ExpertDabbler

I am especially jobless the last couple of days. Basically taking off from work the last week of the calender year and being completely at home. Being jobless leads me to fiddle with stock portals and introspect what we did and did not do well.

The ‘Project Buffett’ experiment completes two years with this December. To begin with, we were damn lucky. I was lucky to have fellow ‘investors’ who blindly threw up money every month. No questions on portfolio selection logic, market timing, growth investing, or any of the investing fundas. Neither did they expect me to know nor did they knew. They knew that Karthi will not cheat, and that was enough for them. Whatever disclosure made was made voluntarily by yours truly.

Our advantages:
- Nano portfolio
- No worries about alpha, beta, gamma, EMH, portfolio diversification since i did not know anyway.
- a bear market in 2008

These created a Lollapalooza effect. It would take a Recurring Deposit scheme to deliver 30 % p.a interest for two years to generate the same level of returns that we managed.

We did not lose much money even in 2008 because we bought stocks the way middle class housewives buy groceries, not like the way the rich women buy perfumes. Since we did not lose much, the returns took care of itself.

Another facet about investing is that much of the tricks and tips of investing had already been written, tried and tested. This is not rocket science. The difficulty lies in the behavioral aspect, which is the ability to follow the advice. We know the traffic wisdom: Follow traffic rules, wear helmet, drive safe, etc. We all know that. Following it is a different matter altogether. Same goes for investing. Yours truly made enough mistakes to start a separate blog.

In 2010:
- Things will be more difficult, net-net returns will be lower.
- People who are competent in special situation investing will still make lot of money.
- No matter how many people scream about value investng, few will actually believe, fewer will actually practice.

Of course there are a whole list of to-do items in 2010:
- Learn swimming
- Learn a foreign language
- Dabble in electronics, DIY projects.
- Travel more now that I have new company at home
- Finish all the unfinished books
- Attend more executive education programs. I attended one by Prof. Vidyanand Jha and absolutely loved it.
- I joined the gym in 2009, should go up the chain.
- Watch more movies
- Write GMAT.
- Learn math, especially probability and calculus.
- Spend more time with mom and wife
- Take a sabbatical and go for higher studies.

I do not expect to do all of the above. Some are contradictory. And I have 24 hours in a day. Accomplishing even a few will be rewarding. I did pretty decent in 2009 with TO-DO lists than in any of the previous years primarily because I used a daily tracker that reminded me of all the items almost every day. Hope to follow the same. One caveat: Life is what happens when we are busy planning.

Happy New Year!!!

PS: If I were you, I’d go out only in a 4-wheeler on New Year Eve in Chennai. Take care!
PS2: Please be at home! Refer Ravi’s comment below!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.