The 2011 Safal Niveshak ‘Thank You’ List

The year 2011 will end in three days and we will be celebrating the onset of a new year. As I look back to the year gone by, I feel the need to extend my gratitude to a whole lot of people and things who made 2011 an amazing year for me.

The list is embarrassingly long, but if I tried to list every single thing I’m thankful for, we’d both be here until New Year 2013. But I’d like to hit a few highlights.

So here’s my personal and very partial list.

I thank YOU
It all starts with you, the reader of Safal Niveshak and the tribesman who has taken it upon himself/herself to become smarter and independent in his/her stock market investing decisions.

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Thank you so much for reading, for commenting, for sharing the posts, for your interest and support and intelligent criticism, for keeping me honest, for helping this entire movement of creating smarter and independent stock market investors become greater and spread wider.

You are magnificent, and I am supremely grateful for your time and attention.

I thank my beautiful little family
This is the one I can’t find words for. Every day with them, even when it’s tough, is a fantastic day. Special thanks to my wife for standing beside me like a rock during the most challenging phase of my career and for supporting the Safal Niveshak initiative by lending her emotional support to me. I also thank my darling daughter for helping me learn the importance of asking questions, and my little boy who never cries while I’m concentrating on writing my daily ideas for you. 🙂

I thank myself for being too stubborn to keep my day job
I was always entirely unfit for life in a normal job. But I thank myself that I was stubborn to take up the challenge to change my life the way I wanted it to be. Seriously, the last one year has been fearful for me in terms of going out on my own, all alone, and then trying to build a community from scratch. But I was stubborn, and believe that has made the difference.

I thank Ben Graham & Warren Buffett
It goes without saying but if the world was minus these two investing greats, the idea for Safal Niveshak wouldn’t have existed as well. Graham and Buffett, and other great investors, have put enormous number of ideas into my head, which I share with you. Reading their work had made a lot of difference to my life as an investor and a human being.

I thank my mentors
They might not know what I’m doing today, but I thank my mentors…

• Ajit Dayal of Quantum Advisors for showing me the less travelled path of helping small investors take independent stock market investing decisions instead of depending on greedy advisors.
• Michael Masterson of American Writers & Artists Inc. for teaching me the art of writing for the heart and not for the mind.
• Bill Bonner of Agora Inc. for showing me through his extreme humility, truthfulness, and modesty why these character attributes matter more and more as you rise in life and work.

I thank the speculator
Life is all about choices. A life well-lived is but a collection of good choices that you made. And it’s only when you see people making the wrong choices and failing that you learn to make the right choices for yourself.

So it’s my ultimate responsibility to thank the speculators and day traders in stock markets, because what they do is what I’ve hated to do for the past many years. Now when I look back, I thank them for they led me to make the choice of becoming a sensible, long-term investor and not one of them who often loses it all out of sheer greed to earn a fast buck.

I thank the Internet
If it weren’t for the Internet, I probably wouldn’t be here in the first place, talking to you day after day. So I thank the Internet for providing me this unbelievable environment in which I can create value, build audiences, make friends out of strangers, and build things that have never been imagined before.

I thank you all for showing me the way. 2011 wouldn’t have been as amazing and complete without your support.

Thanks for a wonderful year, and see you in 2012!