paisa in this. So in that sense its work. Nothing comes free.

There were lots of ‘gut wrenching’ near misses. Stocks I had planned to buy suddenly went up by 5 times in a short time frame. Some which I lost hope and sold had promptly doubled as if waiting for my sale. Things like these makes you look stupid (and rightly so) but will keep happening anyways I think.

If you have access to CNBC, please tune yourself out of it. You are much better off watching Midnight masala. (one of my standard recommendation, nothing against the CNBC folks)

Same goes for BUY/HOLD/SELL recommendations in papers. The news papers ignore a stock when its trading at 30 Rs, and give BUY recommendation when it has reached 100 in two-three months time. I can quote actual examples.

Help yourself by ignoring ‘target price, stop loss’ expertise offered by technical analysts as well.

Don’t worry about beating the street, beating the koyambedu market etc. Most of the businesses are more cyclical than we would like to believe. What goes up comes down and what comes down goes up in about 2-3 years time. 90% of the listed businesses which get thrashed by the market will eventually survive, turn around and perform good, reach a peak, only to turn loss making in a few years time (app. 3-4 years time). So please go against the ‘BUY SELL recommendations. People who told you to sell DLF for 130Rs will ask you to buy the same DLF for 400 Rs in exactly 2 months.

If your bank gives you X% and you can make 2-3 times of X% then you are doing good. Such a lenient outlook ensures the following

you wont get acidity
you can sleep peacefully at night
you won’t do margin trading, in your pursuit to beat the market.
you wont ‘diversify’ - the less stocks you have in your portfolio, the better. three or four should be okay for the long term.

I did close to 30% in this time frame but could’ve done lot more if only I had controlled the ‘animal spirits’ in me better.

Advice:
Put your money directly only if you like the process - struggling with lot of boring material, reading well into midnight and making calculations, and more importantly have lots of patience.

If you want to make money in the market without any big effort, please invest periodically in any of the index funds (the timing is perfect when CNBC screams, ‘the world is gonna end tomorrow’).

I know that I’ve been ranting more about stocks off late. But I guess its only natural. This is just one phase of my life. For now I am obsessed with this. Not sure what will capture my interest in the next six months.

Plans for this weekend:

- I tried to write a review for Fortune’s formula but did not come out good. Hopefully should complete it this weekend.
- will probably do the same as last week, some nearby temple visit, some reading and more sleep.

Happy weekend!