stay hungry, stay foolish
I took the Road most travelled by and was dazzled by the architecture. Kazakhstan is currently Visa-free for Indians and a very economical travel destination providing you with adventure activity, sightseeing, and Partying. Day 1 - Land at Almaty (0630 hours), a 4-hour flight from Delhi. Land at -15 to -20 Degree Celsius and get [...]
“I love to practice. I need to practice. How can I skip practice? I need it.” - Michael Jordan Some days ago at an Investor conference - I talked about what investors can learn from the game of poker. One area I talked about is that in almost all skill games and sports players are [...]
This was part of a 12 day trip. Will write about the full trip later. Day 0: Reach Nairobi. Get a briefing from Shashank Birla from Wilderlust expeditions –Naturalist and Photojournalist on what to expect and a brief outline of our plan for the next 4 days. Day 1: Reaching the Camp and a short [...]
“It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.”Warren Buffet Invesco bought a 11% stake in Zee in August 2019 at Rs 400 – spending ~Rs4000cr apparently after the promoter’s debt problems were known and, in a bid, to help them. It intends to Sell 7.8% in a block [...]
A case of Tail wagging the Dog. You always have a choice between Dmart and Reliance Power. Recently Nithin Kamath CEO of Zerodha has tweeted the reason to Not IPO is because it burdens with unrealistic expectations and I quote “For a stock to do well, you have to outperform”. The quote was retweeted by [...]
While, I have stopped actively looking at Zee entertainment and have not followed its results in detail. I have been pulled back by a number of messages seeking my opinion after the company Q4FY21 results. Some of the points that demand a look at ZEEL are: Improvement in cash flows – a key concern of [...]
I would have not given more than 5 interviews in my life for a Job after campus. The first interview was with Shilpa Krishnan – analyst at Kotak securities. Second – was to Telecom analyst at Merrill known for short temper. The third was for I-SEC in 2007 from where I retired. My first failed [...]
(Only for Laughs ) One of the many successful attributes of successful promoters has been their focus on cost control. Azim Premji has been known to own a preowned Mercedes and would be seen switching off lights after employees left. Jeff Bezos's first desk was made of a wooden door and amazon warehouses are knows [...]
Incredible lessons from India most successful digital entrepreneurs by Sidharth Rao A fascinating and must-read book for people who want to get a synopsis of start-ups of India. The book details the struggles of some of the Indian start-ups and how they almost blew it. One common theme in the success of all startups [...]
In Q3 FY21 concall of zee entertainment, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala had a disagreement with mgmt about them being conservative about ad growth forecast. I have tracked and covered Zee entertainment stock for 15 years. My experience says that an analyst and companies’ ability to forecast industry or company ad growth in any given year has been [...]
Reading stock prices for Better returns Michael and Alfred Rappaport in the book provide intricate details of how to understand the mispricing of stocks from looking at the best indicator of a company – its own share price. This is a framework that helps in easing out “what’s factored in” and to put it in [...]
Nithin Kamath, Founder and CEO of Zerodha, made a few innocuous-looking tweets yesterday which should send the entire broking industry, promoters, and investment bankers into some soul searching. I had recently read in Simon Sinek book “Start with why”- while most companies are able to articulate what business are they in and how they are [...]
Credit suisse to reveal losses from Archegos ; estimate $7.5 bn losses. ( Article) If any of you have ever played live poker with me, you are bound to hear a specific joke of Santa Banta from me -Slipping over a banana peel. The joke goes like this: Once Santa Slipped over a Banana peel [...]
The Management Pet: Always starts with “Great quarter guys!” and is always first to ask. . The analyst wants to show everybody that he is the most experienced analyst with a Strong BUY recommendation and that’s why his question was taken first. So, my question is “How were you able to deliver such a strong [...]
How Great leaders inspire everyone to take action. I would recommend people to watch the Ted talk ( Link here) which became famous of Simon Sinek on the same topic. The book goes into further details with a lot of examples to prove his point. I liked the concept of the golden circle but [...]
Techno Fundamental FM: I agree with your structural fundamental story - charts are also showing accumulation and break out. Pseudo Long term FM: This is a structural story that will play out. Yeh quarter number kya lagta hai. Corp Governance conscious FM: We will not buy zee stock as it was linked to KP. Can [...]
Lessons in creative leadership from the CEO of Walt Disney company The book reads like an autobiography of Robert Iger – one of the most successful CEOs in the world. Robert Iger deserves a lot of respect given he has been successful in steering a company of the size and legacy of Disney. The Media [...]
Deepak Dhayanithy in his book “Strategy Huddle” talks about a very interesting event to understand behavioral strategy . This is about Andre Agassi telling the world how he had an important “tell” when he faced his great rival, Boris Becker. The “tell” was that Boris tended to stick his tongue out, pointing towards the direction [...]
The story of every trader looking for a life partner . Watch till end. https://videopress.com/v/NBt1fd95?preloadContent=metadata
A book by Ben Horowitz. I heard it is so popular among Venture capitalists, that they refuse to fund a startup until the founders have read this book. When a book has praise from Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Dick Costolo, and Peter Thiel on its back cover, one is guaranteed he is reading a good [...]
No one in Mumbai can be a trader/investor until and unless he has traveled in the local trains where the wisdom of years of trading are available for free by Gujju/Marwari traders. I traveled for 4 years in the Mumbai local. This is a story of one such exploit. The Mumbai local in the morning [...]
An Investment classic published in 1852. People like crowds. The bigger the crowd, the more people show up. Small crowd, hardly anybody shows up. -Gallagher With Gamestop, Tesla, and Bitcoin being the most talked-about investment idea in the last few months. I decided to get back to the first principles of understanding and knowing manias. [...]
A Story of Indian stock market by Santosh Nair I had an induction course at my MBA Campus and a 2-day induction session at my first job at SBI capital markets. The inductions still left me unprepared for the real stock markets. I suggest this book as an induction material for all present and prospective [...]
A satirical note. Please dont try to invest in them. U-turnCoin - This is a negative cryptocurrency. All political leaders are given 100 coins by the election commission. As soon as they do a U-turn in policy, one coin is detected from their wallet. They cannot contest an election after they have exhausted all their [...]
By Donald Keough – A Coco-cola executive and with foreword from Warren buffet. This book immediately jumps into the best books on business in my list and simply put not many books are worthy of a foreword by Warren buffet (Halo effect). While, there are many books that talk about reasons for business success and [...]
Twelve classic tales from the world of wall street. The bizarre move in Gamestop stock last week prompted me to read this book especially to understand a similar stock cornering incident that was executed by a single person. In 1923, Clarence Saunders the promoter of Piggly Wiggly stores was involved in a corner and had [...]
An Autobiography of Anupam Kher. The first time I watched Anupam Kher on screen was in the Movie Karma – the Multi starrer and I would repeatedly as a kid enact the scene “iss thapad ki goonj suni tumne”. For people of my generation characters like Anupam Kher, Kader khan and Amrish puri were the [...]
“It is easy to get anything done in India provided you know whom to contact with how much money.” I had heard Josy Joseph on TedxGateway in 2016 and his talk was gut wrenching and so is no holds barred book investigating the dirty mafia of politicians and industrialist nexus. While, the book may seem [...]
An Authorized Biography of the very private man Azim Premji. They are 4 business leaders who have influenced me a lot Narayan Murthy, Azim Premji, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Any book which helps in getting to know more of these personalities is a welcome. The book does justice in trying to get all [...]
Exeptional Book in explaining biases while trying to understand business performance.
Why I feel very wealthy and successful after reading this book and hopefully stay. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel is a very interesting read and a must recommend for all people for understanding and managing personal finance. The book is easy to read and structured into small chapters talking about each topic. It [...]
Q1 FY21 results of Zee entertainment was an exercise by management in trying to shore up investor confidence in governance and give some straws of hope to the few bullish analyst and investors to hang on. Governance building measures: Isn’t good faith enough? Company committed to Qtrly disclosures of balance sheet and Zee5 data along [...]
ZEEL a 15k crore market cap made provisions/write offs of Rs 1500cr of write off and claims in a qtr!!! . A company whose promoters who have lost almost all shareholding (Mere 4.77% left) – write-offs should be seen with dollops of salt. Let’s look at the write offs/provisions/ claims in the quarter Inventories write [...]
Elcid Investments is a listed entity on BSE with a Market cap of mere 18 lakhs. However, the company is an investing company and owns 4.3% or 4.06 lakhs shares in Asian Paints which means an investment value of Rs 6800 cr or Rs 3.5 lakh per /share. The company has two subsidiaries: Murahar Investments [...]
In 2011 cricket world cup, India had entered the Quarter finals in World cup and I fancied a chance of India reaching the finals to be played on Wankhede. I reached out to a close friend with strong connects and was able to source tickets for World cup final whose MRP was Rs 7k each [...]
-Co-authored with Vidish Mantri The northern lights have always fascinated me and I with my nephew decided to travel to Norway this winter (Jan 2020) for the experience. To increase our chances of viewing the northern lights, we decided to keep enough days in Tromso (4 days) and added Svalbard (3 days). Svalbard archipelago fascinated [...]
Today marks 1-year of me quitting the corporate rat-race and doing away with the addiction of a salary. The idea behind this was to now spend more time in doing things that I really wanted to do. I had a very satisfying job as an Equity Analyst and the only role I ever had [...]
The reason to get into any bet or trade is to take an advantage of the pay-outs because of the edge that you have. The edge could be a function of knowledge or skill. In sports, poker or trading, the side that wins in the long run is the one with Edge . In this [...]
Being stuck in Poker or Investing means that you are currently losing money. In poker, this could refer to your current session or this could refer to your cumulative results over a little while. Being stuck in investing or trading means that you continue to hold an investment/stock because you are losing money in it. [...]
15 days , 12 destinations , 15 role models , 500 youth , 8000 Kms Today I embark upon a 15-day long, national train journey that will take you 8000 kilometers across the length and breadth of India, to understand and build the India of smaller towns and villages through enterprise. Traveling along this train [...]
Years ago investor Mohnish Pabrai lost big on an investment in a troubled lender called Delta Financial. Soon after he did an interview with SmartMoney magazine: SmartMoney: How do you deal with Delta Financial, profession- ally and personally?Pabrai: Investing is a game of probability. Sometimes when you make favorable bets, you still lose them. Even [...]
Zee stake sale of upto 50% of promoters holding is likely to be concluded soon as per promoter’s statements in investor concall and on an interview with CNBC. https://www.cnbctv18.com/videos/business/zee-entertainment-stake-sale-to-conclude-by-early-july-says-ceo-punit-goenka-3489961.htm Also, the promoters mentioned that they have one binding agreement and expecting another after which the family will decide. One of them is financial investor and [...]
The Reluctant Analyst 