Life

Meditations on Mortality in Life and Investing

September 22, 2018 | 3 Comments

There is a story, not often told, in Mahabharata where the eldest of the Pandavas, Yudhishthira, comes upon a lake and finds that his brothers lay dead on its banks.

Before beginning the search into his brothers’ murder, the prince in exile finds himself burning with thirst and reaches into the lake to drink, not knowing that it was drinking from the lake that brought his brothers’ end.

At that moment a celestial appears, a Yaksha, no god or angel but instead a presence of power presiding over the lake. The Yaksha warns Yudhisthira not to drink lest he suffers the fate of his brothers.

He has an alternative: Yudhisthira can instead answer Yaksha’s questions. There are said to be eighteen questions that Yaksha asked Yudhisthira, but here is the one that concerns what I am writing today.

Being Vulnerable

August 31, 2018 | 4 Comments

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (9th Sept – Sold Out), Chennai (23rd Sept), Mumbai (30th Sept), Hyderabad (7th Oct). Click here to register now. Few seats remain!

I was 23, straight out of college, when I came to Mumbai in 2001. I had come from a small town in Rajasthan with a population of under 2 lac, or 0.02 crore. Mumbai was 80 times more crowded, and I was scared.

I had just accepted a seat at an MBA college in this city, and my father had paid the fee. So, there was no looking back. Now when I think back about those times, it was quite possibly the most intimidating situation I had ever gotten myself into thus far.

But I did not want to be a quitter, so I stayed, struggled to get along with the city and its people, and still stayed.

In the first few weeks at college, I flunked more than half of my classes as I was too shy and scared to be out of my accommodation and onto the crowded roads and public transport and then into my class of ‘city’ students.

I never felt as vulnerable in my life as then.

[Read more…] about Being Vulnerable

Being A Father

August 27, 2018 | 11 Comments

Welcome to the first edition of Outside the Box, Safal Niveshak’s new, free newsletter.

Now, what’s new here? Well, this newsletter will not be authored by me (you must be thanking goodness!), but a few of my friends in the value investing circle.

I have been connected to these people over the past few years, and highly respect their thoughts and ideas about investing, decision making, learning, and life in general.

Now, who are these people? In an alphabetical order, they are – Arpit Ranka, Gaurav Sud, Jatin Khemani, Neeraj Marathe, Ninad Kunder, Samit Vartak, Shyam Sekhar, and Vitaliy Katsenelson.

While these gentlemen are well-known in the value investing circles, I would introduce them better as we move forward and also have a few others join in.

[Read more…] about Being A Father

The Dangers of Persistence

August 9, 2018 | 17 Comments

Value Investing Workshop in Bangalore (9th Sept), Chennai (23rd Sept), Mumbai (30th Sept). Click here to register now. Few seats remain!

A few months back, during my lecture to a class of MBA students, I asked them to finish a sentence. The sentence was – “If you play a slot machine in a casino long enough, eventually you will ………” *

The class yelled out in unison “WIN!”

As most people reading this know, that is exactly the wrong answer. Slot machines are engineered to make everyone but the casino a loser in the long run. But MBA kids don’t know that, and they are never taught that. I assumed they confused the benefits of persistence with the actual odds of succeeding.

Anyways, I met a couple of my neighbours in the gym today, who smiled – as if mocking me – when I told them about my work that is to teach people to make lesser mistakes with their money and also learn to make sensible investment decisions for the long term.

How to Create An Antifragile Life, and A Stock Portfolio (A Personal Experiment)

May 4, 2018 | 12 Comments

Life was good when I was working at my job as a stock market analyst around 2005-06. Markets were doing well, and my stock picks were flying high. My company’s clients were happy with our recommendations, and consequently, my salary was coming in.

Talking about salaries of stock market analysts, the less that’s said the better. You get paid undeservingly (salary-to-effort ratio, as compared to most other knowledge workers) for constantly questioning the hard work of entrepreneurs and then not questioning your own analyses while churning out words that lose relevance in a few weeks or months.

Anyways, since I was an analyst then, I did not question what I am questioning now. Life was good. I felt safe and comfortable in my job, loved what I was doing, and thought that I would be happy doing the same thing for the rest of my life.