Safal Niveshak

Wit. Wisdom. Value Investing.

Mastermind Value Investing Course: 6th Batch Admission Now Open

Admission to the sixth batch of The Safal Niveshak Mastermind – my premium, online course in Value Investing – is now open, and will remain so for the next 10 days.

Click Here to Join Mastermind Now

My idea through Mastermind is simple – to help you with a simple, common-sense approach to successful investing, so that you can avoid the uncertainty and outlandish time you would otherwise spend doing it all alone.

I’ve lined up a lot of things that you will receive when you become a part of The Safal Niveshak Mastermind. Here’re the key ones…

  • 50+ lessons and few hours of video classes that will help you learn the nuances of Value Investing and how you can apply it to create long-term wealth through stock investing.
  • Lessons on identifying moats and analyzing specific sectors to help you build your circle of competence.
  • Lessons on building a latticework of mental models – the Charlie Munger way – to make better investment decisions.
  • Lessons on calculating Intrinsic Values of stocks.
  • Lessons on creating a portfolio of high-quality stocks.
  • Exclusive Forum to participate in learning exercises and discuss practical examples so that you can gain experience in doing your own independent analysis.

Over the past few years, I’ve sifted through a mountain of amazing books, documents, lectures, websites, and the last twelve years of my personal experience as an investor – to ensure that I bring the best ideas and lessons for you in investing and building wealth.

The goal of The Safal Niveshak Mastermind Course is simple – To help you get richer every single day.

This is your opportunity to become a simpler, sensible, long-term investor, and avoid the uncertainty and outlandish time and pain that you would otherwise spend doing it all alone.

Here are the key features of the Course –

  • 100% online, self-study course
  • Convenient 24X7 online availability of all lessons
  • Downloadable basic excel models and templates
  • Members-only Forum for discussions and performing exercises after each lesson
  • Quizzes to test your understanding of key concepts
  • Premium access to the exclusive Mastermind website

Now, if you are willing and ready…

Let Me Offer You a Deal
The Safal Niveshak Mastermind, with all its invaluable contents and benefits as I have mentioned above, is priced at Rs 14,500/- (incl. taxes).

However, if you are among the first 100 subscribers, you can claim an early-bird discount of Rs 3,000.

Click Here to Join Mastermind Now

By the way, here is what a couple of Mastermind students have to say about their experience with the Course…

I am very humbled by Vishal’s approach in the Mastermind Value Investing Course. The course is created to strengthen us in our investment skills and techniques, allowing individuals to know which stocks are fundamentally sound.

One thing that really differentiate the Mastermind course from the other investing courses is the emphasis and build up on the mindset of an investor which is really very important. I highly recommend anyone who wants to build his wealth in a wise way to be part of Vishal’s Mastermind community.

~ Sean Seah

This is one of the best courses I have ever done. As a true value investor, this is one of the best investments I have made. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and would be happy to recommend the course to anyone who is interested in value investing.

Your course is the true example of ‘The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.’

~ Antony Sakkariyas

Click Here to Join Mastermind Now

If you have any further question(s) about the Course, please write to me at vishal@safalniveshak.com, or call me at +91-8097073918.

Latticework of Mental Models: Game Theory

Every time I get into my car, the thought of crossing the “dead-circle” sends a shiver down my spine.

“Dead-circle” is the name that I have given to the intersection near my house. It’s a small intersection with no traffic lights and rarely managed by any traffic police. What scares me most about this intersection is that it doesn’t need a lot of traffic to invite a gridlock situation.

A traffic gridlock is so frequent in that junction that I have started calling it the dead-circle. Throw in four five cars, couple of two wheelers and you have the perfect recipe for a jam.

In the first few minutes of traffic jam the whole area drowns in the echo of incessant honking. In another few minutes you find few restless drivers rolling down their windows and shouting at each other.

I feel very bad for the people living near that intersection. Poor victims of a serious case of negative externality.

What’s interesting is that just like stock market, greed and fear rules the behaviour in traffic jams. Everybody is either scared of staying stuck in traffic (even if it’s only for 5 more minutes) or greedy about saving another 5 seconds by not giving way to another fellow.

Given an option between offering the way to another car and zooming past shamelessly, most people go for the latter. It’s as if they are trying to cross a collapsing bridge.

[Read more…] about Latticework of Mental Models: Game Theory

Teach Your Kids About Money – Join Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaires Club

I’m good friends with Warren Buffett,
He’s gonna teach me how to do my best, learn to invest
And have a lot of fun doin’ it…

Well, that’s how the jingle begins for the cartoon series called “Secret Millionaires Club” (SMC) where Warren Buffett (in his own voice) teaches kids the basic of good financial decision making and some of the basic lessons of starting a business.

While my 11-year old daughter loves the lessons Buffett teaches, my 4-year old son loves the jingle itself, and thus I have to often watch some videos from the series alongwith them. 🙂

“It’s not intended to teach kids how to read a balance sheet,” Buffett says about SMC. “It’s meant to provide a fun way for kids to understand business and develop good habits from an early age.”

SMC has lots of good lessons about money such as learning not to spend more than you have, and saving for the unexpected, and not borrowing money unless you have a plan to pay it back. The series shows the consequences that can happen if people don’t make wise decisions.

Some of the other lessons kids (and adults) can learn from this series include…

  • The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.
  • The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.
  • Find something you enjoy doing and you’ll never work a day in your life.
  • Treat other people the way you would like to be treated.
  • Never trade your reputation for anything.

Then, there’s the most important lesson Buffett doles out on making mistakes – “Learn from your mistakes. Better yet, learn from the mistakes of others.”

And finally, on failure – “Failing is not falling down…it’s staying down.”

You can watch all 26 episodes of the series here.

I find SMC a fun-filled and effective way to pass on critical lessons on money and business to my child. I am sure you will not find it any different.

Value Investor Interview: Huzaifa Husain

Note: This interview was originally published in the December 2015 issue of our premium newsletter – Value Investing Almanack (VIA). To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.


Huzaifa Husain
Mr. Huzaifa Husain is the Head of Indian Equities at PineBridge Investments based in Mumbai. Since he joined the asset management company in 2004, Mr. Husain has been a key member of the team advising the PineBridge India Equity Fund (a Dublin domiciled India offshore fund). Prior to this, he was an Equity Analyst at Principal Mutual Fund and SBI Mutual Fund. Mr. Husain received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore and a B.Tech from the Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University).

In this interview for the Value Investing Almanack, Mr. Husain shared how he found his calling in value investing, and reveals key insights about his investment strategy and the underlying thought process.

[Read more…] about Value Investor Interview: Huzaifa Husain

Safal Niveshak’s 2015 Annual Letter to Tribe Members

Note: The genesis of this idea lies in the annual letter that Shane Parrish of Farnam Street wrote to his readers few days back. I have shamelessly cloned the idea here because, like Shane, I find great relevance in mastering the best of what others have already figured out. 🙂


Dear Tribe Member,

Trust you are doing great.

2015 was another tremendous year for Safal Niveshak. The tribe doubled to cross 20,000 members by the end of the year. Our Twitter count also crossed 10,000 followers. We conducted five workshops during the year, meeting 200+ tribe members in the process.

The Mastermind Value Investing Course count crossed 1,500 students. We launched a new premium newsletter – Value Investing Almanack (VIA) – in March, which is now 400 members strong, and has gotten great reviews from its subscribers, including Prof. Sanjay Bakshi. The idea to launch VIA came from the need I felt of a detailed value investing newsletter in the Indian context, which had deep insights on the subject, business analysis, and interviews with practitioners of the art. I had always missed such a product in India, and could not find a better way to get it than to create it myself. Anyways, when we opened membership in February, I expected less than 100 people to join. But the final count after ten days was an overwhelming 250+.

[Read more…] about Safal Niveshak’s 2015 Annual Letter to Tribe Members

Life 2.0: Join the 5 A.M. Club

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing to do is wake up. Why not wake up early and realize your dreams earlier.

When I was a kid my father used to tell me – “Early bird gets the worm.

I am no bird and I don’t like worms,” I would tell him and never really took his advice seriously.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, was my mother’s version of motivating me to get up early in the morning. Although the quote originally came from Benjamin Franklin, I was least bothered about who said it. Getting up early was nothing less than a torture and was never in my top ten priorities for most of my childhood and teenage years.

In fact, for the first 25 years of my life, I never really understood the importance of being an early riser. But slowly as I was exposed to the writings and works of great leaders, creative artists, thinkers, authors and business leaders I started observing the pattern. Most of these people were early risers. They used each morning to write, read, ponder, and plan for their day.

Ernest Hemingway felt he did his best writing in the morning. He wrote, “There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.” He’d get started at 6 A.M. and write non-stop until noon.

Benjamin Franklin would wake every day at 5 A.M. and would use the time to wash, dress, and plan his day’s work. He has in fact written a whole book on the benefits of rising early.


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Poke the Box: Compounding Goodwill

Let’s Start with Safal Niveshak
Just in case you missed any of this on Safal Niveshak in the last week…

Book Worm
Stephen King’s book On Writing had been lying in my anti-library for quite sometime. Every time I would go near my bookshelf, the book seemed to catch my attention, as if asking, “Dude, are you ever going to read me?”. When I couldn’t tolerate its stare for many weeks I finally picked it up.

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Latticework of Mental Models: Externalities

About five years back when I moved into my current apartment community, the area around was pretty much empty. The open land and the surrounding greenery attracted so much that making the decision was a no-brainer.

Or so I thought because I forgot one thing. I should have asked for a guarantee that the greenery will stay that way.

It didn’t take much time for small houses to start mushrooming around the campus. Honestly, I shouldn’t be complaining. It’s a free country and people are allowed to construct houses. But it’s always the second order effects which create unexpected problems.

With inadequate supply of water from the government, came the need for bore wells for every house. I guess you can imagine where this story is going.

With bore wells getting installed in some or the other house every few weeks, started the unwanted and unbearably irritating noise emanating from heavy mechanical devices, drilling holes in mother nature’s heart.

I felt I was living in the middle of a factory. I had never signed up for this.

In today’s capitalist society, when I want to listen to a song on iTunes, I have to shell out money for it. But if I am forcefully exposed to a deafening, non-musical, and unhealthy sound, why am I not being compensated for it? Who should pay for my misery? The driller, the landowner, the government? I demand that all of them should but nobody seems to be interested.

[Read more…] about Latticework of Mental Models: Externalities

It’s Your Money, Honey – My Lecture on Saving and Investing at Mindscape 2015

I recently delivered a lecture on the importance of saving and investing to a group of 300+ people, mostly college students, at Mindscape 2015 – an annual ideas festival that features talks, film screenings & performances and is held in Navi Mumbai.


Click here to download my presentation slides PDF (13.8 MB file). I will share the video when I receive the same from the organizers.

I have been extremely fortunate to be able to share my thoughts and experience with budding minds.

Please share this presentation or the ideas it contains with the young around you. Even if you can enlighten one mind and get him/her on to the right path of managing his/her money and behaviour sensibly, it would be a great job done.

Let me know your thoughts/feedback on the presentation in the Comments section of this post.