Blog on Value Investing | Safal Niveshak

The Math of Debt

Alcohol math. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it’s hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible at three. Addition is multiplication. ~ Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

Debt math is exactly like that. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it’s hard to stop early, it will be impossible later.

Economics has a term for this – debt spiral, which is a situation where an individual, or a business, or a country sees ever-increasing levels of debt. This increasing levels of debt and debt interest becomes unsustainable, eventually leading to debt default.

[Read more…] about The Math of Debt

What Nobody Told You About Financial Freedom

I have not yet read Matt Haig’s book Reasons to Stay Alive, but here is an excerpt a friend shared, which instantly touched a chord –

The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind.

To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.

Ten Rules to Live By in 2020

I wish you a very happy, healthy, peaceful, and fulfilling 2020.

Life’s moving really fast (it’s nearly nine years since I started Safal Niveshak), so let me not waste another moment and thank you for being here for me.

As I begin 2020, here are a few things I aspire to do each day. These are more of notes to myself than advice to anyone. But if you wish to take it, I won’t mind at all. 🙂

Here I start.

51 Ideas from 2019

Dear Tribe Member,

Trust 2019 treated you well. It certainly was good for Safal Niveshak. The tribe crossed 60,000 members.

Anyways, right before the year ends, I thought I’d share a handful of ideas I’ve learned, re-learned, and wrote about in the past twelve months. Here are 51 of them categorized under the subjects of investing, learning, and life. I hope you find these useful, as much as I did.

[Read more…] about 51 Ideas from 2019

People Don’t Change

Okay, people change all the time.

School back-benchers turn around, finish college with top scores, get jobs or start businesses and lead mature, responsible lives.

Introverts move out of their shyness and make friends.

Stammerers get over their difficulties and become great speakers.

Alcoholics stop drinking and become mature.

Criminals convert to religion and leave the life of crime behind.

Lazy and selfish people become altruistic and devote their lives to the service of others.

Sinners become saints.

Traders who cannot see beyond an hour become investors (rare, but still) who see beyond years.

[Read more…] about People Don’t Change

Long Term Investing in the Age of Small Attention Spans

My 8-year-old son Chaitanya, like most kids his age, paid little attention as I showed him how to make a paper elephant for what seemed like the hundredth time. I said, “Fold the paper into half, then fold here, and then here.”

As I was talking, he kept looking at everything except at what I was doing. He fidgeted and played with his pencil. I kept pulling his attention back to what we were doing and my constant refrain was, “Pay attention!”

Ultimately, I lost my patience, and moved on to reading a book.

It’s not that Chaitanya is uninterested all the time. He is completely focused when he reads his favorite books, or when he is playing with his Lego blocks. But at other times, asking him to focus is an exercise in frustration.

Now if you think kids with their terribly short attention spans are tough to deal with, consider this. In 2000, the average human attention span was 12 seconds i.e., we could focus on any one particular thing just for 12 seconds before being distracted or allowing our minds to wander. If you think that was terribly low, please note that this number has now fallen to just eight.

When I look back to that time when I lost my patience on Chaitanya and moved onto reading a book, I realize that I was onto a second book in the next five minutes.

The 41st Lesson

I read this story recently about a man who went fishing in his boat. After some waiting, something tugged on the line. He got it out.

He saw the fish had silver and gold-coloured fins. It was very beautiful. He put it in the boat, even as the fish started struggling for life.

Then, to his surprise, the fish spoke, “Let me go into the river. Just put me back in the water. I will give you three wishes. You can ask for anything but put me back in the water now.”

The man thought for a few minutes. The fish was struggling for life, getting weaker and weaker.

Then he said, “Okay make it five wishes, I’ll let you go.”

The fish said, “No, three.” Its voice was already weak.

[Read more…] about The 41st Lesson

The Secret of Money

Money often costs too much. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The tragedy dates to 1859, when around 450 passengers on the Royal Charter, returning from the Australian goldmines to England, drowned when their ship was wrecked off the north coast of Wales.

What caused this shipwreck? Well, many of those on board were weighed down by the gold in their money belts that they just wouldn’t abandon so close to home.

[Read more…] about The Secret of Money

Eliminate These 5 Writing Blunders

This is the second post in the series — Writing, the Kaizen Way.

Let’s dive straight into the things that will make an immediate difference in your writing skills. So without wasting any time, here are five concrete writing tips that will instantly make you 2X effective than average people.

I am not making that claim to sound convincing. I am making this claim based on the common mistakes I have observed (including my own old habits) many people making all the time.

Writing, the Kaizen Way

About one year back, I remember telling Vishal that we should create a course on “How to become a better writer.”

Go ahead and create it, he said, “What’s stopping you?”

With a lot of excitement, I immediately started working on it. Now, we haven’t published any such course yet and that tells you something about the eventual state of my initial excitement. It barely lasted a few days.

“You know Vishal,” I messaged him a few days back, “the reason I haven’t been able to make much progress on the writing course is that I keep getting bogged down by the enormity of the task. The thought of creating an online course on writing is so overwhelming that I find it hard to resume the work on this project.”