Investing

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Latticework of Mental Models: Critical Mass

This article is the tenth of this weekly series called Latticework of Mental Models, which will be authored by my friend and partner in writing the Value Investing Almanack, Anshul Khare. Anshul will write on various mental models – big ideas from various disciplines – which can help you think more rationally while analyzing businesses and making your stock investment decisions.

It’s said that you can find extraordinary intelligence in nature. To unearth this brilliance, all you need is curious eyes and close observation. In that spirit, let me start today with the story of a Chinese bamboo tree.

Imagine that you were given few Chinese bamboo seeds and asked to grow them. You take the little seed, plant it, and start watering it. You add fertilizer and wait patiently for the seed to turn into a plant. You wait for a whole year, and nothing happens.

The second year you continue to water it and fertilize it, but still nothing happens. Looks like somebody is testing your patience.

The third year you water it and fertilize it, and the same story repeats i.e., no visible results. Many people would have given up on the tree by this time. But not you. At least not in my story.

Overpriced

When I was looking to acquire the first client for my writing business in 2011, I had no idea how much to charge. I had no point of reference as far as content writing fee was concerned. For me, there were a few hours of work involved.

Anyways, to my first prospective client, I dared to ask for a hefty sum of Rs 2,500 per article, simply going by the understanding that you charge not for how much work it is for you, but how much the service is worth for the client.

It took me several clients to figure this out. My next client, I tried charging Rs 3,000 per article. He went for it. The next client Rs 3,500. The next client Rs 4,000. I kept charging more and more until finally three clients all turned down my Rs 5,000 fee. So I lowered the price back to Rs 4,000.

Essentially, at Rs 5,000, my prospective clients were telling me, “Your services are overpriced, and not worth it!”

[Read more…] about Overpriced

Governance: Know Thy Manager

In the original version of his book The Intelligent Investor, Ben Graham began his discussion of a chapter on “The Investor as Business Owner” by pointing out that, in theory…

“…the stockholders as a class are king. Acting as a majority they can hire and fire managements and bend them completely to their will.”

But he changed this part in the subsequent editions of the book. In practice, says Graham…

“…the shareholders are a complete washout. As a class they show neither intelligence nor alertness. They vote in sheeplike fashion for whatever the management recommends and no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be.

The only way to inspire the average American shareholder to take any independently intelligent action would be by exploding a firecracker under him.”

Well, this is a fact that is true for not just American shareholders, but all shareholders. Most of us overlook the human aspect of operating a business. This is despite the fact that, in most cases, the future success of a business is directly tied to the quality of its people.
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Latticework of Mental Models: Law of Small Numbers

This article is the ninth of this weekly series called Latticework of Mental Models, which will be authored by my friend and partner in writing the Value Investing Almanack, Anshul Khare. Anshul will write on various mental models – big ideas from various disciplines – which can help you think more rationally while analyzing businesses and making your stock investment decisions.

Outside of the closed glass chambers in the corporate world, there is another very unusual place where grand scheming about workplace strategies (read, office politics) happens regularly. Don’t worry, there is nothing hush-hush about this place and it’s not at all surrounded by thick soundproof walls.

Wondering what I am talking about? Let me give you another hint.

It’s the designated open area in every large company, where people go out in fresh air to fill their lungs with freshly brewed smoke. You guessed it right. I am talking about the smoking areas.

Mind you, it’s not just a place trafficked by the smoke billowing nicotine guzzlers, but you’ll often find those hapless passive smokers too who don’t realize that their lungs are going to collapse sooner than their active smoker buddies.

Latticework of Mental Models: Kantian Fairness Tendency

This article is the eighth of this weekly series called Latticework of Mental Models, which will be authored by my friend and partner in writing the Value Investing Almanack, Anshul Khare. Anshul will write on various mental models – big ideas from various disciplines – which can help you think more rationally while analyzing businesses and making your stock investment decisions.

I was almost at the end of a beautiful evening drive. Refreshing cold breeze gently blowing on my face through the car windows coupled with minuscule traffic was like heaven on earth. Sporting an ear-to-ear smile I felt confident that nothing in the world had the power to take away my inner peace at that moment.

But, as usual, my faithful and ever reliable nemesis, the chaos-monkey, had different plans for me that evening.

Just when I was about to take a smooth turn on a closing traffic signal, a taxi cut me off while overtaking my car. The surprising rash maneuver from the taxi called for sudden brakes and by that time signal had turned red. As a result I missed my turn because of the insensitive driving by the taxi driver.

In the next few seconds, my Buddha smile turned into an angry frown and I was thrown out of my “appreciating the good things in life” mode.

Why did I feel so agitated? Well, for one, I was ahead of the taxi and it was me who was supposed to cross the signal first.

When I Met the Legends of Investing – Part 4

“I have noticed one thing…” I told my wife, “…that whenever we are on a holiday, the stock markets take a nosedive.”

“Oh, you and your stock market!” she replied with expected frustration. “You always promise at the start of the holidays that you won’t look at stocks, but then…”

“Yes dear, you know I don’t look at daily stock prices while on a holiday or even otherwise, but the way stock prices are moving these days, I can’t help but take notice.”

“Forget it! Let me sleep now for we have a long day tomorrow touring the entire city.”

“Yeah, even I need a good night’s sleep,” I said, “…and possibly continue my dream of meeting the legends of investing who have guided me well in the past.

“Amidst this excessive stock market volatility, I surely need to get my thoughts re-aligned.”

And the dream follows…

Latticework of Mental Models: Redundancy

This article is the seventh of this weekly series called Latticework of Mental Models, which will be authored by my friend and partner in writing the Value Investing Almanack, Anshul Khare. Anshul will write on various mental models – big ideas from various disciplines – which can help you think more rationally while analyzing businesses and making your stock investment decisions.

What’s your favourite day or time of the week? For somebody like me with a Monday-Friday job, the favourite part of the week usually is Saturday morning.

Now, what could be the best way to ruin a Saturday morning? Let me tell how I (almost) achieved the feat.

On a cool and breezy weekend morning when most people prefer to sit in the balcony and sip on a hot beverage, I was standing just outside my front door with milk packet in hand and toothbrush in my mouth, wondering why do they build these auto-lock doors.

Yes, you guessed it right. I managed to lock myself out of my house. Everything including my keys, glasses, cell phone, wallet, and slippers were behind the door which was slammed shut by the very same saturday morning breeze.

However the story had a happy ending when I was rescued by my saviour. Saviour? Yes and it was none other than our mental model for today – Mr. Red (short for Redundancy).

Value Investor Interview: Jae Jun, Old School Value

This interview was part of the May 2015 issue of my premium newsletter on value investing, behavioural finance, and business analysis – Value Investing Almanack (VIA). If you wish to read more interviews with value investors, you can click here to subscribe to VIA now.

Jae Jun is the founder of Old School Value, a deep fundamental analysis tool that helps value investors speed up the analysis process and make better investment decisions.

I’ve admired Jae’s work at OSV and thoughts on investing for long, much before I started Safal Niveshak. So it was great to interview him for Value Investing Almanack. Let’s get straight into Jae’s experience and philosophy on investing.
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Book Review: A Short History of Financial Euphoria

This book review has been submitted by Ankit Kanodia.

If anyone would ask me to summarize A Short History of Financial Euphoria in quick words, I would borrow the following three quotes to make my point…

All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there. ~ Charlie Munger

History does not repeat itself, it rhymes. ~ Mark Twain

There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

For starters, the book does not give you any tip on how to compound wealth or how to invest to earn great returns on capital. On the contrary, it brings to your notice how you can lose it all and thus how difficult but important it is to avoid that danger.

A small, thin book of only 110 pages, it consists of almost everything one needs to know about the speculative bubbles in economic history.

Life 2.0: Journaling

Today I am going to share an insight that shook my life pretty hard, for the good of course.

How many times it has happened with you that after reading a book you thought that you understood the idea until you were asked to explain it. The idea seemed pretty clear in your head but the moment you had to verbalise it you discovered that either you didn’t have a proper grasp on the idea at the first place or you were unable to explain it in a logical coherent way to a third person.

This is the kind of silent reaction I got from people “You’re telling me that you just finished reading a compelling book but can’t explain the central idea in few sentences?”

This problem haunted me for a long time. Then one fine day I discovered the Feynman Technique, which says that the mere action of writing something down allows for a more effective integration of the learning. This further led me to the idea of Journaling. It was a Eureka moment!

Let me first share my definition of journaling. Journaling is simply an activity of writing in plain language about what’s going on around you and what your thoughts are about them. It can include things like your future goals, plans, dreams, reminders to yourself, comments on ideas/people or any unrelated thing that crosses your mind. It’s a conversation that you have with yourself.

So what’s so special about journaling? Stick with me through the rest of the post and you might find some surprising insights.

Journaling allows you to take fuzzy thinking and distil it into precise line of thought. If you want to think better you have to start writing your thoughts. It’s not a common knowledge that writing, apart from being a communication tool, is a thinking tool too. Famous author, Dan Pink, further validated my belief in this commencement speech.
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