Rich (and nasty)?

There is something surprising about a private banker warning his colleagues about the rich. It would be like a director ofVolkswagen AG casting doubt on motorists, or the boss ofMcDonald’s Corp. distancing himself from people who eat fast food. Rather like valets, the main aim of the private banker is to court the wealthy.

At a conference in Zurich last week, the head of Barclays Wealth Management’s private-banking unit, Gerard Aquilina, appeared to issue a red alert about the richest of clients.

“Beware of the complexities of dealing with ultra high net worths,” Aquilina told his audience. “Demanding and often unreasonable” requests from them may create “impossible demands on the organization.”

Such as? Help with getting children into the right school, securing credit to buy property, or obtaining last-minute concert tickets, for example. Even worse, the richest of the rich turn out to be pretty stingy as well. They don’t even want to pay the full fee for all the services they demand.

It was strong stuff. But it was also an insight into the way the rich have changed over the past decade. They are, it turns out, a nasty bunch of people who are only getting nastier. And the banking industry only has itself to blame.

Customer Demands

To some degree, Aquilina’s warning can be seen as the kind of observation you find in every industry. Executives in any business tend to feel the real trouble always comes from the customer, who is often stupid, unreasonable and annoying, and sometimes all of the above.

No doubt, the software engineers at Microsoft Corp. fume about all those blockheads who don’t know how to partition their hard drive, or re-configure the registry file. There must be countless airline executives who occasionally dream about how smoothly their planes would circle the globe if only they didn’t have to fill them up with stupid tourists, their snotty children, and their overstuffed bags.

It’s always the case that people are going to be irritated by those they have to serve. There’s no reason that even super- smooth private bankers should be exempt from that. But Aquilina makes an interesting point.

There is an increasing amount of evidence that the rich are a vicious tribe of people. One study last year from the University of California, Berkeley, found that the rich are ruder than others. Another piece of research, conducted at the same institution, concluded they were less likely togive to charity than poorer people were. A third study, carried out at the Humboldt University in Berlin, concluded they were “nastier,” in the sense of being keener to punish others.

Top of Tree

Nothing is shocking about that. You don’t get to be rich without being difficult and demanding. You need some sharp elbows to get to the top of the tree, and there is no point in being squeamish about treading on a few toes along the way. And the rich have a lot more to protect than other people: They have to be fierce to hang on to all that wealth.

They have probably been vicious ever since one caveman used a bigger club to take control of the grandest cave on the hill.

In the past, most fortunes were built in association with ordinary people. Factory owners were aware of the shop-floor workers on whom their wealth depended, and that shaped the view of themselves. Carmaker Henry Ford doubled his workers’ average pay to $5 a day in 1913 and shortened their working hours. The Cadbury family of chocolate makers in the U.K. built a small town for many of the company’s workers in Bournville, near Birmingham, in the 19th century. That made them more human.

The growth of the financial-services industry and the bonus culture has changed that. The investment bankers and hedge-fund managers who make up most of the new rich elite don’t have much contact with ordinary people. They assume their wealth is entirely the result of their own brilliance. And they cut themselves off from normal life.

It is an industry that mints billionaires and also breeds arrogance, selfishness and snobbishness.

Aquilina has put a spotlight on an industry that only has itself to blame. Maybe that’s why he’s warning others.

(Matthew Lynn is a Bloomberg News columnist and the author of “Bust,” a forthcoming book on the Greek debt crisis. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Is this guy for real?

Apropos the earlier post, here is an interesting statistic I picked up today. While I do think the guy is making wildly exaggerated statements to get some headlines, I do think the guy has a point (which is why trade #1 in the earlier post).

Judge for yourself!

Oil Should Be Around $10 a Barrel: Analyst

CNBC

On Monday August 30, 2010, 12:57 pm EDT

The price of a barrel of oil would be closer to $10 if the commodity wasn't traded as an investment instrument, given the record-high levels of U.S. oil inventories, Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover, told CNBC Monday.

"I honestly think that if there were no investors using oil as an asset that the price of oil right now would be $10 or $15 or $18, but it wouldn't be anywhere near where it is," Beutel said.

"We have so much oil right now, more than we've had in 27 years. Why is it 27 years? Because that's how far our records go back. It's probably the most in 50 or 100 years," he added.

Part of the reason the price of oil is currently above $74 (BIS: US@CL.1) a barrel is because of a belief in the economic recovery, Beutel said.

Comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke over the weekend gave the commodity a boost as he signalled a willingness to support the fragile economic recovery with additional policy measures.

From a historical perspective, Beutel pointed out that the current level of inventories is even higher than when the price of oil was below $20 a barrel.

"We've got 50 million barrels of crude more than we had two years ago. We have 176 million of distillate," Beutel said. "When I started in the business back in 1980 we used to think to ourselves: "Gee, we would love it if we had 140 million barrels of distillates to start the winter."

Not all market watchers agree that the price of oil should or will go lower. Jonathan Barratt, managing director at Commodity Broking Services, told CNBC that he thinks oil will rise to between $82 and $85 a barrel.

Investment thoughts

Whiling away time late Friday night, thinking of what trades to put on in the market next. A few thoughts (disclaimer: these are just ideas, and I may change my opinion on them anytime!!)

1. Oil marketing companies - in the next 1 week, all the 3 oil marketing companies (IOC, HPCL, BPCL) will pay out 2-3.3% of their current market value as dividends. This will be tax free in the hands of the shareholder. If one has spare money lying around in the bank, one can earn the equivalent of interest for the whole year in 1 week. And the best part is that it is going to be tax free! Of course the stock price will get adjusted downwards for the payout, but here the bet is on a continuing weak global economy and consequent weak oil prices. If crude oil prices remain below $73 per barrel, I think the oil marketing companies will rise in value at least 5-10% from here. It is a big IF, but I am comfortable with the risk / reward here.
2. Tata Motors - sales of the Jaguar and Land Rover are picking up. The domestic business is going great guns - commercial vehicles are on a roll, the Nano is ramping up volumes, and demand for the Indica / Indigo are robust. If Jaguar and Land Rover sales sustain at the current trajectory, it will a) magnify earnings per share because of the highly leveraged capital structure of the company b) allow quick de-levering (high leverage has been a major overhang on the stock) and c) lead to a re-rating in the p/e or ev / ebitda multiples. The multiplicative effect of these 3 drivers could lead to $$$ returns! The rewards should more than compensate for the risk of downside.
3. Tata Steel - a sentimental favourite for me. Currently trading at lower than 5 year average valuations due to fears about Corus performance. The brain likes it because a) the India operations are superb (lowest cost producer in the world), b) most of Corus' losses stemmed from the fixed costs at a particular plant, which has since been shuttered and put on the block and c) the Tata group have managed to turn around all of their global acquisitions - Tetley a decade ago to Jaguar Land Rover a couple of years ago. The heart likes it for reasons unknown! Overall risk / reward seems quite favourable.
4. Sell or short Suzlon. Loads of debt (approx 10x EBITDA), negative EBITDA (high fixed costs), no new orders internationally in the last 3-4 quarters and general poor perception of quality (broken blades being a big issue with its windmills). The company does not have enough cash to even service its debt, let alone pay the principal back. As of now, seems like a candidate for bankruptcy. Again, I dislike this stock sentimentally for reasons unknown.
5. Reliance Industries - because this is the big daddy of Indian stocks and has underperformed the Index by 30% this year. This cannot continue - either RIL should rise or the Nifty must fall. Long RIL - Short Nifty is one trade that suggests itself

Other ideas welcome!

Pyaar ke side effects

This post is actually about shaadi ke side effects - one very strange effect in particular. I had heard about this phenomenon, but seeing it in action is very mystifying!

The longer you are married, the more you become like your spouse. A slow and gradual process, no doubt, but utterly unhalting. Before our marriage, the wife loved milk, I did not. I loved watching movies, she did not. I was a late sleeper and late riser, she was the opposite. I liked eating out, she was a home-made healthy food freak. She was a big yoga fan, I was not. I had 10-12 cups of tea a day, she was a 2-cups-a-day girl. I was the more foolhardy risk taker while she was the quicker tempered one.

And now, I am a milk maniac, she has a lot of tea, I wake up at 6:30am without an alarm, while she sleeps for a bit longer, I have become a yoga fan, the last movie I saw was 7-8 months ago, I prefer the plain and simple ghar ka khana; she is a successful entrepreneur while I hold on to a steady job. She has become patient and I fly into rages more often. We have even begun to have similar choices on colors, cars, homes, books, people and music!! This was unthinkable as recently as a couple of years ago. Its almost as if we are converging into the same person!

Fascinating development!

Anagram

Heard this one recently -

Suresh Kalmadi: Sir U Made Lakhs

Disillusioned

Yesterday, as I spent more than an hour in my car navigating the many traffic jams that had proliferated in the rain, I saw a disquieting event. At a jammed-for-miles traffic intersection, there suddenly appeared a cavalcade of old Ambassadors with flashing red and blue lights, which then proceeded to take the wrong side of the road, speeding away to their destinations. Traffic from the other side was disrupted, the people who had been waiting in line for more than 20 minutes kept sitting there in their vehicles like idiots, and the policemen manning the intersection did nothing except wave the cavalcade forward.

This led me fuming - why is it that my time is always considered less precious than some likely corrupt, illiterate, venal, small time thug? Why are rules only for me, and not for this same person? I remember an ad on radio during election time talking about the "garibon ka massiah" Kanwar Singh Tanwar, the BSP candidate from South Delhi. This very same thug's son recently crushed 2 people to death in his speeding BMW, which he was driving in an inebriated state.

The thought led to many other (I had lots of time to kill in the jam), and I realized that everywhere, in every sphere, the Indian state has failed. I look at the Commonwealth Games fiasco, and feel ashamed. I look at the big dug-up holes that pass for in-process-of-beautification roads in Connaught Place, and dont know how to explain it to myself. The latest on these holes is that the contractors have given up on getting them repaired in time, so they will be filled back with mud, and 'beautified' AFTER the Games are over. Meanwhile, Kalmadi and his ilk line up their pockets with Rs 11,000 crores, delivering leaking stadia, substandard roads, and shoddy pavements. The RWA in my colony spends its precious time getting petitions for cutting trees so that they can create yet another cemented parking lot for their third cars. Meanwhile, every rain, the lane outside gets flooded and breeds slush and dengue carrying mosquitoes.

The Indian state is failing. No - this is beyond the state. Indian society is failing. There is little I can do about it. I am not sure if the reason is poor governance and systems or Indians themselves. The 'real' India of the villages still believes in male chauvanism, caste based 'khap' panchayats, feudalism and illiteracy. The 'elite' Indians living in cities like Delhi are rapists, totally selfish, corrupt, narrow minded and a threat to social living.

I can ignore all this and keep going through my daily grind (as I have been for ages). I do not know what else I can do?

Did you know?

Doing some research on media in India, I came across this gem...

The longest movie in the world according to Guinness World Records is The Cure for Insomnia, directed by John Henry Timmis IV. Released in 1987, the running time is 5220 minutes (87 hours) and has no plot. Instead, it consists of poet L. D. Groban reciting his 4,080-page poem “A Cure for Insomnia” over the course of three and a half days. The movie is inter-spliced with clips from porno and heavy metal music videos.

Weird!

Completing the troika

$20 million is a big amount, in any country in the world. Very few of us earn this kind of wealth over entire lifetimes. So, when one hears about a guy who made $20 million EVERY WORKING DAY OF A YEAR, one is compelled to wonder - what did this guy do? What makes him special? What makes him tick?

Answering these questions is "The Greatest Trade Ever" by The Wall Street Journal's reporter Greg Zuckerman. The book traces the history, demeanor and turning points in John Paulson's life, as well as the thoughts behind the trade that led to a $4 billion payout in 2008.

The book is a definite page-turner, focusing on the human interest stories and very light on the technical aspects. This is definitely a good thing, since a lot more people will be able to enjoy the colourful stories told here - whether of Andrew Lahde, who dropped out, hustled big time to raise peanuts, and then had the best investment run of all time, only to drop out again (the letter he wrote thumbing his nose to the Establishment is a classic), or of Jeff Greene, who stole Paulson's trade and (almost) suffered big time, or of Paolo Pellegrini, the 46 year old starting from the lowest rung in Paulson's fund, working with 20 year olds.

Comparisons are odious, but since this is the 3rd (and last) book I've read on the subprime trade (others reviewed here and here), it makes sense to rank the 3. I would rate the Greatest Trade Ever up at #1 place, very very marginally ahead of The Big Short, with Roger Lowenstein bringing up a mediocre third. While a lot of the characters in the 1st 2 books are the same, its just that The Greatest Trade Ever has a lot more, covered in lesser detail. This makes it less involved, but also lighter reading (not that Michael Lewis is any slouch in that department).

Overall, a good investment of time and money!

Road trip to Shimla

We decided, almost on the spur of the moment, to drive our little one to Shimla and get some respite from the heat and humidity of Delhi. The drive, on the day of a Bharat Bandh, was very nice.

It took us, despite some unscheduled stops - to fix a burst tire, and for a blockade by some mercenary looking, slogan shouting BJP workers - about 10 hours door to door, with the road from Delhi to Ambala being very nice, Ambala to Kalka being pretty bad (but 4 laning is in progress), and again a slow 90km hill climb from Kalka to Shimla.

Shimla was a real pleasure. It was cool and very pleasant, now sunny...

and now foggy:

Now clear,

and suddenly cloudy.

But overall, just very very pretty.

Highly recommended for weekend trips out of Delhi. The drive is quite enjoyable, and the climate uphill (at least in the summer) to die for!

Thanks Megha

for introducing me to Flipkart yesterday. Highly co-incidental that these guys are in the news today!

BANGALORE: Popular belief has it that parents of young Indians with coveted degrees from the Indian Institutes of Management or Technology, quail at the thought of their children giving up a job in a multinational corporation to start a business. However, when Sachin Bansal, a Computer Science Graduate from IIT-Delhi, landed his first posting at global retail major, Amazon, his family was happy but wanted to know when he would launch his own business, so they could look for a bride for him.

“In our community a person with a salaried job is less valued than someone who runs their own business,” says Bansal who quit Amazon after a year to kick start his own e-commerce venture Flipkart.com with fellow IITian Binny Bansal. “As it happened I was married within a few months of starting out on my own,” he says.

That was more than two years ago. Today, Flipkart.com is the country's largest online bookstore, selling more than five lakh books since its inception in end 2007. “We sell a book a minute,” says Bansal who started selling movies, music and games on the portal this fortnight.

It was no cakewalk though. Flipkart could count only family and friends as customers in the initial months. “The first real order came nearly four months after the launch when we were able to source a customer request for the book ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change the World',” says Binny Bansal, who also worked at Amazon for eight months before launching Flipkart.

For one, the two Bansals had to bet on word-of-mouth marketing amongst peers, college mates, friends, blogs and social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter to find new customers as they had to keep their budget tight. “We had spent just about Rs 4 lakh to set up the business in the initial days,” says Sachin.

The partners, who moved to Bangalore with their jobs, would park themselves at the entrance to some of the city’s largest book fairs, distributing flyers to announce the launch of Flipkart. “The bookstore owners were very tolerant, they rarely objected to our presence,” he says.

Thanks to their control on budget, the company broke even in just six months, in March 2008 and the first thing they did was to rent an office and hire a helper. At the end of their first year of operations the business had grown enough for the Bansals to hire a team of six. “We had to sell at lower rates and also make sure that every customer had the order delivered at his doorstep,” says Sachin. They relied on free shipping, discounts and personalised service to build the business.

The sales picked up once Flipkart extended cash-on-delivery system to customers across 25 cities. And soon it was in the radar of venture capital firms. “The online retail business (excluding travel, classifieds, content) is worth at least $150 million and is growing very rapidly,” says Subrata Mitra, partner at private equity firm Accel India, which invested Rs 4 crore in Flipkart.com in mid 2009.

This helped the e-commerce outfit focus more on expanding its reach and increase its offerings built largely around strong regional content. Flipkart, with six million titles and the promise of free shipping across the country, claim to be the largest online bookstore in India. The site also has nearly 20,000 movie titles including English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi and Bhojpuri movies and 12,000 music titles in Hindi, English, vernacular and instrumental music. The games catalogue includes games for devices like PS, PS2, PS3, Ii, Xbox and PCs.

But there are others such as Indiaplaza.in, Rediff Books and the web version of offline store Landmark, fighting in the non-travel e-commerce market that industry experts estimate at $100 million in India.

“Multi-category retail is the way to make profits in this business, I do not think an online store that sells a single category of products can build traffic, grow sales and be profitable,” says K Vaitheeswaran, co-founder of Indiaplaza.in, an online shopping mall that was set up by a team that built the country's first e-commerce company FabMart over a decade ago.

As consumer demand for new products and services creates more opportunity for young Indians to build businesses of their own, the Bansals’ decision to strike out on their own while still barely a year and a half out of college is paying them rich dividends. “By the end of March 2011 we hope to be a Rs 100 crore company,” says Sachin Bansal for whom enterprise is clearly the calling card of choice.

What's happening?...

...in the World Cup, I mean? Just up from a watching a highly disappointing Brazil - Portugal match which ended in a tame 0-0 draw. The league matches are almost up, and soon we will be talking business - no draws from the next stage, and the men will be separated from the boys.

This World Cup has been unique - both finalists from last year have been kicked out unceremoniously in the first round itself. France after making a mockery of themselves (poor coach Domenech!) and Italy after playing some really un-spectacular football. All my favourite teams have played at least one bad match each - Argentina against Nigeria (though Messi has been spectacular after that match), Brazil against Portugal, Germany had a terrible match against Serbia, England against Slovenia. The only big ticket team which has been playing well consistently so far is the Netherlands.

I have not seen any of Spain's games yet (I hope to correct that at midnight tonight), but so far, I don't think there is any one favourite for lifting the cup. If Messi continues his golden run, then it could be Argentina all the way! Though I'm now rooting for Germany (Brazil are off the top of the charts for now). Fickle me!!

Another book

For a change, I splurged almost a thousand bucks to buy Roger Lowenstein's "The End of Wall Street" when I was in the US (it was not yet available in India, so I had to buy the hardback version from there). Having read and really liked "When Genius Failed", I had high expectations from ol' Rog. However, I was a tad disappointed at the end (which also explains why it took me more than a month to finish this baby - or roughly 15x the usual time).

The book reads like a bland retelling of the furiously moving events in September 2008, when Lehman went bust and the world got into a tailspin. While it goes way back, to 2005-06, to explain the genesis of the problem, it does not offer any new insights into why whatever happened, happened. Most people who read the news (or visited Bloomberg's website) would know all this stuff.

Comparisons are odious, but if I compare this to Michael Lewis's "The Big Short", I would short Mr. Lowenstein and go long Mr. Lewis. As opposed to The Big Short's human interest and genuine freshness of content, The End of Wall Street does not offer either. Nor does the title seem very apt!

Deeply disturbing

I have been following off and on the latest story in international media - the Gulf Coast oil spill, which is releasing approx. 60,000 barrels per day of oil into the ocean. By any metric, this is the largest ever man-made environmental disaster in the history of time. The ocean is a big thing, but I dont think even it can suffer endless degradation.

People say that BP is squarely to blame. To quote a Bloomberg article: "Evidence of BP’s corner-cutting, to the point of intentional negligence and reckless endangerment, is everywhere. According to lawmakers, BP used six instead of the usual 21 centralizers before cementing the well, didn’t test the cement bond, chose a cheaper method to prevent gas from rising unchecked to the surface, and stinted on a backup blowout preventer -- all to “save time/money,” to borrow a phrase from one internal BP e-mail."

My point is not that BP is evil or that no one should make mistakes. Instead it is this - how does one equate environmental disaster on this scale (and boy, is it truly gigantic!) with money? BP says it will keep $20 billion in escrow to pay for damages. How many fish is that worth? How many people who die eating contaminated fish will that compensate for? How many loved ones would you trade for $20 billion? 100? 10? 1?

I think this is a symptom of our times - everything equals money. We are cavalier and depraved when it comes to preserving our ecology. However, I don't think this state of affairs can last very long. Something is going to give. Soon. I just hope it does not happen in my kid's lifetime. Meanwhile I do what little I can to protect the environment near me.

Waca Waca

My closest friends are usually very surprised whenever I mention that I used to play football (and not too badly, I might immodestly add) in my student days. I was a key goal-scorer for my teams, both in IIT as well as IIM. My rather rotund frame does not suggest this in the least (but hey! look at Maradona in his new avatar as coach - the guy is positively fat! Who can think that he was a terror on the field?). However, all this is a preamble to say that for the next few days, I am an obsessed guy - with the FIFA Football World Cup in South Africa.

So far, the highlight of the tournament for me has been Maicon's near impossible goal against North Korea. But I'm sure this will be surpassed easily. Predictions? I don't think Argentina are going to make it to the semi-finals. I have not seen popular favourites Spain play as yet (they open their tournament against Switzerland today), but so far my money is on perennial favourites Germany and Brazil.

And for those who have not heard it yet, here is Shakira shaking her booty in the World Cup theme song:

Tenderness and security

I am always amazed by the wife's immense patience and tenderness in dealing with our child. And I think our daughter understands this quite well too. For her, her mother is the fount of all security, love and tenderness. She is happiest when ensconsed securely within her mother's arms.

Some wise person said - God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers. I think I agree!!

Follow up on Analyst Credibility

Saw the following interesting article on Bloomberg:

Goldman Sachs Hands Clients Losses in ‘Top Trades’

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. racked up trading profits for itself every day last quarter. Clients who followed the firm’s investment advice fared far worse.

Seven of the investment bank’s nine “recommended top trades for 2010” have been money losers for investors who adopted the New York-based firm’s advice, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from a Goldman Sachs research note sent yesterday. Clients who used the tips lost 14 percent buying the Polish zloty versus the Japanese yen, 9.4 percent buying Chinese stocks in Hong Kong and 9.8 percent trading the British pound against the New Zealand dollar.

Pretty interesting, I thought. Shows how much the large investment banks follow their own analysts' advice! Clearly, they did not implement the 'top trades' otherwise how would they have made profits EVERY SINGLE DAY in the last quarter. In the same time period, clients following the recommended trades would find themselves in a much worse position. If the chef refuses to eat in his own restaurant, I would rather go hungry than eat there!

Very ordinary

Another book I'm reading right now (though with great difficulty) is called 'The Immortals of Meluha'. Frankly, I bought the book because of its cover.

The premise of the book is very very interesting - it is set in 1900BC and tells the beginning of the story of Shiva, the God of Gods. However, the execution is so pedestrian that it makes me quite sad. It reads like a Bollywood masala movie script, not the insightful, graceful and dignified attempt I had hoped it would be. I could take out Shiva, and put in Shahid Kapoor or some equally frivolous current heartthrob into the story, and nothing would change (Disclaimer: I have read only 25% of the book - like I said, with great difficulty - so it may still redeem itself. However, I doubt it)

I wish it had been a better book!

Michael Lewis does it again

I read 'The Big Short' in a couple of totally engrossed sessions over the weekend. Michael Lewis ( author of Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball) has written another masterful, funny and insightful page turner - this time a blow-by-blow account of the great credit crisis of 2008.

The book is fantastic because its central characters are a bunch of oddball, eccentric misfits who saw what no one else could. These guys (the 'good' guys in the book) made tons and tons of money even though they had not set out to do so - all they wanted was to uncover (discover?) the truth. And all of them paid a big price for their success. The book also looks at the guys on the other side - equally smart guys who were 'long' (ie they were buying when the good guys were selling). One notable dude is a Morgan Stanley trader, who was right, but not right enough, and who ended up losing $9 BILLION in a single trade. And in the center of the mayhem, touching all the characters, good or bad, was a particular trader from Deutsche Bank.

All the guys, the guys who were right as well as the guys who were wrong, made lots of money personally from the momentous events that unfolded. In doing so, some institutions were bankrupted, a few million livelihoods lost, a generation's lifelong savings evaporated and a few fortunes made.

The book raises very important questions - for one, what are we doing today about a system where all gain is private but all loss is public? The answer, unfortunately, is that we are not doing anything. The American financial system (and by corollary, the world) is hostage to what benefits Wall Street (and in particular Goldman Sachs). And secondly, is money really worth more than a few pieces of paper? Michael Lewis, the guy who saw the big picture, and quit Wall Street to fulfil a higher calling, is absolutely the right guy to answer this question. The answer is not surprising, but its quite weird how none of us ever seem to grasp it in our own lives.

However, enough of the moralizing! The book reads like fiction, is a page-turner and is a definite must-read!

Murder: How an industry was systematically killed

The great Government of India has killed the telecom industry with such astounding brutality that it deserves special applause.

A bit of background - the telecom industry is somewhat special - to survive, it needs spectrum, which (like the Reliance D6 gas) is a national resource. A lot of players invested a lot of capital and took huge risks to start the industry from scratch in the 1990s. Just when they reached the end of the long investment cycle (10-15 years later!) and should have sat back to earn their returns, the government of India jumped in and started killing them.

First, in Jan 2008, the (dis)honourable minister for telecom suddenly changed rules midway and said that more operators would be allowed in the industry. This, despite the law saying categorically, that new licenses would NOT be given out. The incumbents, who should have got more spectrum by law, were now told - sorry! you will not get any more. We will give it away (almost for free) to friends and cronies (who by the way are going to make millions of $$s selling this spectrum to the likes of Telenor, Etisalat etc etc, without investing a single rupee of their own. Sorry, correct that - they are going to bribe me, the honourable minister, so that I can get a nice little fund going in my Swiss bank accounts.) Also, I'm going to keep an arbitrary date for consideration of applications for spectrum, so that ONLY my friends get this spectrum AND I'm going to change the rules on which incumbent gets spectrum first.

As a result, Reliance Communications, which by law was last in queue to get spectrum, will now jump to #1 position.

In any other country, this would have led to corruption charges against said minister, and he would have been in jail. But thanks to our strangely perverse country, the minister not only thrives, he actually got a second term in the government of the supposedly 'clean' Mr. Manmohan Singh despite a huge uproar on the blatant theft of revenues that should have accrued to me, the mango man of India.

The result of this was that fly-by-night operators came in, the industry got screwed because of irrational pricing, call quality suffered and investors got punished.

But the honourable minister had only begun. He now says - ha ha! you incumbents - you had the temerity to oppose my despotic theft - I will make you suffer more. So he says, retroactively AGAIN changing the rules - I am now going to arbitrarily decide that spectrum above 6.2 MHz (which I gave you 4-5 years ago for the same price that the new guys got it for) will now be priced at rates determined by the 3G auction (or more than 10-12 times what the new operators paid for their spectrum just last year). I will, perversely enough, not charge anything from the new operators. The losers, not surprisingly, are Bharti, BSNL, Vodafone and Idea. Reliance Communication, not at all surprisingly, totally not affected by this decision.

The incumbents today are large, respected companies not because they bribed thieving ministers and bureaucrats. They have built companies painstakingly, putting to risk large amounts of capital, effort and resources, and believing in the law of the land and principles of justice. To see them being systematically killed is a matter of shame. Strangely, perpetrators of this murder continue to line up their bank balances and enjoy their positions of power. But such is life in our country.

Analyst? With credibility? Ha ha...

I have nothing against research analysts. I have quite a few friends who are research analysts with respected fund houses. A few are very good and I respect their views. However, I would never ever want to become a stock analyst. A vast majority of these guys have no credibility. I would strongly advise the retail investor to strongly disregard analyst views and NEVER ever buy based on analyst recommendations. Trust me - my job gives me access to all the reports ever published, and I read quite a few of them (for a few laughs, and mostly during leisure time).

Sample this. I choose this at random - this is, in my view, a representative example of what analyst views are worth. Disclaimer: I do not have anything against these particular fund houses, just used here as examples. All of them are as good or as bad. Take a sugar company called Shree Renuka Sugars ('SRS'). The business is cyclic, and totally commoditized. Everyone knows that commodity cycles turn with great regularity. If sugar is scarce today, it will be in plenty tomorrow (and vice versa).

In a report dated Jan 18, 2010, Morgan Stanley recommended Overweight on SRS, with a target price of INR 125 (adjusted for bonus). In a short period of 3 months, the price target was reduced to INR 70 (or a downward movement of 45%). This was primarily because the stock corrected by approx 45% during this period! The world did not change in this 3 month period, and the outlook on sugar should have been known as recently as 3 months before!

Ditto Merrill Lynch. As recently as Feb 11, they said BUY with a price target of INR 173. In 2 months, the price target suddenly became INR 80 (or 50% of the one before). Talk about volatility!

Or Credit Suisse. They take the cake. They went from INR 128 to INR 58 in a similar period of time.

Credibility, anyone?? Why should anyone believe these jokers? It is not my case to trivialize the important work analysts do. However, there is something called perspective! And something called balance. And foresight. Just moving target prices around because the stock moves in that direction does not a credible analyst make! When will this change. Dot-com, Enron, Lehman - nothing has changed analyst behaviour so far. I wonder what will!

Elina

The reason for my vastly reduced blog posts these days:

Volatility? Whew!!!

Interesting times for markets globally, to say the least!

• Tiny, inconsequential Greece re-engages with history books, with a government soon about to go bankrupt, a striking and rioting public that seems spectacularly dense and insular, and overall an enactment of the theatre of the absurd. Repercussions include a 1,000 point drop in the mother of all equity market indices, the mighty Dow Jones - in about 15 minutes, and while the media goes to town with the usual cliches - never happened before, six sigma event, yada yada yada - my take is that these days six sigma events happen every six months. Poor Spain and gluttonous Portugal have to suffer for the Grecian's fun. Lesson: In the party, get drunk while you can. If you are still sober when it ends, you may be left cleaning someone else's puke!!

• The Sage of Omaha puts his 40-year reputation on the line as he defends the newest villian of the times. Move over Osama bin Laden, Goldman Sachs is here. 2 idiots who got screwed are crying foul at Goldman's mercenary ways, but I think they are more to blame than they let on. Caveat Emptor, anyone? They forgot the golden rule - Goldman Sachs will screw you when it can.

• Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem set to gain a majority in the UK (though not a government, apparently). Traders troop in to work at midnight in the financial district of London. The Tories promise to implement what I think is the solution to the whole 3 year old debt-fuelled crisis - cut the UK government deficit and apply brakes to government spending. For the sake of Britain's economic future, I hope they get their shot at fiscal prudence.

• And here in India, Reliance Industries emerges unscathed from its bruising courtroom battle with kid brother ADAG controlled companies - I think the outcome is very rational and fair and square in the national interest - natural gas found in India's territory cannot be divided between individuals. It belongs to the mango man (the aam-aadmi) and should be priced for the benefit of said mango man. So sorry, Mr Anil Ambani - you cannot make umpty zillion rupees buying my gas for cheap (disclosure - I own RIL shares)

What does one make of all this? My opinion (could be in-famous last words) - ignore all the noise. Buy the dips and hold emerging market (Indian) equities for the next 5 years. While one may or may not make a packet, one will surely be spared watching the value of painstakingly hoarded cash erode due to inflation. And keep at least 10% of the portfolio in gold. It remains the only hedge against global insanity

Too smart for our own good?

An experiment that shows that too much smartness could be counter-productive! I think this is also the reason that good businesses are not built solely by numbers and analytics, but by that indefinable thing called the instinct or gut-feel or intuition.

Sourced from here:

The Trouble with Humans: Why rats and pigeons might make better investors than people do

"Psychologists have long known that if rats or pigeons knew what the NASDAQ is, they might be better investors than most humans are. That's because, in some ways, animals are better than people at predicting random events. If, for instance, you set up two lights in a laboratory and flash them in a random sequence, humans will persistently try to predict which of the two lights will flash next. Stranger still, they'll keep trying even when you tell them that the flashing of the lights is purely random. Let's say you flash a green light 80% of the time and a red one 20% of the time but keep the exact sequences random. (A run of 20 flashes could look something like this: GGGGRGGGGGGGRRGGGGGR.) In guessing which light will flash next, the best strategy is simply to predict green every time, since you stand an 80% chance of being right. That's what rats or pigeons generally do in a similar experiment that rewards them with a crumb of food whenever they correctly guess the next outcome".

But humans are apparently convinced that they're smart enough to predict each upcoming result even in a process they've been told is random. On average, this misguided confidence leads people to get the right answer in this experiment on only 68% of their tries. In other words, it's precisely our higher intelligence that leads us to score lower on this kind of task than rats and pigeons do.

Karthik calling Karthik

is a good movie. Not romantic, not horror, not even very thrilling. Dark, foreboding and realistic. And very very spooky - I've been having nightmares last two nights on account of this movie.

Farhan acts well, especially in the climax, when the mystery gets revealed. Deepika looks lovely as usual, and the few other characters are all quite real. The movie is probably one that wont be remembered for long as anything special, but I kind of admire the people who made it, since it represents something different from the run of the mill kind of stuff we are accustomed to seeing. The songs are also good, and do not jar in the least.

Recommended as a watch for a taste of something different.

Dork

Finished reading Dork (authored by Domain Maximus) over the weekend.

Immensely entertaining for the first 85% of the book. While I thought the last 15% was a bit abrupt, I think overall it is a fantastic effort.

By the way, inner sources say the book is derived from largely true life incidents in the author's short year at a "leading mid-market consulting firm". I can totally identify with it :-)

Someone is finally talking sense

I have a young cousin who wants to get into IIM. She believes that an MBA (or PGDM, to be precise) from any of the IIMs will set her up for multi$$$ moolah.

This is obviously not true. Who is to blame? Fair and square, I think our popular media is the culprit. They print grotesque, inaccurate and non-comparable salaries year after year after year on the front pages of newspapers. It has become a given, a vulgar and obscene race to bigger and bigger material scores - speak to a layperson, and they will ask "Beta, you are from IIM? Oh you must be earning crores". If one tries to talk sense to this person, and explain how things really are, the reaction most likely is "Hmmm. This dude was probably near the bottom of his class. The Economic Times / Times of India / Jhumri Talaiya Khabrein cannot be wrong"

Anyhow, I was mightily pleased to read the following article. I hope it encourages other institutes to speak up and let the truth be known:

IIM-A has denied a front-page report in The Economic Times which said a recruiter made a Rs 1.44 crore-plus salary offer at final placements currently on at the school.

“Sure, no one’s talking yet. But ET has learnt that Deutsche Bank, which had set the upper ceiling in 2008 by offering a Rs 1.44-crore package, has broken that record this year”, said the ET report.

In a blog link sent by student media co-ordinator Rohan Desai, the school said (Desai also urged that we put-up the link on our blog to reach a wider audience):

“We would like to clarify in interest of the entire community that this is incorrect. Also, converting dollar salaries to rupee terms does not portray the correct picture and hence we provide the average dollar salary separately in our press releases.

We felt compelled to communicate this clarification because we believe it has the potential of driving aspiring students into making misinformed decisions and also gives incorrect signals about the economy.

IIMA over the last few years has chosen not to disclose the highest salary offered as we believe salaries are just one component of the jobs offered and also because the highest salary is in no way representative of the recruitment scenario.”

While the purpose of this blog is not to run-down competition, and we have never done that,Mint understands why students, and teachers, wish to project b-schools as more than just places where students turn into crorepatis. While salary figures are indicative of the economy, we stick to the official version released at the end of the placement season.

Placements can be covered in other ways. This is one of the reasons why the writer of this blog was allowed to live on-campus during placement week in 2007 at a time when there was a media black-out.

Pronab Da zindabad!!

In my humble opinion, the Union budget 2010-11 has its head and heart firmly in place.

For one, the budget does the right thing by reducing direct taxation and increasing indirect taxation. This increases compliance, because the poor overtaxed salaried guy (aside - this is not anecdotal - India has one of the highest personal and corporate tax regimes globally. Scandinavian and developed countries have higher overall tax rates, but they more than compensate in the form of social security benefits. Most Asian countries have tax rates closer to 16-20%. Not surprisingly, compliance is abysmal - close to a pathetic 12-15% from the figures I remember seeing most recently) gets relief; and the smirking tax-stealing business guy pays up more indirectly for all the conspicuous consumption. Reduced direct taxation also stimulates the economy by incentivizing greater consumption - we are a unique country which does not depend on exports for growth, and we should try our damnedest to keep it that way.

Secondly, the budget signals a return to fiscal prudence by targeting a lower fiscal deficit (through lower 'non-productive' non-plan expenditure) and makes a case for transparent and proper reporting of the deficit. No more hiding subsidies 'below the line' by issuing oil bonds and all other kinds of instruments designed to win votes today but burden our children and grandchildren for all time. Additionally, the budget firmly puts disinvestment as a revenue source. Less government is good government.

For all the hoo-haa the short sighted scaremongers in the BJP and the perennially stick-up-my-ass communists are making about petrol price hikes, I think it is a good thing. Petrol prices need to be deregulated - normal laws of economics (demand drops on rising prices) need to be allowed to work. For the economy as well as for the environment.

If anything, the budget should have firmly introduced fuel price decontrol, the direct tax code as well as the GST tax regime. But overall, I look at the budget as a glass slightly more than half-full.

And the hypocritical opposition can shout themselves hoarse.

Kenyes versus ... (err... who is on the other side?)

While our day to day lives are relatively humdrum and routine, we are in the midst of a ferocious worldwide war. The (small) problem is that there is no other side in the war.

The war against the biggest recession globally in the last 60 odd years is being fought as per the principles of John Maynard Keynes, who famously advocated massive deficit spending to work one's way out of a recession. In tandem, central banks globally are printing massive amounts of currency, increasing government spending and increasing government roles in business. The general theory is that debt will be inflated away, savers will be punished, currencies depreciated, and consumers incentivised to 'shop till they drop'.

I'm no expert, but somehow I don't see why this should work. The reason for the recession (as I see it) was too much debt and excessive leverage, leading to asset price inflation in US residential homes. When the bubble burst, people's wealth (equity in their homes) was wiped out, leading to reduced spending, de-growth, mass unemployment, and further wealth erosion - a vicious cycle started. The risk in Keynesian medicine is that it stokes the very fires that led to the problem - artificial floors to asset prices could lead to massive stagflation if consumption does not respond to fiscal stimulus.

Maybe I am old fashioned, but I think it is better to take the bitter medicine today (like Paul Volcker advocated in 1971-72 by massively raising inflation rates. The economy staggered for 3-4 years, but inflation was gone for good, and the next 20 years of excellent growth followed in the US). The problem is that everyone these days is a Keynesian. Where are the monetarists, the Volckers? How will we know who wins this fight if there is no other example to counter the recession? Where is the alter-ego to 'helicopter' Ben Bernanke?

I think (fear) we will keep seeing events like Dubai / Greece / Portugal for the next few years, where nations with excessive debt will keep being unable to pay off their dues. And the Keynesians will declare themselves winners, whether they win or lose.

Increase GDP - buy alarm time pieces!!

I am generally sceptical of the numbers our esteemed government churns out. Having served a large government entity in my previous career avatar, I can imagine how un-robust the data collection process in a large and totally un-automated organization must be.

Even so, this news article takes the cake - the headlines scream that the index of industrial production index (IIP) in December was up almost 17%, or the most in more than a decade. The truth is that 7% (or approximately 40% of this growth comes from (believe it or not!!) 'alarm time pieces'!!!! These esteemed articles, which in my considered opinion no one uses anymore, have a weightage of ~0.3% in the IIP index, and the government would have us believe that growth in this category was 2500% (25x of production a year ago). The mind boggles at this stupendous statistic.

So I know now how India can overtake China in the economic growth sweepstakes! Every urban person just needs to buy a ruddy alarm clock!!!

Addendum

Speaking of Ishqiya, here is another part of the movie I loved... this song plays in the background when Babban is 'having fun'

I agree totally with Calvin

here... (thanks for the link!)

I demand euphoria!!

Ishiqiya

Saw the movie today, and liked it quite a lot. The wife hated it, though. No matter - she did not like The Dark Knight either (shudder....)

Good timepass movie, very grounded. Fantastic performances (esp Khalujaan and Mushtaq Bhai), fantastic songs and music, but best of all:

1) Ch**ium sulphate! I can almost see myself scream this from my car window the next time someone honks needlessly or cuts into my lane

2) Nandu (and his bantering with Babban): worth many many smiles

$104 million! For this!!!! Gulp...

This thing (I can not think of a better word for it) sold for $104 million today! I'm speechless...

What do bankers really do to earn their millions???

Now we know :-) The action starts 1 minute into the video - a must see!!

Power and Beauty

Ever wondered why high heels exist? Why the most common lipstick colour is red? Why women prefer (guys with) cars to (guys with) motorbikes? Most of all, does size REALLY matter? The answers are all simple. Explained in this article (courtesy Mint Lounge)...

Pretty interesting, I thought! Though at the end of it all, I had just one question - what is a pudenda??

Reply To All | Aakar Patel

I have a game I have been trying out at parties for a decade. I ask women to give it a thought, and then choose the order in which they would be attracted to the following types of men as their partner: a) Good-looking b) Powerful c) Stable.

No other quality in these three men is defined, and they are what those words mean. Almost invariably, women choose the powerful man as the one they are most attracted to. This is followed by the stable man and last, the good-looking one. I cannot remember more than a couple of women, and I have polled dozens, who did not choose power as the thing they were drawn to most.

I ask men to choose from the following:

a) Beautiful

b) Rich

c) Homely

Men always choose beautiful first; most pick homely second and rich last.

We are uncomfortable with accepting the extent to which our instinct, formed over tens of thousands of years as hunters-gatherers, dominates our intellect. But it is true that our sexual instinct is not entirely in our control, and women are drawn towards the powerful male.

A wealthy man, no matter how ugly—Aristotle Onassis—will bed the most desirable women in the world: Jacqueline Kennedy, Maria Callas. Given that fact, powerful men often practise what is called serial monogamy, monopolizing a beautiful woman for the best years of her beauty and then moving on to the next woman. That’s why rich men often have many divorces—Larry King is on his eighth wife, Johnny Carson had four, Mickey Rooney eight.

Other powerful men have a different model, a stable family life but constant sexual relationships on the side: Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Bill Clinton.

Evolutionary psychologists attribute this behaviour not to sex addiction but the instinct to spread genes. Man has an unlimited number of potential offsprings because of his ability to generate sperm. And so the most important aspect of whether or not he will mate with a woman is not love or even attraction, but opportunity. Most males will accept this if asked, and any number of studies show it to be true.

One study, a few years ago, had a beautiful woman on a college campus approaching strangers to have sex with her. Every single man she approached agreed. When an attractive man did the same with the campus women, not one agreed. Again, the reason for this is thought to be primal, and it is this. A woman will have three or four and a maximum of perhaps a dozen or so children (Mumtaz Mahal was rewarded with the Taj Mahal for producing 14). So, in a species where man is provider, she must be more careful in selecting her mate because she has to ensure he is capable of protecting her limited offspring. This explains the female attraction to power.

Gujarati women find Narendra Modi very attractive sexually and, even more than the man, it is the urban Gujarati woman who has made Modi a heroic figure in that state. An ageing woman does not have appeal in society because man is instinctively trained to see that her utility is low. This is why women hide their age more than men. It is because of her declining fecundity that age is unattractive on a woman though it’s irrelevant in the rich man. This is not to preclude that a man might find a beautiful woman of older age sexually attractive: He will (remember the opportunity rule). But this will be a relationship of casual sex, because man is first drawn to the nubile woman. Exactly how nubile? The male preference for shaved pudenda offers an indication.

The idea that women are drawn to power opens up doors that many men would rather be left shut. The myth in health literature that penis size does not matter is subscribed to primarily by men. Women would actually have been attracted genetically to the large organ before the use of clothing, which is quite recent. This is because a larger organ is more efficient at depositing sperm, thus ensuring fertilization.

We know that organ size matters because it conditions the unusual behaviour of males in the toilet. In the men’s room, when a urinal is open between two standing men, a third man entering will avoid the spot in the middle and head for the fifth urinal so as to keep one open space between him and the next man. This is because he is conscious of his neighbour sizing him up.

Indian men are particularly insecure and toilets here have a wall—often as high as a standing man’s head—between each urinal.

Incidentally, this competition among men for women is a clear indicator that the anti-homosexual sentiment of Christians and Muslims is Old Testament prejudice. Instinctively, all heterosexual men should like homosexuals because they are not a threat. Often we send out sexual signals that we think are effective, but are actually meaningless. The man who colours his hair black does so without understanding that his youth isn’t what women primarily find attractive in him. It is important, however, for a woman to colour her hair, and the defiant woman who doesn’t, finds it difficult to get men to view her in a sexually attractive light.

Despite the male obsession with large motorcycles, and the advertising that suggests that women find them alluring, an expensive car, say a Mercedes-Benz, is much more effective at communicating a man’s quality. Money power being the key here, and not mechanical power. Similarly, the female predilection for handbags is unfathomable to men, though wearing stilettos is a good idea. Women should wear high-heeled shoes. They make a woman physically vulnerable, teetering, and that makes her attractive to a man, because he likes to think of domination. The heels reform her posture forwards, and that also has its appeals.

Nail polish and lipstick are most appealing to men when red, because it indicates health and vitality, and that was the original purpose of cosmetics. Brown, blue and black and such other colours are quite useless in attracting men.

So can we escape our instinct? Yes, but only episodically. It keeps coming back and it’s always lurking in our head if we observe it. Our prejudice is quite marked and women who are both gorgeous and intelligent are remembered for their beauty. A man who is striking-looking and intelligent is noted for his brains, even by women.

It’s banal but true: To improve their odds in the love market, men need to focus on making more money and women on looking more beautiful.

Unadulterated BS

I have nothing against Mr. Bejan Daruvala. The dude writes a weekly zodiac horoscope in the Sunday Times of India, which I'm sure a lot of people read and forget in a jiffy. However, these days Mr. Daruvala is beginning to bug me a bit - the guy has become a financial expert!!! He advises people on what to buy, sell or trade!! So much so, that he gets star billing on CNBC (dunno if he actually appears on the channel, but certainly on the website!)

I found this mildly amusing initially, but now the trend seems to be really propagating. I was stunned to find that a well educated (MBA, no less!!) acquaintance checked Mr. Daruvala's prophesies daily. Call it superstition or looking for divine guidance, but I call it sheer idiocy. Investing is tough enough as it is - but using these kind of 'astrological' guideposts is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Check out some specific examples of divine guidance:

05-02-2010 to 18-02-2010 Repeatedly make entries and exit. The time is not good. If you follow the above rule you will make money in atleast 7 out of 10 deals.

19-03-2010 to 01-04-2010 Sell off shares that you purchased at low pricesas they will fetch good prices. Wait for the prices to fall prior to purchasing.

02-05-2010 to 19-05-2010 Not a very good time. Don't trade unidirectionally. During bullish time trade bullishly and in bearish trends trade bearish. Stick to the trends and don't act reverse to avoid risk, advises Ganesha.

Wah!! This last one really is very useful :-) I just wish to offer the poor suckers who trade according to the wishes of this dude a bit of unwanted advice - if this guy could really predict the market, would he be wasting his time telling you how to trade?

Idiot? Certainly not...

I read this article and felt a bit confused - is this good or bad? Then I figured that this is really really bad - in fact a guaranteed fact that shows just how massively screwed up our education system is!

Nobel laureate Ramakrishnan failed IIT, medical entrance tests 5 Jan 2010, 2138 hrs IST, PTI

BANGALORE: Venkataraman Ramakrishnan won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2009 but decades ago he failed to clear entrance tests for both the IITs and a reputed medical college. At a public lecture at the Indian Institute of Science campus here, he recalled his journey from Baroda where he went to school and college before moving to Ohio University for his Ph.D. He shifted to Baroda from Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu when he was three. He noted that he appeared for the IIT entrance test but "did not get a single seat in IIT". "My parents were somewhat old-fashioned; they did not believe in coaching classes (in preparation for entrance test)," Ramakrishnan told a packed J N Tata Auditorium, where many could not even enter because it was crowded. They (his parents) thought coaching classes were "nonsense". He also appeared in the entrance test for a seat in the reputed Christian Medical College in Vellore in Tamil Nadu but was unsuccessful. Giving an explanation, he said that those days, there were only a small number of seats for men. The (really sad) takeaways I have after reading this stupendous article is Getting into IIT (and other prestigious institutes of higher education) is a function of what kind of coaching class you have been to There are no avenues within the country for potentially brilliant scientists or other skilled professionals if they do not conform to the rat race (IIT / SRCC / AIIMS / NLS etc etc) Now that I try to think hard, I cannot recall any Nobel prize winner who is from IIT. I can think of many people in finance though (self included!). To me, this is a travesty of IIT's purpose

Thoughts in a New Year

A New Year, and a new day, week, month, and if you so believe, even new decade. A time to sit back, relax and count the innumerable pleasures of life. A time to feel the privilege, bask in joy and burst with happiness :-)

Worries on the horizon? I can not recall a single day when I was not worried about something or the other. One year out, I don't even remember 95% of the things I was worried about - feels funny that such trivial inanities should fill 95% of my waking thoughts. When I count my joys, my reasons to be happy, I find I discount them very quickly. Life moves on instantaneously towards the next goal, the next struggle, the next trivial pursuit. How much of this do I really care about? How much of this do I desire? How much can I do without? Mostly all.

The fundamental bedrock of needs - health, safety, family, friends, freedom - are all present in abundance and for free. It is up to me to savour these or take them for granted. I hope I can make the right choice!

Happy new year :-)

Tis the season to be merry...

1) Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day

2) If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you

3) It is darkest before dawn. That's the best time to steal your neighbour's newspaper

4) Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you are a mile away and you have their shoes!

5) Warning sign on a Japanese food processor: Not to be used for the other use

6) Instructions on a Chinese product used to relieve painful haemorrhoids: LIE DOWN ON BED AND SLOWLY INSERT POSCOOL UP TO THE PROJECTED PORTION LIKE A SWORD-GUARD INTO ANAL DUCT. WHILE INSERTING POSCOOL FOR APPROXIMATELY 5 MINUTES, KEEP QUIET

7) Market definition: Bear market: a 6-8 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewellery and the husband gets no sex

8) Market correction: the day after you buy stocks

9) Institutional investor: someone who sells a stock big time a day or two after you have bought it, for no apparent reason

10) From an engineering exam:

What does this mean?

If this is marketing strategy, then I'm really glad that I didn't major in marketing. This is the sign put up by Haagen Dazs in a posh south Delhi mall.

Not only do I not understand what this means, I don't think anyone else does, either!

Are they trying to stress how premium their ice-cream is? So premium that only foreigners can eat it? Well, perhaps. But then, why are you launching in India???

In my opinion, this is a really stupid and 'guaranteed to fail' method for launching any new brand. In fact, it is probably downright illegal. If I were sitting in the head office of Haagen Dazs, I would fire the top management.