Mahant!

It is really sad when a great idea fizzles out due to, for lack of better word, arrogance. I could have used the mismanagement, to use a nice jargon and give a McKinsey-Boston Consulting feel, but ultimately it all ends up in arrogance. But why arrogance? Arrogance because most of the failure of ideas are because what we want and what we want to impose on others. We are the gate keepers for others and we are the ones who decide what is good for others. We are the subject matter experts and we are the trend-setters of the industry. That is Arrogance, with capital A. What people are interested in is NOT what you have to offer, NOT what you make, NOT what you find interesting, NOT what the great idea you have, NOT because you have an interesting shop/establishment/domain name. They are only interested in THEMSELVES and things THEY care about. They are interested in how they can enjoy or benefit them or do things that will give them joy or that will enable them to do/learn things that will...

I remember a conversation with a friend who was a Head of Derivative Sales at a major bank. He told me how laws were circumvented to reach targets of everybody: sales targets for the sales team and revenue targets for corporates. Effectively, corporates played their shareholders' money to speculate so that they could assure bonus. And this was sometime back, so there were not much disaster-stories to share. Derivatives can be pretty freaky - freaky when it gives you great returns and freaky when it makes a big hole in the pocket. Indian firms, who were unleashed on international markets after liberalization are learning the lessons the hard way. Good times are over, well atleast in short term. Actually derivatives have burnt the fingers of almost everybody (sub-prime) in 2007. But this is the first time Indian firms are loosing heavily in their foreign exchange exposures. A fascinating snippet from Bloomberg: ------- Sundaram, which has no business in Switzerland, paid nothing on...

For past few days I have been working on a particularly nasty piece of research assignment. Nasty because the data I need to do full justice to the assignment is so difficult to find. I had to bring to my use all the Google tricks I knew to work out. But unfortunately the data I am looking for is still elusive. One good side effect is that I had to learn to use many things to come up with data, which has given me good amount of information. I thought of documenting some of these. So here are some things that helped me do it. Google If you are unsure of what exactly you are looking for, i.e. if you are trying to search for a concept or answer to a concept question - try Google. Google is sensitive in understanding the context of the question and does a very good job of giving you a right direction to search. Keywords I spent the better part of days searching on the keywords that were perhaps not the right match. This is because “standard of living” is often t...

When the Bank of England was formed the powers to create money was finally transferred to private hands. The creation of Fed in US, was just a part of this cycle. Though it is a common knowledge US Dollar has depreciated nearly 100% since the creation of Federal Reserve, the same is the case of all the currencies across the globe. For example, below is the UK Parliament data that highlights the depreciating value of Pound.

Bad writing is bad. I am always scared my sentences are too long unwieldy and will loose interest. So I like to keep them short and to point. I also tend to avoid jargons as much as possible. I dont write because I know how to write but to improve my writing. I came across a passage which won a "Best of bad writing" contest, I was pleased I was not so smart. Here is the passage. Honestly, I do not understand what she is saying, after two tries I gave up trying. "The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relationships in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed concep...

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. We are faced now with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late…We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late.” Martin Luther King Jr. ‘Where do we go from here: chaos or community’ ---- Its been sometime since I heard a wow! quote. When I read this, I knew I had to make a serious note of this.

If there is one greatest asset mankind has, it is his home planet. Earth is a very special place in our scheme of things. Until we are able to inhabit other planets and heavenly bodies, it is the only place where we can live. Only place to exist. http://surff.blogspot.com/2006/06/case-for-earths-greatest-asset-blue.html

At least 27 companies have matched or topped Wall Street estimates in every quarter since 2000, including Coach Inc. and Starbucks Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. General Electric Co. ended a 32-period winning streak on April 11. The real puzzle is why GE hadn't missed estimates since at least 2000, said Shiva Rajgopal, an accounting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. If analysts made their own judgments independent of company forecasts, the probability of compiling a record like GE's by sheer chance would be about 1 in 100 billion, based on a standard statistical equation, similar to a coin flip, he said. Bloomberg

With the targets for Euro being bandied at 2, its an enormous change in attitudes... the break of 71.50, which seems like imminent, could lead to huge pain for lot of people.

For those interested in paper trading and learning technical analysis, the site http://www.inspectd.com/ is a worthy bookmark. It allows the player to trade on mock sums, against REAL historical data. So, go ahead and manage portfolio back in past. :) Falkor

A friend from Blogathon left a message here . He was basically trying to counter my criticisms but unfortunately seems to have played right into the arguments. Let me make something clear, I am not against this Blogathon at all, but yes my previous blog was meant as a suggestion. While I have posted on the negative aspects, let me also clarify that what these guys at Blogathon have done is really good. This is first of such organized events and there ‘may’ be few slips. That is what the next times are for. --- Agent says: 1000 posts on 1000 topics makes no difference.1000 posts on 1 topic DOES make a difference. Buddy, sorry to say 1000 posts on 1 topics also makes no difference. Actually, if you look at it, it is worse than 1000 posts on 1000 topics. All it takes is one post to make a difference. Remember Gettysburg speech? Agent says Of these 1000 posts, atleast 5 might be heard. And of these 5, atleast one might be worth hearing! Again, as above. Who will bear reading 995 not-so-go...

I came across a nice blog on creativity ( creativecreativity.com ). It has some nice posts, but it was the first post that caught my attention - fully. Isn’t that strange that I became totally hooked after: it caught my attention and then I was motivated to see some more and then some more and then realize it is a very good site and then book marked it and then writing a post inspired by the original post. What would have happened if it was not able to get my attention? Obvious thing is I wouldn’t have written this post and may be I would have never come across this site in my life. That brings me to the point that I have been thinking on for quite sometime - attention. A thought process that was originally started by Seth Godin's post that brought the concept to my attention. (If Seth had not written that, may be I would not have thought about it) Attention is a very important commodity. We all want attention at various point in life, from mundane activities to imp...

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. - Abraham Lincoln This is one of my favorite quotes when I have to talk about effectiveness. We can bombard and carpet bomb, but laser-guided systems remain very efficient. We are constantly bombarded by emails, anything from real-estate to financial newsletter to miracle medical treatments. We call them Spam. The spam is something that works on law of averages. Simply put, if the hit rate is say 0.5%, then sending out 1000 emails will give 5 conversions. If this ratio remains constant, there is no extra effort in sending out 100,000 emails to get 5000 conversions. 4995 conversions for not doing anything extra but just spam! 80% of all email messages sent in December 2007 were spam. It surely works. And spamsters are working on law of averages. We often see people spamming others - about themselves. There are people who rejoice in having hundreds of friends online. The networks like Linkedin (my p...

I have kept spirituality out of this blog all these years but this one is too good to resist and note. very often I have this problem in resizing an image and whenever I do such a resizing the quality of the picture obviously goes down significantly, this is quite a let down. But accidentally, I came across this picture of Sai Baba which seems to be a very high-resolution picture because what ever the image-size the image remains crisp and clear. I guess, lot of people may need this image at some point, hence posting it here. Also, a very good post to begin blogging on finer aspects of life.

Bullet-point abuse The only place where a person can legally plunge bullet after bullet into your head is in a presentation room. If you in corporate world you would have undoubtedly experienced it. Presenters’ sometimes use multiple levels of bullets, and when the limit is crossed the experience becomes worse than a Chinese torture. So, when does a bullet-point use become bullet-point abuse? There can be no clear demarcation. Bullet-points have becomes such a routine exercise, that the very importance attached to bullet-points is extinct. On the contrary, we are on the other side of the curve, where use of bullet points may signify the lack of any significant points to communicate! Even if we had strong content to communicate, it could easily be drowned in the sea of obscurity. Cliff Atkinson, who wrote Beyond Bullet Points, gives a very interesting analogy. For more than 100 years films have communicated and held audience in rapt attention, again and again, without the...

So, what does it take to turn a marvelous idea into an exercise of mediocrity? The answer, like in any other business, lies in loosing touch of ground realities. The marvelous idea in question is Blogathon event, which is happening for the first time in India : not that India has any special significance on internet. Regional boundaries do not have any relevance on internet apart from bringing together people we can meet offline and closer to home. So what went wrong? In my opinion, the trigger for this post as well as the 'wrong' is the chosen topics for selection. While the topics chosen are good from the social perspective, they are way off the reality of the blogging context. It is clear there are very very few blogs that actually deal with the subjects like traffic jams, alternate sexuality or politics at grassroots. Most of the blogs target topics like technology, finance, niche topics or just fun/ online diaries. A post on alternate sexuality on a technology b...

One thing about Metastock that drives me crazy is lack of keyboard shortcuts. And if there are any; I am not aware of any of them. So, finally, I decided to geek myself out of this headache. 1. Downloaded and installed a software called AutoHotKey ( http://www.autohotkey.com/download/ ) 2. Noted down the screen co-ordinates of the "clicks" I wanted to convert into keyboard shortcuts 3. Updated the default script file with a very simple one line commands for executing the clicks 4. Now, the keyboard shortcuts work well, I dont have to click The syntax of the script: #IfWinActive ahk_class MetaStockMainWnd #z::Click 892,651 #IfWinActive Where MetaStockMainWnd defines the active window where the 'clicks' should be made. If this window is not active, these keyboard commands will not work. so, these commands will work only if the Metastock window is active. "#z" stands for Windows + Z. The coordinates are for the zoom-reset button. ...

If you use few options more frequently than others you can combine them into a single menu. Here is how to do it: 1. Word > Tools > Customize 2. In Commands tab > Categories > look for "New Menu" 3. The New Menu tab will appear to the right 4. Drag the "New Menu" to your toolbar 5. Once it is there, right-click and give a name 6. In Commands > Categories section you have menus; 7. Click on, for example, File. 8. The options under File menu is given to the right 9. Drag the desired option to your toolbar 10. Continue until you have all the desired functions under single menu title

When working with documents like presentations we routinesly would like use some specific fonts. For example, if our primary font in the text is Times new roman but use other fonts like verdana or georgia; the usual process is to select the text and scroll down the font we want to use and select that. MS Word offers us a neat way to avoid these scrolling and get things done in a snap. Here is the keyboard shortcut for changing fonts. 1. Word > Tools > Customize > Options > Keyboard... 2. A Customize keyboard will open 3. Select "Fonts" in Categories list 4. Select the font you want a short cut for 5. In "Press new shortcut key" give the short cut want 6. Click "Assign" 7. Close the windows. Whenever you want to change a text to that particular font select the text and hit the keyboard short cut.

The gap has now been covered, the market may now move higher to challenge 17200.

The prices have stayed above the support levels we have been watching. The prices have retraced below the h&s neckline that we are tracking. On the momentum front, we are seeing some positive divergences, but this are not confirmed yet, as prices have not shown a confirmed reversal. My guess, is the H&S version would hold firm, reach the target 1 of 39.20.

Dow has been range bound for well over a month. The expected retest of 12850 levels has finally occurred. The momentum or the volumes still do not support an explosive upward break. And such a break is usually accompanied by a fundamental trigger, we find such a trigger lacking in this scenario. This gives rise to suspicion the markets may down from here. But the thing to watch out for is the earnings, and in particular any positive surprises and in particular from the financial companies and banks. Alcoa's result has already shown results are likely to be on darker side. Nobody, nobody in the street expects, financial to do better. We do not know what will come out of the mystery box, how big the write-offs will be, the provisions, the equity capital, the funding and the guidance. The impact of positive surprise in this pessimistic scenario is very high compared to companies giving the expected results.

Contrary to what I had expected the rice chart has progressed higher even though the Gann angles were broken with low volumes and low momentum. The threat of severe retraction still exists in such cases, but we have to take into account the fundamental factors (and also the commodity behavior of extreme moves) when we make judgments. Fundamentally, the prices are finding support by countries trying to build a food-security reserve. The prices are still working withing the rising regression channel. The Fibo extension gives us a target of $23. Calling the top was and is trickier, but we will watch the smaller time frame Gann angles for any first signs of breakdown. The commodities however remain in steady uptrend with Crude reaching close to its alltime highs.

taken by a dude who calls himself: eezee as hell!

Its been a long time buddy. We all miss you.

Divination Systems What has been will be again, What has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 1:9 Man has always been eager to stretch beyond the imagination. One thing even after millennia we cannot do consistently is travel ahead of time. Time doesn’t move faster or slower. Time doesn’t allow itself to be manipulated nor does it allow us to know what future would be if things happen the way they are happening. Time does not allow us to modify future by letting us have peek at it. But that thing beyond the horizon, the search for the world's end, is what broadens the horizon. And out of this quest are born divination systems. The veracity and its effectiveness of each system are unknowns. Possibly dependent on the player and not the system itself. Future is highly malleable and elastic. We can manipulate it at our will. But if you bring in God and destiny into context, the picture may start to resemble Quantum and...

The food prices have risen very fast, actually doubled in 6 months period. Rice is certainly among the top performers over 6-month period. Robert Zolleick's message for a new "Green Revolution" is timely. We basly need to channel our technology and innovation towards global food security. Technically, it appears that we may have slight relief in Rice prices in coming days. Though it is still early days to call a 'top', the chances of top appears likely. The prices have broken above the Gann angles but with much lower momentum. Hence, unless momentum rises very sharply, this breakout is not likely to hold, and we may drift back into the mid-channel, possibly targeting the lower channel which at present is at around 50% retracement levels. The Doji or what may turn out to be an island formation may also indicate some level of 'top'. The biggest factor would perhaps be warning of Zolleick which has brought the issue to the front pages, this may lead to some p...