Safal Niveshak

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This page contains our best articles on the subject of value investing and investment behaviour.

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Value Investing Contest 2020

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Here’s your chance to showcase your devil’s advocate skills to the Safal Niveshak tribe, help others understand what can permanently lose them their capital, and in the process win a prize if your entry gets chosen amongst the best.

Contest Rules

  1. Write a max. 1200 words SELL or AVOID report on a listed Indian company of your choice (BUY reports or those longer than 1200 words won’t be accepted)
  2. You must submit ONLY one report
  3. Deadline for report submission is 5th October 2020
  4. Email your report in a Word file to vishal[at]safalniveshak[dot]com with the subject line as – “Value Investing Contest 2020 – Company Name – Your Name”
  5. The stock must have a market capitalization of more than Rs 1,000 crore
  6. The idea must be well researched (by you). Your analysis must cover these areas:
    • Company’s business
    • All your reasons why one must avoid the stock, or sell if one owns it

The report would be exclusive to Safal Niveshak. You must not have published it on some other site. But once the report is published on Safal Niveshak, you may post an abstract at other places and link to the full report on Safal Niveshak.

Evaluation & Rewards

I will evaluate each submitted entry ONLY on the depth and simplicity of analysis, though good presentation and proper language is more than welcome (would save me editing time).

There are three prizes to be won (delivery in India only) –

  • 1st Prize – Books of choice worth Rs 3,000/-
  • 2nd Prize – Books of choice worth Rs 2,000/-
  • 3rd Prize – Books of choice worth Rs 1,000/-

All submitted entries would be published on Safal Niveshak (the author can remain anonymous if he/she wants).

This contest is now open. Remember, the deadline for submission is 5th October 2020.

A 2000-Year-Old Technique for Weathering Life’s Storms

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In ancient Greece and Rome, many prominent thinkers subscribed to a philosophy called Stoicism. As part of this philosophy, they practiced a thought exercise called premeditatio malorum, which means premeditation of evils.

It simply means taking a moment to think through everything that could go wrong with a particular plan. It means visualizing a bad future.

The idea behind premeditatio malorum is that by contemplating calamity, we rob future hardships of their bite and appreciate what we have now. In other words, anticipating adversity is likely to diminish its power on us when it actually strikes.

[Read more…] about A 2000-Year-Old Technique for Weathering Life’s Storms

Dear Mr. Buffett

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This is a Warren Buffett birthday post, and like all birthday wishes, I will not take long. This message will never reach Mr. Buffett, but I silently hope the thoughts form some kind of waves and time-travel to reach him before he celebrates his 100th birthday.

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Dear Mr. Buffett,

Happy birthday to you (it’s still 30th August, 11.29 PM in Omaha as I write this).

Trust you are doing well, feeling young, and in the pink of your health.

[Read more…] about Dear Mr. Buffett

When You Become a Millionaire

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The Money Game by Adam Smith (pseudonym used by George Goodman), first published in 1968, is a timeless classic on investing and human behaviour.

It is a witty book wherein the author shares his insights on the irrationality with which most of us make our investment decisions. He also shatters common myths and misconceptions, revealing why nothing works all the time and illustrating how greed and fear fuel the market.

As I was re-reading the book, I came across this passage that details the dangers of trying to earn a lot of money to be able to achieve a certain level of happiness and peace in our lives. It is as relevant today as it was when the book was written 50+ years back.

It has been my fate to know people who have made considerable amounts of money, sometimes millions, in the market.

[One of them] had a very good point when he said the end object of investment ought to be serenity.

Now if you think making a million dollars will give you serenity, there are two things you can do. One is to find a good head doctor and see if you can discover why you think a million dollars will give you this serenity. This will involve lying on a couch, remembering dreams, talking about your mother, and paying forty dollars an hour.

If your course is successful, you will realise that you do not want a million dollars but something else which the million dollars represents to you, such as love, potency, mother, or what have you.

Released, you can go off about your business and not worry anymore, and you will be poorer only by the number of hours you spent in accomplishing this times forty dollars.

The other thing you can do is to go ahead and make the million dollars and be serene. Then you will have both a million dollars and serenity, and you do not have to deduct the number of hours times forty dollars unless you feel guilty about making it.

It seems simple, and there is indeed a catch.

What do you do with the million dollars arrives and serenity does not?

Aha, you say, you will worry about that when you get to it, you are sure you can handle it. Perhaps you can.

Money, contrary to popular myth, does help people more than its spoils them, simply because it opens up more options.

The danger is that when you have your million, you then want two, because you have a button saying I Am A Millionaire and that is who you are, and there are, all of a sudden – as you will notice – so many people with buttons saying I Am A Double Millionaire.


The core idea of Mr. Goodman’s book is that money game is about the players, not the rules or the features of the board. And so how we play the game matters much more than how the game is stacked.

Some books never lose their relevance, no matter how old. The Money Game is one of them.

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Here are few things I thought were worth sharing with you:

  • An Investor’s Spam Filter (Anand Sridharan)
  • Risk and Return in the Stock Market Are Not Evenly Distributed (Ben Carlson)
  • Preparing Your Mind for Uncertain Times (The Atlantic)
  • My Son Is Looking to Me for Answers—And I Don’t Have Them Anymore (Uri Friedman)
  • Your Financial Portfolio and Japanese Principles (Fortune)

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That’s about it from me for today.

If you liked this post, please share with others on WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, or just email them the link to this post.

If you are seeing this newsletter for the first time, you may subscribe here.

Stay safe.

Regards,
Vishal

The Sketchbook of Wisdom: A Hand-Written Manual on the Pursuit of Wealth and Good Life

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The Sketchbook of Wisdom: A Hand-Written Manual on the Pursuit of Wealth and Good LifeI am writing, actually handwriting, a new book.

It is titled – The Sketchbook of Wisdom: A Hand-Written Manual on the Pursuit of Wealth and Good Life. I aim to release it in December 2020.

My idea through this book is to bring to you wisdom from Krishna to Taleb, Socrates to Munger, Vivekanand to Steve Jobs, and Kabir to Naval Ravikant, as it applies to our lives today. The ideas in this book will cover a range of topics like investing, personal finance, behaviour, decision making, learning, and life.

Peter Bevelin wrote in his book Seeking Wisdom –

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.

I have no intention to change you or your thinking through my book. What you will read in these pages are the notes that I have written to myself and the lessons I have offered myself over the years, through my own experience and that of others. And in that very spirit, like my notes, this book will be entirely hand-written.

Download 10 ideas from the book by signing up for my free newsletter – The Safal Niveshak Post – that offers time-tested ideas to help you handle your money in the most intelligent way.

* No charge. No spam. Only wisdom.


* * *

I welcome you to join me in this pursuit of timeless wisdom.

Please help me share the word about the book on WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn.

I also welcome your suggestion(s) on the book, and your feedback after reading the ten free ideas. Please share the same in the Comments section of this post.

Thank you in anticipation.

With respect,
– Vishal

The Five Most Irrelevant Facts of Stock Investing

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Look at this. This is a stock’s price.

Now look at it another way. This is not just a stock’s price. It is, borrowing from the legendary John Bogle, a “giant distraction to the business of investing.”

Long term investment returns are created by how businesses perform, but most investors make their investment decisions based on where stock prices have come from and where they may be going.

[Read more…] about The Five Most Irrelevant Facts of Stock Investing

Personal Finance for Smart People: A Pocket Guide for Wealthier Life

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I recently made a pocket-zine for my kids that contained some lessons on living a good life.

They loved holding and reading it as much as I loved creating it.

Well, call it a positive feedback loop, that zine has led me to create one more. This time on the most important things in personal finance.

I call it – Personal Finance for Smart People: A Pocket Guide for Wealthier Life.

Personal Finance for Smart People - Safal Niveshak

Click here to download the PDF version.

Please note that personal finance is, well, personal. So, it is OK if you reject all the ideas in this zine. See these ideas in context of your own financial goals and circumstances.

Anyways, while this zine is completely free, it is not cheap. If you wish to show your support, please forward it to someone who may benefit from it.

You may share it on WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, or just email them the link to this post.

If you are seeing this newsletter for the first time, you may subscribe here.

Stay safe.

Regards,
Vishal

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