The world's best CHAOS

To go on to visualize a successful chaos, lets begin with Singapore of all places!! Singapore, as most of us are aware, is amongst the most disciplined, organized and well-governed city-states in the world. You can't get away with littering or breaking rules. Shops and businesses strictly adhere to the time guidelines [and not tweak these on the basis of their business realities or maybe even by bribing cops/authorities]. There is no unruly traffic - since no one really breaks the rules!

But in all this, there exists a small area where
--> you could occasionally find litter on the pavement or
--> shops/businesses [Mustafa! - Frankly I don't understand why so many desis shop there of all places in Singapore!] have successfully tweaked the rules - Mustafa is the ONLY 24-hour shopping center in Singapore!
--> and you would encounter the occasional traffic chaos around the parking lots

and this place could only be called "Little India" :)

While these arguably are the negatives about Little India, the good points are those that are common to everything that has "India" in it:

1. Very buzzing and active - meaning lot of people, lot of noise and a lot of work happening all the time!
2. Business, trade and commerce thrives successfully here, setting new benchmarks all the time.
3. The food is brilliant!
4. And of course, it is very colorful here!

Again while these are true of India [or Little India in Singapore] - there's of course a lot more that goes on to define my super country.

Being the largest, oldest and continuous civilization in the world - we have given [and very passionately continue to give] more people to this world than anyone else. If there ever was a debate globally as to who gets the credit for the progress of human race - India should win hands-down - had we not procreated - there would be no people and hence no progress! [This silly argument apart, we should anyway be responsible for most progress purely on the basis of the quality of our people]. India and her people have had admirable qualities, some of which are:

1. Tolerant and peace-loving - we haven't invaded other countries or enforced our beliefs on other people [at least not forcefully!]
   
2. No word is rich enough to describe the heritage and culture - earliest school of medicine known to man [Ayurveda], the mother of all European languages [debatable but I am convinced it is Sanskrit], religions, scriptures, epics, vedas and it goes on
3. Hard-working and progressive - this is quite evident even in the current times where our junta is often blamed for taking the jobs away from some of the lazier folks :)
4. Hospitable and welcoming to all - Unfortunately could also be the reason why we had so many foreign rulers!

However, like everyone else, I too have opinions on what we should do and what we shouldn't do in our country :)

What we should do
- Focus on the basics - land, water, resources and above all people --> While it's probably good to have enough people to take over the world without having to fight a single battle - what we don't realize is that all these people don't go to settle in other countries and that we all are trying to use the same set of resources that half of us were using some decades ago. These resources unfortunately don't share our quality of exponential growth! And knowing this, there still isn't a single man [or woman], in the house that matters, who would talk about implementation of population control! The mindset is "It's something that the masses don't like and let's not raise it - we might just get a negative impact and lose the elections!"
- Stronger judiciary --> not the one Sunny Deol refers to in Damini
- Remove ANY political influence from the armed forces, police system, national educational institutions

What we shouldn't do
- Take decisions on basis of religion/caste --> be it hanging criminals or creating reservations in education/jobs or giving/not-giving benefits to a group of people
- Educated/well-meaning citizens, social activists and political outfits fighting the battles alone --> There are so many amazing people, who have willingly given up their comfortable and successful lives/careers and decided to make a difference - these folks would really make a difference if they were together - if they were one force

The list as such can go on..

What, however is interesting, is that with all the good and bad, we still click as a country - we are growing and succeeding at whatever we do. India and Indians have this innate quality of making things work - even if the best of resources may not be available, we make do with what we have and get the best out of it. Everyday the commuters in Mumbai's local trains complain of the extreme crowd and the mess - but they still continue to make it the most relied upon, fastest and most convenient mode of transport in Mumbai! India's biggest industrial house sets up one of the most ambitious car projects in a state which has historically not been too warm to industry - only to suffer later thanks to political reasons - but the project doesn't get shelved - it ends up in the leading pro-industry state of India and gets perfectly on track! The Tirupati Temple in Andhra Pradesh has 50,000-100,000 visitors everyday and without using any advanced logistic mechanisms or equipments, the authorities have designed quite a unique system where the time spent by devotees has gone down steeply over the years [although the number of devotees has been going up]. These are just some examples that go on to illustrate the "make things work" quality of Indians.

To come to think of it, it is our unique mix - of the experienced and the youth - of the conservative and the modern - of the right and wrong - that make us work - that make US the world's best chaos..

And lets leave it that thought for now.

Happy Independence Day!

Some pictures from India's first independence day - August 15th, 1947

How I got lost @ Dalal Street...

The interesting thing about "stocks" "shares" "equities" is that when we first come to hear of these terms, we are fairly excited by their potential. [Not literally the first time but more likely the first time we come to hear of them after we have some of our own funds to invest - which by-the-way is also the time when it makes sense to hear about them - at all other times, how did it matter!] I, for one, had quickly figured out that if you really want that retire-at-40 [as per my plan it was much earlier :D] kind of a life - then stocks is where the moolah is.

Fortunately, quite a few of us have that all important 'decision-check' person in our lives - Dad - who in his time would have gone through this "stocks market main bahut interest hain" phase.

One fine day, I began on this note and ambitiously started reading the hitherto-never-touched 'Finance' section in the newspapers. Not having the most impressive reading speed, I preferred the short precise summaries of stocks / markets / funds in general. Off-time between work went in reading moneycontrol.com articles and then going on to having these very-intelligent-discussions in the coffee area with anyone and everyone who was interested in listening as to why I thought the market would go up or collapse that week [the predictions were fairly true in the beginning but went really awry later on! must be beginner's luck!]

So after monitoring some scripts [which I called "my picks!"] for some weeks [by when your patience really starts running out], I decided to take the plunge. This was just before the gloomy crisis began! :) Things then were golden everywhere and any drop in the market was "a minor profit booking by foolish short term investors".

Fortunately I took baby steps [more out of the fact that I did not have big money or big heart to jump in]. Unfortunately though, the first script [lets call it chapraasi life sciences ltd.] that I invested in was a company that was not doing the best then. My logic behind this one was based on what a lot of big smart guys say - invest in a "good" company when it's *not* doing good! :) And well before I could do the Math for my loss [I used to put all the numbers together - the STT's, brokerage, tax, interest %, etc. - when calculating my profit or loss] and take the decision to exit - the loss went up exponentially! :|

The period after buying this first script to until some months back had these trends where I came to learn about the various axioms of equities and investments!

1. Seeing two different markets was a confusing factor in the beginning. However, later on I started seeing the occasional disparity in the price of the same stock on NSE and BSE. I then thought-out-of-the-box [in my personal opinion ONLY] of buying from one exchange and selling on the other and making a neat profit intra-day! Of course with my first such transaction, I quickly came to realize that Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parikh were way too intelligent than me!
2. This lesson was followed by a pair of new "terminologies". "Bonus" and "Split". The former sounded so simple in it's possible implication. However, since I had burnt my fingers with my previous creative-thinking, I decided to find more about how bonus/splits work. So I got in touch with some "informed" friends, who, well, misguided me. Since then I have gone back to basics and asked only my well-read and really-concerned-about-my-money Dad.
   
3. The previous two experiences were nothing as compared to this one! :) This of course was my grand grand decision of investing heavy in the market the night the bailout package was almost approved by US Congress - the next day the markets tanked - and Ramalinga Raju hadn't even hit the markets yet!!! I didn't realize the logic for days and kept arguing with people who explained it to me that it was because of the long drawn process of the bailout package, the uncertainties of how/where the money would be spent and that it was lesser than what our dear Bernanke bhai had asked for. Anyway, who cared about the reasons after the money was out, the stocks were in and my portfolio was RED.
   
4. I became very conservative after the above experience and came to realize the large-scale significance of US markets on global economy. During this phase, I came up with this scientific identification of the relation between US and Indian markets . This relation held true only till Diwali or so after which often the Indian markets would behave differently than the others!
5. As a result of all these bad experiences with stocks, there came a small period of time when I was absolutely convinced that Mutual funds are the ONLY way to go. I developed this active interest in all available and performing funds then. I sounded more like an ICICIDirect.com salesman making a pitch rather than discussing why we should plan our tax investments in advance - and all this was to an audience that didn't really care about either [my team members! :)]
6. I also had these sincere attempts at making plans to read/learn up on Futures, commodities and the works which resulted in my sincere failures at doing any of the same.
   

Gradually, in a lot of ways, I have come back to where I started
- having that list of "my picks" stocks [which is much refined and in general been good for me consistently]
- I ring up my father before any buy/sell
- I do all the math related to profit/loss
- but I more or less keep it simple, i.e. I buy for a period greater than a year and track once in few weeks

In between all these tragic and terrible experiences at the stock market, there were also a lot of moments of brilliance that helped me make some money :) Fortunately the book overall has been green and healthy!

So in this entire process, I have come to learn a lot - and not just about the markets - but about
- companies and enterprises [and their well-planned frauds]
- rich performing public sector that becomes poor and poor performing public sector that becomes lazier or non-existent
- the jazzy economic words and terms
- the mass-philosophy of buying/selling
- the importance of rumors and working principles that make rumors work!
- and I still have the chapraasi life sciences ltd. :(

I have also found folks who I can ring up / email anytime for advice and who I can be sure are the most well-read, well-calculated, well-planned and basically all well to help me out!

But after all this, if given a choice then it is still confusing as to what was better - pocket money with no concerns to invest/plan or salary and all the right-things-to-do that come with it!