Most of our business or success goals are self oriented. They are related to what we want. What if we could invert them? What if they are based on what others want? This is not as idealistic as it sounds. Neither is it altruistic. Nor is it irrational. It is more rational and practical than … Read more
No one trusts anyone easily anymore. There are real reasons for it. We don’t trust the celebrities telling us to buy things. They are being paid by the company. We don’t trust tweets and instagram posts. They are new ways of getting paid. We never trusted salesmen and marketers. Now we suspect them. By default, … Read more
Swami decided to join a protest last weekend. He told me and Jigneshbhai that we are going to have coffee at a protest. But a doubt cropped up. “Is coffee allowed at a protest? Who’s going to get it for us?” Jigneshbhai and I had no idea. We had never been to any protest. “Let … Read more
“Everything material is changing all the time and is temporary, so for lasting happiness, we should change our focus from what is temporary to what is eternal” said our broker friend Jigneshbhai as we met for our weekend coffee yesterday. Swami and I were stumped seeing him in such a philosophical, almost spiritual mood, specially … Read more
“Abraham Lincoln once posed the question: ‘If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does it have?’ and then answered his own query: ‘Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one,’” Buffett writes. Our broker friend Jigneshbhai was reading from Warren Buffett’s latest annual letter to his shareholders. He … Read more
“Charlie Chaplin once said ‘I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician’” said Jigneshbhai, my broker friend as we met for our weekend coffee. He was musing over the happenings of the past few days apparently. “But … Read more
“Artificial Intelligence is going to completely change investing” said Swami excitedly as we met for our coffee. Jigneshbhai did not react, and continued sipping his black coffee, as usual. Swami was not the one to be discouraged by that, at least immediately. So he continued with even more enthusiasm. “Machines will be reading through stock … Read more
“Where have you been?” asked my friend Swami to Jigneshbhai, as we met for our weekend coffee after a really, really long time. Indeed when I checked, it was over a year since we had last met, and some of our coffee house friends had also started asking me why we had stopped meeting. “I … Read more
“Many years back there used to be an ad for some detergent remember where the lady of the house boomed with pride ‘ढूंढते रह जाओगे’ when her husband found no stains on his shirt. Do you remember that?” asked Jigneshbhai while sipping his coffee last weekend. Swami and I met our broker friend Jigneshbhai had … Read more