Investing

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The Most Important Portfolio of My Life…and Yours

I met a long-time Safal Niveshak tribesman and a great friend Sanjeev Bhatia and his family yesterday. Sanjeev took out time from work to visit me in Chandigarh (where I am holidaying), travelling almost 100 km from his hometown, Ludhiana.

While Sanjeev looks pretty lean and young (as you can see above :-)), he has a couple of grown-up boys, one studying engineering and the other also looking to go that way.

Being from a family that has several engineers – including Sanjeev and his wife – it’s obvious for the kids to head in that direction.

Investing and Shortcuts

It’s human nature to want to get a job done as quickly as possible. Like you cross the street between intersections instead of using the zebra crossing, or jump a fence instead of using the gate.

It isn’t your problem!

Many of us have grown up being told that it’s important to accomplish as much as we can. But what we often aren’t told is that rushing can result in accidents, errors, and more time spent in the long run.

How to Lose Weight and Make Money Fast

“What is an article on losing weight doing on an investing blog?” you may wonder.

Now, you asked this despite that you opened this article expecting a real good way to lose weight in seven days. Isn’t it? 🙂

Anyways, you are not alone in this search for a quick fix to your weight issues, for this is what the world is searching on Google when it comes to losing weight…

As you can see, most searches are for losing weight fast and without much hard work – “in a week”, “fast”, “in 7 days”, “in 1 month”…and “without exercise”.

The truth is that, and this is what I have realized, the faster you lose your weight, the faster you regain it.

Analyze a Stock in 30 Minutes (Free Excel)

A few readers have accused me in the past of being a sadist who wants them to do the dirty work of analyzing companies on their own, instead of simply recommending stocks like so many other blogs do.

But I’d rather give you a compass instead of a map, for you can confuse map with territory and lose your life’s savings walking that path!

In this pursuit of handing you another compass, here is an excel file (see below) that you can download on to your PC, and analyze not just the past performance of a company but also arrive at its intrinsic value in 30 minutes or less (only after you already have the annual reports with you).

Wit, Wisdom, Charlie: Elementary Worldly Wisdom from Charlie Munger (Issue #9)

This post is authored by Puneet Khurana, a Safal Niveshak tribesman.

Imagine the following scenario. You are sitting at your work desk sipping your coffee when your boss comes and offers you the following deal.

He offers you a fixed bonus of Rs 1 crore for the year. Besides this, he offers you a variable bonus. For the variable bonus, he asks you to either take another fixed Rs 50 lac or flip a coin. If it’s heads, you get Rs 1 crore and if its tails, you get zero.

Which of the options will you chose?

Now consider this.

This time he offers you a fixed bonus of Rs 2 crore for the year. From this Rs 2 crore, you can either give him Rs 50 lac back, no questions asked, or you can flip a coin.

Wow, What a Tribe!

My neighbors think I speak less. My friends think I speak very less. My wife thinks I don’t speak at all!

But when I tell people that I can speak for 30 hours in 3 days, they are astounded. And so was I by the end of day yesterday i.e., after finishing my fourth Art of Investing Workshop session in three days. 🙂

It was an amazing weekend retreat for me as I got chance to meet around 120 Safal Niveshak tribesmen in Bangalore and Chennai.

[Read more…] about Wow, What a Tribe!

Value Investing, the Chetan Parikh Way – Part 3

I recently had the privilege of meeting one of the highly regarded value investors in India, Mr. Chetan Parikh in his office in Mumbai.

After publishing Part 1 and Part 2 of his interview recently, here is Part 3.

Safal Niveshak: Do you think it’s important to do historical research looking back at companies in different circumstances and understanding or trying to draw conclusions about why they succeeded or failed in a particular decade or period of an economic cycle or change in leadership? Is historical research an important part of your investment methodology or not so much?

Mr. Parikh: In trying to answer the question, I’m reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s remark that when an historian had to rely on one document he was safe, but if there were two to be considered he was in difficulty, and if three were available his position was hopeless.

Analyzing Crompton Greaves, the Ben Graham Way

Ben Graham, the Father of Value Investing, writes the following at the start of Chapter 37 of Security Analysis…

In the last six chapters, our attention was devoted to a critical examination of the income account for the purpose of arriving at a fair and informing statement of the results for the period covered.

The second main question confronting the analyst is concerned with the utility of this past record as an indicator of future earnings.

This is at once the most important and the least satisfactory aspect of security analysis. It is the most important because the sole practical value of our laborious study of the past lies in the clue it may offer to the future; it is the least satisfactory because this clue is never thoroughly reliable and it frequently turns out to be quite valueless.

These shortcomings detract seriously from the value of the analyst’s work, but they do not destroy it. The past exhibit remains a sufficiently dependable guide, in a sufficient proportion of cases, to warrant its continued use as the chief point of departure in the valuation and selection of securities.

Work Less = Earn Less = Spend Less = Live More

“How can you be so kanjoos (miser) to be wearing a t-shirt worth just Rs 250?” a friend ridiculed me recently, while showing off his latest Van Heusen shirt worth Rs 2,000.

“Think whatever you want of me, but I am like that only,” I told him. “If I can get a t-shirt worth Rs 250 that I can use for a year, why should I buy anything expensive that would last almost the same time?”

“Wow, and you call this cheapness as enjoying life. Huh!” he continued.

How to Master Analyzing the Balance Sheet – Part 2

A few days back, I had posted a video on how to analyze the balance sheet on the Equities and Liabilities side.

In continuation of that series, here are two videos on how to analyze the Assets side of the balance sheet.

Given my habit of speaking too much when no one is listening :-), I have divided the explanation in two parts.