Archives for 2019

The Orangutan Theory

I am a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. According to me, it’s the greatest comic ever created. Sadly, Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, developed an interest in other creative pursuits and stopped making Calvin and Hobbes after 1995.

For the uninitiated, Calvin is a 6-year-old boy who is a little too smart for his age. But judging by his performance at school, one would think of him as a slow learner. However, Calvin’s genius is revealed when Watternson lets you peek into the little boy’s life outside the classroom. The kid may not know basic mathematical operations like addition or multiplication but he can outsmart any adult when it comes to imagination. And let me remind you what Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
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Scaling Fallacy in Investing

December 17, 1903, was a momentous date in the history of human transportation. On this day, Wright brothers — Oliver and Wilbur — made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft.

We all know, Wright brothers weren’t the first to attempt human flight. For centuries curious adventurers had been trying to decode this puzzle — how to fly. They looked at nature and noticed that birds fly by flapping wings. So do insects and butterflies.

But mimicking nature can be dangerous — this was a painful lesson that was learned by many early pioneers of human flight. There’s a long list of men who plunged to their death when they jumped from towers wearing large artificial wings.

Small Steps to Change Your Life, Simplicity, and Living with Acceptance

Every Saturday, I send out this special post with a few ideas I am reading and thinking about. Plus, a question I am meditating on.

If you wish to receive this post – apart from others I write regularly on investing, decision making, behavioral finance – please sign up below.

Anyways, here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – One Small Step Can Change Your Life
“Go big or go home,” is a glorified adage. To change a habit, most people believe that they must take drastic steps. Like an austere lifestyle to get out of personal debt, quitting an addiction “cold turkey,” removing all their favorite foods from a diet. In most such cases, either the task is finished or they are. (often, it’s the latter.)

Forces Shaping Our World, Fixed Vs Growth Mindset, And Handling Failure

Every Saturday, I send out this special post with a few ideas I am reading and thinking about. Plus, a question I am meditating on.

If you wish to receive this post – apart from others I write regularly on investing, decision making, behavioral finance – please sign up below.

Anyways, here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – Mindset
Tolstoy and Darwin were considered as ordinary as children. Iconic photographer Cindy Sherman failed her first photography course. Amitabh Bachchan got rejected by All India Radio. What differentiates them from other people who encountered similar setbacks was their mindset.

Three Types of Management

People come in different shades, and managers are people.

Here are three different types of management (there may be more, but let’s go with these three for now), and my thoughts on how you may want to deal with them when it comes to investing in the businesses they manage.

Most of us overlook the human aspect of operating a business, yet, in most cases, the future success of a business is directly tied to the quality of the people managing its affairs.

Recipe for Successful Long-Term Investing, Biggest Financial Regrets, and Applying Stop Loss in Life

Every Saturday, I plan to send out this special post with a few ideas I am reading and thinking about. Plus, a question I am meditating on.

If you wish to receive this post – apart from others I write regularly on investing, decision making, behavioral finance – please sign up below.

Anyways, here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – A More Beautiful Question
Since early childhood, most of us learned that our parents did not like us asking many questions and that only authority figures – most grown-ups – had the right to ask them. The result was that we stopped questioning things and accepted what we saw, heard, and were told with meek acceptance.

Sadly, this approach worked well in the industrial era, but proves futile in the knowledge era, because it compromises our ability to think and understand deeply.

Of Good Stories and Bad Businesses

The company WeWork has been in the recent news for a lot of reasons — many of them not so comforting for the company’s private investors. Those who haven’t heard of WeWork or don’t know much about it, here’s a primer on Wework’s business model.

In one line, WeWork leases out large office spaces, upgrades them, makes them look cool and upscale, and rents them out on per seat basis to either individuals or other companies. In case you’ve heard of the term coworking spaces, WeWork is that.
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How to Survive the Death of Businesses

Businesses die, like we do.

However, in contrast to us (I mean, humans…because some bots and aliens may also be reading this post) gradually increasing our average life expectancy over decades, more businesses are dying faster than any time in history.

While there is no real research done on Indian businesses, as per Credit Suisse, the average life span of S&P 500 companies in the US, which stood at 60 years in the 1950s, has now fallen to under 20 years.

The biggest culprit for this is the disruptive force of technology, which is killing off older companies earlier and at a much faster rate than decades ago.

Anyways, today’s post is not about what businesses can do to stave off their deaths, which is mostly inevitable in these rapidly changing times.

How to Win At Investing (And At Anything in Life)

I wrote yesterday about five ways to destroy wealth in the stock market.

As an antidote, and especially as you may be sailing through the vicissitudes of ecstasy (after seeing your stocks surge yesterday) and, at the same time, misery (for not buying more stocks before yesterday), today I share with you one way to win at the game of investing, or at anything in life.

That way, my dear friend, is of equanimity, which is calmness and composure, especially in a difficult situation.

Indian scriptures define it better as samabhaav, which means “sameness of things” or samatvam, which means “evenness of mind.”

5 Ways to Destroy Your Wealth

It’s common if you are wealthy to worry about losing your fortune due to forces beyond your control. Like market meltdowns or economic stagnation.

But what many of us don’t realize is that our own behavior may be the root of significant losses.