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Date:	2005-08-15 23:28
Subject:	'Hero' or 'Zero' ??
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative
Music:	Journey to the moon

I know many people (may most of the people) won't like this post. But every year on I-Day, we hear about the 'martyrs' and 'heroes' and I couldn't help but think, "do they really deserve this?"

A soldier’s No. 1 job is to stay alive. If you die, you can’t accomplish the mission, and you weaken your team and put your buddies in danger.
Obviously no soldier dies on purpose, and he may well have have had no control over the circumstances that let to his death.

BUT.

In war, there are no excuses. You find a way to stay alive, whatever it takes if you’re a good soldier. A soldier who doesn't do that pays the price. but he also fails the mission and lets down his buddies.

As a soldier, such a 'martyr' can be called a failure. He was brave (maybe), but he was also incompetent.

So, really, how much exactly are we supposed to grieve over this guy? Isn’t a certain amount of disapproval in order for the guy and by extension his family, for making such a fuss over a person who was by definition a loser?

So shouldn’t 'martyrs' or the so-called 'heroes' families and well wishers show a little shame about the situation
Something to think about, anyway.

The late Louis Ehrenkrantz, one of the greatest American stock pickers, was known for his ability to predict social and political developments -- and identify companies that would benefit most from those events.

First rule: develop a large appetite for reading; it will hone your instincts for finding successful companies.
Second rule: don't overdiversify; ten stocks, in at least three sectors, are enough for the average investor.
Third rule: stick with your winners and sell your losers; do not automatically sell when a stock hits a target price, but continue to hold it as long as it performs well and has good prospects for the future.
Fourth rule: look for top-quality, out-of-favor companies; look for companies that produce an array of high-quality products and/or services.
Fifth rule: don't worry about earnings if a company makes a popular product; strong earnings growth will follow.
Sixth rule: don't tinker with your portfolio; check your portfolio's performance only once or twice a year.
Seventh rule: don't be afraid to hold cash; it's okay to be prepared to purchase stocks with beaten-down prices after a correction.

Since 1900, September is the only month in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen more often than it has risen. The Dow industrials have fallen 1.2% in September, on average, making it the only month with an average decline of any significance. The industrials fell in each of the past six Septembers, and in 18 of the 25 from 1980 through 2004. More bull markets have ended in September than in any other month, according to Ned Davis Research of Venice, Fla.

For October, the average gain is barely above zero. And when really bad things happen, they somehow do it in October. That is when stocks crashed in 1929 and 1987. Of the Dow industrials' 15 worst one-day percentage declines, seven came during October."

May be its a marketing gimmick but there is his blog on msn spaces. Check it out Mangal Pandey (Aamir)

Date:	2005-08-02 02:53
Subject:	My first movie in a Kolkata theatre
Security:	Public
Mood:	cheerful

Finally I did it :) Saw a movie in a theatre (INOX) in Kolkata for the first time!! 14 long months and no visit to a theatre!
My friend asked me,"How did you manage this feat?". Well, my laziness helped me a lot in keeping me away from a movie theatre and the mocie piracy made it easier :))
However, its very unlike me to not to go out for watching a movie. At, IIT Madras, my frequency was atleast twice a week in my final year.
Now, when is the next visit? ummm.. its on cards. Which movie.. I don't know.
At the moment, Counter Strike and the upcoming project deadlines keeping me busy and should keep me away from movies for atleast three weeks.
And coming back from the theatre was another adventure which took me and my friend to the Jadavpur Police Station. It took us full fifteen minutes to make the inebriated taxi driver and that constable understand simple arithmetic of fare calculation.
Too tires. Here I hit the bed now!!

Date:	2005-07-28 16:23
Subject:	The "Greenspan Model"
Security:	Public
Mood:	curious

From an article in Barron's in 1998:
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan hasn't said much about the stock market this year, but his favorite valuation model is just about screaming a sell signal. The so-called Greenspan model was brought to our attention last summer by Edward Yardeni, economist at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, who found it buried in the back pages of a Fed report. The model's very presence in such a report was noteworthy because the Fed officials normally don't tip their hand about their views on the stock market. The model surfaced at a particularly interesting time: Stocks were near a high point, and the Greenspan model indicated that the market was about 20% higher than it should have been.

That turned out to be a pretty good call. By October, stocks had fallen as much as 15% from their summer high point. By year-end, of course, the Dow had recovered to around 7900, but it still remained about 5% below its peak for the year.

Now that the Dow has climbed above 8600, Greenspan's model is again flashing a warning signal. To be exact, the Greenspan model now indicates that stocks are 18% overvalued.

"The market is as overvalued now as it was before it took a dive in October," Yardeni avers.

The Fed's model arrives at its conclusions by comparing the yield on the 10-year Treasury note to the price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 based on expected operating earnings in the coming 12 months. To put stocks and bonds on the same footing, the model uses the "earnings yield" on stocks, which is the inverse of the P/E ratio. So while the yield on the 10-year Treasury is now 5.60%, the earnings yield on the S&P 500, based on a P/E ratio of 21, is 4.75%.

In essence, the Fed's model asks, Why would anyone buy stocks with a 4.75% earnings return, when they could get a bond with a 5.60% yield?

The Fed's model suggests the S&P should be trading around 900, well under its current level of 1070.

Still, the model is very erroneous and cannot be relied upon because it ignores differences between bonds and stocks "in risk and expected growth"
Courtsey: Our prof. for Financial Statement Analysis and Equity Valuation

People here are getting crazy over one of her music video which is doing rounds inside the campus. I don't what do they like in her: her sweet face or her voice. Though I found both nothing extraordinary.

Date:	2005-07-26 14:34
Subject:	Latest Weather report
Security:	Public
Mood:	relaxed

awadh from Mumbai: misty sa..halki halki baarish ho rahi hai n cool breezee..totaaaal roomantic

Vaibhav from Kolkata : yahan to kaale kaale baadal hain aur very breezy

RGE MONITOR

And its free till October!

The European Union (18.5%)

Japan (18%)

United States (17.5%)

Hong Kong (11%)

ASEAN nations (11%)

South Korea (9.5%)

Taiwan (8.5%)

Russia (2%)

Australia (2%)

Canada (1.5%).

And India (the 2nd most populous nation, the next door neighbor) is not even Tenth in terms of trading volume with China.
Bro, Treasure lies next door and even indoor.. you gotta explore it!

We've discussed the importance of not becoming emotionally involved with investing or a trade or even the entire market. Now, a new study of aphasiacs -- a kind of brain damage affecting only specific regions of the brain -- turn out to make better investment decisions than people with "undamaged" brains.

The study shows "people with brain damage that impaired their ability to experience emotions such as fear outperformed other people in an investment game."

The (obvious) conclusion is that mixing emotion with investing can lead to bad outcomes:

"By linking brain science to investment behavior, researchers concluded that people with an impaired ability to experience emotions could actually make better financial decisions than other people under certain circumstances. The research is part of a fast-growing interdisciplinary field called "neuroeconomics" that explores the role biology plays in economic decision making, by combining insights from cognitive neuroscience, psychology and economics. The study was published last month in the journal Psychological Science, and was conducted by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of Iowa."

Quite simply, if you can avoid your own instincts when investing or trading, you remove a source of underperformance.

My favorite exposition on this topic comes from Michael Mauboussin back when he was at Credit Suisse First Boston, titled "What Have You Learned in the Past 2 Seconds?"

The bottom line is that learning to control your "emotional responsiveness" is an advantage when investing. You are more willing to take calcualted gambles with high payoffs when you control fear. Too much cautious and being overly reactive to your emotions will hurt your performance:

"Some neuroscientists believe good investors may be exceptionally skilled at suppressing emotional reactions. "It's possible that people who are high-risk takers or good investors may have what you call a functional psychopathy," says Antoine Bechara, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Iowa, and a co-author of the study. "They don't react emotionally to things. Good investors can learn to control their emotions in certain ways to become like those people."

Neuroeconomics helps explain why don't people always act in their own self-interest: Its because they are often irrational.

Before you start whacking yourself in the head with a cast iron skillet to improve your returns, understand that this is a very specific type of injury with a peculiar brain damage; Merely giving yourself a blunt head trauma could accidentally lead to a career in economics, not money management.

Source:
Lessons From The Brain-Damaged Investor
Unusual Study Explores Links Between Emotion and Results;
'Neuroeconomics' on Wall Street
JANE SPENCER
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 21, 2005; Page D1
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112190164023291519,00.html

Date:	2005-07-26 13:06
Subject:	Even The Capital Markets Get it Wrong
Security:	Public
Mood:	curious

"The Stock Market has predicted 11 of the past 4 recessions"

That old joke is quite telling: Despite the liquidity and massive dollar amounts involved, even the Stock and Bond markets are quite fallible as predictors.

After the 2000 crash, the market had 5 substantial rallies which many economists proclaimed as a sign of an imminent recovery. They were wrong. Similarly, some people were insisting the first half of the year’s weakness as a sign of an imminent recession (wrong again).

If these enormous, liquid, widely followed markets forecast wrong (or were wrongly interpreted by the experts) -- how accurate can we expect the thinly traded futures markets to be?

Date:	2005-07-19 12:58
Subject:	Fourth entry in half an hour !!
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused
Music:	Buddha Bar

Wow !! My typing speed is improving. Alas! the same can't be said for my writing skills!

Date:	2005-07-19 12:50
Subject:	People seems to be having a lot of girl friends these days!!
Security:	Public
Mood:	weird

And at the same time, here I am still protecting myself from the other half of this world. Well not exactly but still it seems (as my friends from IITM say) that, a siren seems to be let ON wherever I go and nature ensires that there is no chic in the 2 km radius wherever we go. And here is my friend PseudB, when I ask him about his girl, he asks me,"Which one?". He seems to have a way to make us feel jealous of his life's serendipity in matters of girls which seems to be lacking for most of us from IITM.

Date:	2005-07-19 12:44
Subject:	Mackichan (k)Nights Rocking again !!
Security:	Public
Mood:	cheerful
Music:	My Sharona

The adventures of Mackichan (k)Nights are in news again at IIMC !! Coustsey a discovery by D'lord Somancho of an enrty in a blog by my sidey frm IIMB at Mackichan: The guy seems to be wondering why we buggers(as he puts it) managed to gain entry into the hostel even after the night curfew while he had to spend a night out on the road! And I ll let out a secret , the guy's two shirts are still with his roomie Gaurav :))

Date:	2005-07-19 12:36
Subject:	A farce called "customer care" in India !!
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

These call center execs (as they these fools call themselves) of various companies esp. mobile phones and credit card ones have so low standards of service for their domestic clients that I wonder why they are in demand in other countries. Perhaps they had even lower standards. I have called up these execs of Hutch so many times for any information and more often than not they hardly have any information of use to me. The story for Airtel and other telecom operators in no different. And this ICICI bank call center exec doesnt even know about the billing of my credit card and why it hasn't reached me yet. Totalling apalling. I wonder how these call centers gonna sustain themselves once Chinese, eastern europeans and bangladeshis learn to speak English or for that matter hindi. Then India will outsource from them

Date:	2005-06-09 15:08
Subject:	In Cal again
Security:	Public
Mood:	bouncy

Already getting overwhelmed with courses.. but enjoying them.. lets see how long I enjoy them