Mahant!

If you are an anti-corruption crusader and enthusiast, I feel for you, your sadness. Anti-corruption saga that has enveloped India is now, IMHO, in a very peculiar strait. It is as if it is digging itself into the ground. More it crusades, more it becomes stuck. At the very core, it’s the dilemma of trust. Imagine one of those Hollywood movies where bunch of people are stranded and one by one people begin to disappear and suspicion moves from one person to another. So in the end everybody is a suspect, and distrustful; and almost always the evil goes scot free. Anti-corruption movement, more like a rag-tag bunch of people, few with genuine interest and sacrifices to justify claim its leadership and a lot more with social media endorsed adrenaline rush, are like those stranded people who have no clue as to who is a genuine crusader and who is a traitor. In effect, what happens is lots of little battles are fought - cold wars, mainly- along with a larger do-or-die war against corruption...

Bhav Baghwan Hai The fundamental principle of all trading activity is the Price. If there is no price, no transactions can ever exist. Every transaction can exist only at the intersection of price. Even if there are ginormous buying and selling interests, if they do not interact and come to an agreement on Price, none of the transactions can come to exist. To wit, Price is the particle on which the entire financial system is based on. As marvelously put forth by above (mainly) Gujarati saying, Price is the God and everything else. Price charts are a simple representation of accepted price at any point of time. There are many methods of looking and analyzing prices, however we will concentrate on two important and critical aspects of price. Auction Theory Patterns Auction Theory Every market is in effect an auction by buyers and sellers. More the buyers’ demand for the product, higher will be the consequent prices. More the sellers for the particular product, lesser will be the price of...

 Technical Analysis is the simply the best party trick there ever is! Period! It is guaranteed to draw attention and awe. If guaranteed to make its proponent a future seeing Magi. Technical analysis is one of the best ways to inflict revenge on your enemies. Imagine this, you hate your boss a lot. So, go ahead and show him / her marvels of technical analysis, the precision and ease of making infinite amounts of money in shortest time. If he / she follow your most benevolent advice, they are most likely to lose quite a bit of money before they become aware of it – you have your revenge! And in good instances, they are very profitable, they are so happy with you for sharing Aladdin’s lamp that they may give you a promotion or something. This is the sweetest revenge. The reason it is‘revenge’ is technical analysis, for all its simplicity of presentation hides far more than presented. Most often, people just don’t bother to look deep enough for the flaws in the foundation or how the ch...

The whole is sum of all its parts. The Market is the sum of actions of all the players – buyers & sellers. There are times when buyers overwhelm and times when sellers overwhelm. The reasons of actions are varied and diverse, and actually beyond some common-sensual limit absurd to configure. This is because for every reason for a buyer to buy, there is equal reason for sellers to sell. Judging, which of the two reasons are valid, better and is correct, is a wild goose chase. This causes an inherent volatility in the markets, an uncertainty that is unexplained and may even seem unexplainable. It’s like entering a strange dark room not know what to expect, or reasons of its appearance, or the subsequent actions should something materialize. Hence, a whole lot of populace is afraid of markets. Some charitably call it a casino and some call it meaner and meaner names. But in almost all the cases, it is usually the ‘sour grapes’ reprisals. Markets for some strange reason, beyond compreh...

In the simplest and most effective sense, markets are just meeting of minds. Markets are a place where a buyer and a seller meet, the decide on the products of trade and the price of the trade. Once there is an agreement a transaction is born. Stock Exchange is the place where stocks and shares of companies are traded by buyers and sellers. They are traded as per the rules laid out by the Stock Exchanges and the larger sector regulator. In past every city or province had major marketplaces for shares and hence most of the exchanges catered to traders and investors of specific province. Hence, you will usually find stock exchanges named after a province or a city. There can be many marketplaces aka stock exchanges in any city. Technology New Technologies have been great game changer for stock exchanges. The physical location of any province or its time based availability is redundant. People now have ability to buy at any market place whiteout leaving their cities, hence the markets whi...

There was a time when Twitter was a place of out-of-box incisive conversations. It has started and fostered revolutions, however in its entire revolutionary avatar Twitter remained a sensible channel to reach out to people and strategize the future, inform and connect for critical information. But I am very sad to note, that incisiveness has rapidly diminished on one of my time line (and a rather important one to me) for it deals mainly with India, and its developments and the problems India faces. Unfortunately, I am finding this blind obsession with corruption, character assassinations; insinuations rather in bad taste (no matter how large our frustrations are) are not going to lead us to the solution that we look for. There are many ways random people can organize using Twitter and start storms of immense proportions. Remember, Tahrir? Sadly, instead of cool headed thinking most of the conversation is a vague demagogue of righteous indignation. What revolution was ever achi...

An absolutely brilliant piece by Art Cashin of UBS. Copied here in its full glory. Original here . -- Originally, on this day in 1922, the German Central Bank and the German Treasury took an inevitable step in a process which had begun with their previous effort to "jump start" a stagnant economy. Many months earlier they had decided that what was needed was easier money. Their initial efforts brought little response. So, using the governmental "more is better" theory they simply created more and more money. But economic stagnation continued and so did the money growth. They kept making money more available. No reaction. Then, suddenly prices began to explode unbelievably (but, perversely, not business activity). So, on this day government officials decided to bring figures in line with market realities. They devalued the mark. The new value would be 2 billion marks to a dollar. At the start of World War I the exchange rate had been a mere 4.2 marks to the dollar. I...

OilMin cancels RGTIL's permits for 4 gas pipelines RGTIL, whose bank guarantees totalling Rs 80 crore (Rs 800 million) that were pledged as collateral for executing the pipelines, expired last year and the ministry has asked the firm to furnish fresh securities of the like amount which the government will forfeit for failure to lay the pipeline , he said.

Roads to hell are paved with best intentions Arvind Kejriwal adorns the front page of news papers today. The smiling engineer is shown reconnecting a disconnected power supply in Delhi. And he calls it 'civil disobedience'. Speechless! One of the first things he does after the official announcement of his political party he fires a salvo at Gandhi family, particularly Robert Vadra. The first moves are very critical in any machinery. Because first actions, just like first impressions are very hard to override and they come to define / benchmark subsequent actions / proposals. And these two being the first two actions from the new party, I can only laugh (and cry) at these projects. While we admire his intentions of fighting the corruption and black money, he probably has a long way to go before he can fool enough people to get to the kursi . And if these are the trailers of what we can expect, then I am sorely disappointed. I expected much more from him. A better...

The Long delayed Planning Commission’s 12 th five year plan was finally approved by Cabinet yesterday.  The Plan reports are prepared by Planning Commission and approved by government *before* the expiry of the current plan. However, though the last Plan expired in 2011, the 12 th Plan report was still in works. And ostensibly they needed another 10 months of 2012 to ready a five year plan, which for all the practical matters is now a Four year – two month plan. I was also very curious about this because many economists have laid all the blame of economy’s under-performance due to lack of 12 th plan. In Indian contexts these plans are important milestones as they signify the extent and thrust of investments and expenditure. They are the legacy of Nehruvian-era we have not shaken off Many have accused Montek Singh Ahluwalia of causing the repeated delays in formation and finalizing of the report. And this accusation may not be far-fetched if you consider the huge fu...

Lion wakes up one morning and goes for the hunt. It finds a fat, limp and wounded gazelle which can run but cannot outrun, nor can it endanger any predator and is essentially harmless, and by now essentially dead. However, Lion ignores the gazelle and moves on, trying to hunt other gazelles. Now, it must be very saintly of Lion to let the wounded gazelle live, or it could eat it and be satisfied. Lion may also realize that it cannot protect the gazelle by not attacking it, as other lions may come to hunt it. Why then would a Lion give up something which is good for itself and inevitable for the gazelle? Why does the BJP, the strong party, under present situation and considerations, not attack the weak, wounded Congress and claim the stake for the next elections as a leading party? Why is BJP, protecting the government by not attacking it, thereby allowing the new lions to come and attack a visibly weak prey? Why has BJP failed to capture the opportunity to prey on Congress, when it has...

How does an ecosystem or a simple system survive? If you are  a believer in evolution and survival of the fittest, explained in a very simple way, the system survives by encouraging good and beneficial changes, while discouraging bad and damaging changes / actions. As long as these encouragement and dis-encouragement plays out, we can be sure in long run the system will survive with new and better players. Now lets take the case of markets in past few months. The market is completely broken. When people say market it broken, then necessarily imply the feedback loop that once encouraged good and smart players, are now aimed at encouraging the uninformed players. A caveat here is, that there is no right or wrongs here, and no differentiation as to who should be encouraged and who discouraged. Hence, the market may still be turning correctly, and the so called smart players may find themselves having made a mistake at the end of the game. Given the hard facts that stare at our faces, ...

One of the first social battles I faced, and vividly remember, and if it can be battles that is, is the extraordinary preoccupation in owning and exhibiting your newest, sleekest and loudest music system by blaring it at such high volumes that you don’t have to hear your mother’s angry scream and also telegraph that such a boy is back from school. It was a fun time that we, a group of scientifically sharp but broke as rabbits, boys with sole other interest of playing cricket in hot sun. Those were interesting times indeed. I don’t recall how we ended up fighting with friends, there were no rivals here, just the loudest music, but it was a one large experiment to enjoy. The guys with the off the shelf big brand music players won hands down and were always envied. However, the game was to ensure whose music was heard and not who had the most massive PMPO. The reason I recall it is also because of the recent story I heard of a teacher telling students that if he had bought shares of Infos...

Happy birthday Mahatma Gandhi, the man, I refuse to believe walked on this earth. Happy birthday Lal Bahadur Shastri, the man, I wish, people would emulate in their walk on this earth again.

Nowadays everyone is an expert in everything. Everyone’s an analyst in everything. Having a blog or a twitter account qualifies one to pontificate on any subject under the sun. And every time they prove those words of wisdom – “Open your mouth, and reveal your stupidity.” Now, what qualifies me to write this? Look at me! I have been writing on few things, I am not an expert on! Though, a voracious reader of everything that internet can dish me out, I am in no way qualified to interpret or even make a meaningful observation on say politics, or sports or even technology! But guess what, of all the articles I have written on this blog the most popular ones are the articles that I cannot claim any bonafide authority. Either I underestimate myself or like me, people on internet just read anything that is handed out to them. I remember the time when the badge of “Analyst” was almost equivalent to Olympic gold medal to achieve. People did their MBAs, CAs, CFAs, and worked for years before the...