Mahant!

People love markets for many things but the foremost one would be that it holds the promise and hope of making your dreams come true. Investors from all walks of life are attracted to markets and investments. But it is unfortunate that most people make it big in market. Is it difficult? No, it can’t be that difficult. People in olden days did much better at investments than with complex strategies, economics or software. Some, even made their fortunes on back some simple percepts like "buy low sell high". This is just an attempt at pointing out some of the aspects that we need to have as investors. This, of course, is not a complete list or even a correct list. These are just some pointers hoping investors can take can some guidance from them. Top 5 things to do for investors and traders 1. Study the companies Know the companies thoroughly. You don’t have to read the annual reports backwards but you need to be comfortable in explaining your decisions, if required, with ease. ...

This tool came out as a result of creating a tracker. This uses Yahoo Finance's database for real time price updates. This enables users to automatically download prices of stocks and other instruments for free and also keep and updated portfolio. The known issues in this version are: 1. It is Long-only version 2. Some glitches can be experienced when running the macro 3. Cells contain absolute references, hence it is safe not to delete any rows. This is the first version and later versions would incorporate more. You can download the file here

The increased networking and social media exchanges are changing the dimensions how people interact and what drives them Few days back when Corkd, a website that writes on wines, got hacked its owner Gary Vayner Chuk asked the Twitterverse (aka Web 2.0 world) for help but offering no money in return. And he ended up with lots of people offered help. Its not a earth shattering instance, but how Gary 's videocast is different and what it proves is that the role (or more precisely the importance) of money is shifting in the new media. The old driver of money seems to be carrying lesser sheen in online world, where the actual potential to earn is limitless: what you don’t have is friends; being a friend and being associated with something or somebody is / would be a main driver. Old form of payments Money used to be a mode of measuring ones efforts in the old world. When you needed a well to be dug up, you measure that work against certain amount of equivalent wo...

Commodities are finally becoming interesting once again. The slumber is over. Comex Gold Gold seems to be the first one off the block. It has gained around $150 since our last call on Gold (A case to buy Gold - now) and has gained around $50 since the Jan 5th call. But all these advances are peanuts when compared to the real potential of Gold and Silver. From the longer perspectives, something that we are very interested in, the weekly charts of Gold show first signs of birth of a new rally. The twice thick upper channels on the weekly charts have been broken on the upside. Though it is early to say the rally has started, it is a clear sign that uptrend remains intact. Importantly, if this is the bottom - then the correction would appear very short. The prices have seen a correction of One year contrast to a three year bull run. What this means is; IF this is a terminated correction then the Bull Run coming forth would be huge and would have astonishing momentum. F...

We begin this New Year with dampened enthusiasm and dented optimism. Our happiness is diluted and our peace is threatened by the financial illness that has infected our families, organizations and nations. Everyone is desperate to find a remedy that will cure their financial illness and help them recover their financial health. They expect the financial experts to provide them with remedies, forgetting the fact that it is these experts who created this financial mess. Every new year, I adopt a couple of old maxims as my beacons to guide my future. This self-prescribed therapy has ensured that with each passing year, I grow wiser and not older. This year, I invite you to tap into the financial wisdom of our elders along with me, and become financially wiser. * Hard work: All hard work bring a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. * Laziness: A sleeping lobster is carried away by the water current. * Earnings: Never depend on a single source of income. [...

There is much fascinating happening on the technical front in Sensex. Most of our estimates are still on. Here is a note from older post. Nothing insightful in this charts too except saying 'still on track, where next?' :)

All advertising are interruption in some way. The strategy is to try and get your message across between something very interesting. The idea is that viewers would continue to watch the interested program hence will bear through the interruption. In the environment of no options, viewers had no choice but to bear it. Remote became essential when the multiple options emerged. They did not have to bear it any longer. The same is true of other medium like radio. The print or static ads which are strategically placed cannot be negated by viewers or an unwelcome pop up ad when browsing with a definite purpose or provocatively posing models staring us down from hoardings. But with the concept overdone, the fatigue set in. Then the contextual ads were invented. What they did was to play something very close to your interest based on the subject you are viewing. Was that new? No. Televisions have used this for a long time. The Nike, Adidas and Reebok ads during sports ar...

I collected The Rich man's story posts into a booklet and have uploaded them here. File factory 4Shared (Please report any broken link in the comments section) Hope you find them useful. And share as you will.

I tried to figure out what are the most important posts before 2008. Not having much posts again helped me out. This time, I kept the list short to just 5. So, here are the posts that I think were commendable for many reasons. Damn the critic. Stand. [August 2006] Monetary inflation and spiritual devaluation. [July 2006] Coming of new and bigger LTCM like collapse. [July 2006] Case of Earth's greatest asset: Blue Gold [June 2006] A Philosopher trades the Market [April 2007] And the Best and the most favorite post of all time is ... The Rich Man's story. My very first story which was split into 7 parts + 1 part. I posted it again in 2007. It still remains relevant. I wrote this for my sister to help her understand the economics of gold and monetary economics minus all the complexities and jargons. This is undoubtedly my favorite post of all time. Preface Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Rich Man's story - Entire set

Taking off from where Bernard Lunn left. [Alok’s comment here ] There is no doubt this is the period Indian companies need innovation. And IT companies have onus on them to take the lead. For years, IT companies have used some of the best Indian talents for their purposes, for years they have got tax breaks and other incentives to operate their businesses and they are at the cutting edge of technology. In effect, they have everything that would need to start a tech revolution: talent, opportunity and resources. The reality however is that Indian IT companies are services companies and just don't have the mindset of product companies. Fortunately lots of new companies are now breaking the mould. The catch - "new companies." This recession however offers the IT Biggies firms a huge opportunity in terms of developing products. IT firms should become Incubators and give the producers & creators the "upside". The 'Upside' the greatest driver. IT compani...

THANK YOU 2008 This post has been three weeks overdue now. I wanted to recap Top blog posts from 2008. Having less than 200 posts to filter through made the task easy. These posts are posts that I like and not based on number of hits. 12 th Loss of Reality Just a sad commentary on sadder events 11 th Mega-structures of Finance This came long before the crack in derivatives market appeared in newspaper headlines. It was, on other hand, nothing but stating the facts people have known for years. Though I never expected the derivative mess to unravel this badly and so soon, IMO this is just a tip of the iceberg. You ain’t seen anything yet. 10 th Linkedin: Sensible and Effective use of Linkedin and Sensible way of using Linkedin A good post when it appeared but my opinions have changed a lot since then. This post exists here for just one reason, a wisdom that it carries in the end: If you want a friend, be a friend. 9 th Notes on Divination System...

Charting BSE 's Charting (Very good. An online Metastock module for Bse listed shares) iCharts (A static but good for basic technical research) VFM Direct (It uses iCharts' charting software. A good mirror from charting perspective. Also has very good technical data) Forums and Data Desi Trader mall : Run by Prashanth and friends, who also manage BSENSE2005 at Yahoogroups. Provides free data for Indian stock exchanges including intraday, commodities, futures and options and EOD data Yahoo Finance (Very good for historical data) National Stock Exchange (Along with SEBI & BSE is the primary source of all information on Indian stock markets) Yahoo Groups (Technical Investor) Google Groups (Investment Super Group) Traderji forums NASDAQ Individuals Vivek Patil Phil Smith Rohit Srivastava Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (?) Other blogs Smell the Cheese blog Value Notes Portals and Commentary Equitymaster Money Control International business Market Watch New York Times Business Google ...