Cricket is a religion in our country. Is there anything else that binds the whole nation together? Is there anything else that generates so much passion within each individual? Right from the street side hawker to five star restaurant, from small work table to corporate corner office, from normal tree side primary schools to world class management institutes, cricket allows us to speak a common language. Everybody understands this language.
And yet, we forget that it’s a team game. It’s a game where every individual has to do its part and perform his role. In our wins, we forget negative, while in loss we demonize individuals. We forget somebody has to score runs, somebody has to catch in the field, and somebody has to take wickets. In this game, we tend to applause showmanship (even when if it is without any substance), while hard work just becomes a regular talk and not celebrated.
Our team had a dream run from middle of 2000 to 2004. In this we all applause certain leader for the team who is takes off his shirt in enemy territory, but we do not seem to remember folks who worked tirelessly to make it happen. We continuously praise this certain leader, without recognizing that he had an excellent team mates who always bailed him out. He had two great batsmen of this era and one great bowler who were always ready to standup and make the contribution. Continue reading rest of this article…
TIP Guy
28 March 2009
admin
It has been just over one month since I started actively posting on The Income Portfolio (TIP) Blog. It is a very short time frame, but it feels like I have been doing this for a long time.
So far…
I started slowly with about one post in a week. In the third week, I got hooked and started posting more frequently. I did not have much content on my blog spot and hence, there was practically no traffic and subscriber list was empty. Continue reading rest of this article…
TIP Guy
7 March 2009
admin
Being an avid proponent of do-it-yourself investing, whenever I read any financial or general economics book, I am continuously attempting to put the subject matter in the context of my personal investing process or personal investing decision making process. I am trying to figure out if it should have any influence in my investment process. Of the many books that I have read in recent past, there are two books that really made me think, what a lesson for individual investors. These two books are:
- “When Markets Collide – Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change” written by Mohammed El-Erian.
- “Unconventional Success – A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investments” written by David F. Swensen.
In next post and/or in near future post, I will be:
1. Summarizing the main themes of the book;
2. Presenting my interpretation from dividend-investing perspective; and
3. Discussing whether it has any influence on my investing process (if any).
So stay tuned!
Various Participants in Financial Industry
What do I think about Financial Advisors/Planners/Brokers, mutual funds, portfolio managers, etc?
My primary source of income is my engineering career and as everybody else, I work hard to earn it. So why not work hard to use my hard earned money to invest it the way I want, the way I like, and not get biased by somebody else. I know what is important to me and what has relevance to me. I fail to understand how can an outside advisor tell me what is good for me. The whole investment industry works on fees and commissions, and hence the likelihood of swaying away from your own investment goals is very high. Additionally, the historic data seems to suggest that majority of the mutual funds (or portfolio managers) are not able to beat the general market indexes. So why should I pay fees, commissions, loads, etc. for this under performance. Why I shouldn’t just buy the low cost index fund? I read an article sometime back (forget to bookmark it) that one investor had significant reduction in value of its mutual fund holdings, but had to pay short term capital gains tax. While devil is in the details, but I thought that was little contradictory to me. To me, if one charges a fee for the service, I expect some level of quality behind that service. Perhaps financial advisory/planning/brokerage is the only industry, which does not stand behind its product (or service). Would you buy anything when the service provider or seller tells you upfront, that he cannot stand by it or held accountable because of such and such risks? Sorry, I don’t buy such products. Continue reading rest of this article…