Archives for January 2018

Safal Niveshak’s Value Investing Workshop – International

Time flies. It’s already been over six years since I started Safal Niveshak in mid-2011. Even the journey of my Value Investing Workshops is about to complete six years. So far, I’ve completed 70+ workshops across 15+ cities in India, covering 3,000+ investors. And it’s been a wonderful experience.

Over these years, I have also received quite a few requests for conducting such workshops outside India, which I have avoided so far.

However, given the continued requests, I am making an attempt now to conduct these workshops internationally.

To start with, I plan to conduct two workshops in the United States in February 2018. Tentative dates are 10th February (Saturday) in San Francisco and 17th February (Saturday) in New York.

If you are in the US that time and wish to attend any of these sessions, please fill this short form to show your interest, which will help me finalize my plans.

Also fill the form if you live in some other country and want me to visit there to conduct such a session.

If you need any other details on these workshops, please email me at vishal@safalniveshak.com.

Thank you! Look forward.

InvestorInsights: Saurabh Madaan

Saurabh Madaan is a Silicon Valley-based investor and a Senior Data Scientist at Google. He is well-known in the investing world for his more than 30 interviews with the world’s best investors through Talks@Google investing series.

Saurabh also teaches an award-winning Leadership and Teamwork course at Google, has previously addressed the global One Young World Summit to talk about leadership and education, with the likes of Richard Branson and Muhammad Yunus. Saurabh holds a B. Tech from IIT Madras (2006), MS in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (2008), and MS in Physics from the University of Waterloo (2010). He was Literary Secretary and editor at IIT Madras, and the recipient of graduate scholarships at both Penn and Waterloo.

Over to Saurabh!

Safal Niveshak (SN): Please share about your background in education and what work do you do at Google?

Saurabh Madaan (SM): I grew up in Amritsar, India. I studied there before going to IIT Madras where I did material science and engineering. Then I got a scholarship to study masters in engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. I had always wanted to study Physics, and did another masters in Physics (University of Waterloo) before I started working at Google.

Currently, I work as a Senior Data Scientist at Google. There is rich statistics and machine learning behind Google’s search and ads. My team focuses on the latter. My day job involves simulations, predictive models and business strategy. I am constantly thinking of risk and probabilities, concepts which also translate well in to investing.
[Read more…] about InvestorInsights: Saurabh Madaan

Investor Insights: Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall

Note: This interview was originally published in the November 2017 issue of Value Investing Almanack. To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall - Value Investing Almanack - Safal Niveshak

Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall is an American value investor, teacher, and author. He teaches value investing in the masters in finance program at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, and at Stanford University. He also teaches asset management in the MBA program at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the 2017 bestselling book Good Stocks Cheap: Value Investing with Confidence for a Lifetime of Stock Market Outperformance published by McGraw-Hill. He holds a BA in Economics, International Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles; and an MBA from Harvard University. He splits his time between California and Sweden.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Thanks for doing this interview, Kenneth! Please tell us a little about your background and journey, and how you got into value investing?

Kenneth Marshall (KM): Well, I was first shown value investing in the late 1980’s. But it wasn’t like some sudden enlightenment. It actually took me a decade to get it. I’d rather not think about the cost of that delay.

My Interview with Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall

Note: This interview with Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall was originally published in the November 2017 issue of our premium newsletter – Value Investing Almanack (VIA). To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Thanks for doing this interview, Kenneth! Please tell us a little about your background and journey, and how you got into value investing?

StockTalk (January 2018)

The Art of Asking Good Questions

Two hunters are out in the jungle when suddenly one of them collapses. His pulse is gone and his eyes are glazed. The other guy yanks out his cell phone and calls the emergency services.

He gasps, “My friend is dead! What should I do?”

The operator says “Calm down, sir. I can help. First, let’s make sure if he’s really dead.”

After few moments of silence, the operator hears a loud gunshot. Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”

The hunter was dumb but given the high adrenalin and panicky situation, the operator’s question wasn’t brilliant either, was it?

There’s some truth to the saying – the quality of your questions determine the quality of solutions. Computer programmers know this very well. They call it GIGO, i.e., garbage in garbage out.

Good question begets good answer. Bad question leads to bad answer.

The Wisdom of Intelligent Investors (Special E-Book)

If the history of stock market is anything to go by, investors often make decisions that can undermine their ability to build long-term wealth. As such, it is often very valuable to look back in history and study closely the principles that have guided the investment decisions of some of the best minds and practitioners in this field through both good and bad markets.

By studying these experienced investors, we can learn many important lessons about the mindset required to build long-term wealth.

With this goal in mind, here is a special e-book that aims to offer the wisdom of some of the best investment minds of current times from India and abroad.

BookWorm: Win Bigly

Trump’s win in 2016 U.S. presidential election came as jaw dropping surprise. Those who concluded that Trump was nothing but a lucky clown, missed one of the most important perceptual shifts of present times. If you’re curious and open to changing your world view to become a better decision maker, Scott Adams’ book is for you.

Trump’s win in 2016 U.S. presidential election came as a jaw-dropping surprise. If you concluded that Trump was nothing but a lucky clown, you missed one of the most important perceptual shifts of present times. If you’re curious and open to changing your worldview to become a better decision maker, Scott Adams’ book is for you.

[Read more…] about BookWorm: Win Bigly

13 Secrets to Becoming a Better Writer

Note: Obviously this post is not about investing, so you may skip if you don’t want to read anything on Safal Niveshak except investing. Just that writing well – the topic of this post – can also help you think through your investments better. Most great investors write well for a reason. Now that got you interested, isn’t it? Read on.

There was a time when my writing hurt. Even my close friends were not interested to read what I would write.

That made me afraid to write because I feared offending others. I was afraid of the backlash I thought I would receive from what I wrote. I was afraid of people judging me. I was afraid of what people would say when they read what I had to say.

This was sometime in 2003 when I was about to get into a career of, well, writing about stocks. However, things improved over years as I wrote a lot. Apart from that, I read a lot of books on good writing. That helped me move past the fear of judgment and into a place where I could be confident about what I wanted to write about.

Behaviouronomics: First Conclusion Bias

The moment a sperm enters the human egg, the doors are slammed shut. Our brain is like a human egg. As soon as an idea impregnates the human mind, it closes its doors for other ideas. The first explanation that comes to mind makes us blind towards other more plausible possibilities. Unfortunately, in our complex world, the first conclusions are almost always deceiving.

Recently, I was accused of being unethical and a liar.

Here’s the backstory. On a Friday before the new year eve, at 9 PM, a gentleman knocked on my door. He claimed that my car had hit his car in the common parking area. To show courtesy to a fellow resident, let’s name him Mr. M, I agreed to cooperate and find out more about the incident.

“Did it happen in front of your eyes?” I asked him.