I found this wonderful talk – both in style and substance, in numbers and stories – as he mentions – delivered by Prof Aswath Damodaran (of New York University) at Google posted on Youtube over this weekend. Here are some notes/ statements from this talk to takeaway: “Accounting is not valuation” “Goodwill is the most … Read more
So 2014 saw a total of 75 NFOs (New Fund Offers by Mutual Funds) compared to 18 in 2013. In 2012, there were 8 and in 2011 there were 11 NFOs. Last we saw anywhere close to so many NFOs was 41 in 2008 and 48 in 2007. And incidentally many of these 75 NFOs … Read more
It has been a while since I posted to the blog. The reason being I had nothing much to say. So while I find something to say, there is always a lot of interesting stuff to read. While the message remains the same like all the basics of investing, it is not a bad time … Read more
Peter Drucker, the management guru, said, “This is by far the best book on investment policy and management.” The more I read books on investing, the more I get convinced that investing is much simpler than most people think or are told. Simple, but not easy as Buffett had once said. Most of what one … Read more
Over the past 6, 12 or perhaps 18 months, the Indian capital market performance has had a polarized structure. It is broadly divided into, on the one hand, a small set of wonderful companies that are grossly overvalued, whichever way you look at it, and which keep getting expensive; and on the other hand, a … Read more
Most personal finance books are boring. Most of them have nothing new as such. Of course, there are the legendary books on investing that make great reading. They are generally written by gurus who have a past investing record, or by academics or a combination. Or they are written by journalists or writers following the lives of these ‘gurus’ … Read more
A slightly old-ish book (first published in 1994), I chanced upon this book and picked it up again at the library recently, though I had read it a few years back. While after so many years, it may not seem to have anything new, given that there is so much written about Buffett since 1994 … Read more
One Idiot is a short 30-minute movie with a message on financial independence. The film is an initiative from IDFC Foundation (which may mean that it may indirectly and tacitly act as marketing for their mutual fund). But nevertheless despite that, it is a nice attempt to educate the youth of today’s urban India on the … Read more
Seth Klarman is the founder and president of The Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership. He wrote a book named ‘Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor’ which is an investment classic, but has been out of print since 1991. If you google for this book, you will find a … Read more