It was Valentine’s Day in 1990. The Voyager 1 space probe, which had completed its primary mission, was leaving the Solar System.

At the request of astronomer Carl Sagan, the American space agency NASA commanded Voyager to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth, across a great expanse of space. The photograph that got clicked was from a distance of about 6 billion kilometers (same as 240,000 round trips from Mumbai to New York).

In the photograph, against the vastness of space and among bands of sunlight scattered by the camera’s optics, Earth appears like a ‘pale blue dot’ (that’s what the photograph was named) that is smaller than a pixel.

Anyways, four years later, in 1994, during a public lecture at Cornell University, Sagan presented the photograph to the audience and shared his reflections on the deeper meaning behind it –

[Read more…] about Zoom Out, Baby, Zoom Out

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

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In Safal Niveshak’s Value Investing workshops, when we discuss the mental biases, we show the following video to our participants.

I would suggest that you pause here and watch this video before reading further.

It’s a test of your awareness so don’t cheat 🙂 [Read more…] about Fighting the Last War

Life is simple. Why do we make it so hard?

This is what Jon Jandai, a farmer from northeastern Thailand, asked the audience while delivering a TED speech in 2011.

He echoed what Confucius had said 2,500 years earlier, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

While I recommend you watch Jon’s complete speech, the crux of what he says is that we don’t have to do what society tells us, we can have the life we want, and our choices determine if we get such a life.

Consider wealth creation. Spending less than you earn, i.e., saving money and investing it well over a long period of time is all you need to meet all your financial goals. Simple, right? But the question again is, like Jon asked, why do we make it so hard?

Look at this chart that talks about the three simple steps to get wealthy over time…

Could this get any simpler?

[Read more…] about How to Get Wealthy (Over Time)