Anchor to the future
Making a case for why we need to anchor to the future and not to the past.
Interest upon Interest
Compound Interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
Latest posts
Zigging and zagging
It has two main themes. The first theme is that lucky people follow a zig zag path in life. The second theme is that heavy ideologies must be avoided because they box you in and don't allow you to zig zag. And therefore, in a world of ideas, we must be nomads, not settlers.
Anchoring Bias
This post is about Anchoring bias in humans.
How foolish are you willing to look
Warren Buffett said that he and Charlie are willing to look foolish provided they have not acted foolishly. In this blog, I am saying this is a superpower because it allows you to not fall for social proof and making independent decisions.
Falling for narratives
The mind likes to weave simple narratives around complex events. It makes it easier to store, understand and retell them. In investing it is better to have fewer narratives and be willing to go anywhere where there are opportunities.
Bias for now
Humans spent a majority of the time as hunter - gatherers. Therefore we have a bias for immediacy. This is both good news and bad news. Good news when we can use dashboards and other real time feedback for improvement. Bad news because Compound Interest is an invention of civilization which we are not programmed for.
This too shall pass
When there is so much noise and confusion around us, it is important to have a perspective that everything is impermanent. And no matter how dark the day is now, that too shall pass.
When Rory met Sanyal
Once you understand why people do what they do, it is easier to sell ideas to them. This blog combines a real life problem with Rory Sutherland's wisdom in a Dhurandhar like setting.
Best of times, worst of mistakes
This blog is about money. And how over centuries we seem to be making similar mistakes with it.
Anitya: everything is transient
Everything is transient. They come and they go. And things often don't go according to plan. But cultivating an attitude of taking things less seriously and viewing them as transitory can act as a shock absorber.
We’ll See – 2
Change is hard yet underestimated and we must not declare victory too soon because things tend to revert to mean. This is a sequel to the previous blog on the importance of being skeptical.
We’ll see
Time is the ultimate stressor. Most of the current narratives, ideas, books, products or technologies are unlikely to stand the test of time. On the other hand, things, ideas and products that have survived for hundreds of years are likely to do so in future too.
Unpopular investing
Investment should be about making good long term returns. It's not about winning a popularity contest.
Voting machine vs weighing machine
This blog revisits some of Ben graham's teachings related to markets and valuations.
Ajit Agarkar channels his inner economist
In this blog, I present the recent team selection through 3 different ideas.
Dot balls in investing
When there is nothing to do, do nothing. This is true in Test Cricket, Baseball, Investing and Business. It's important to be patient and wait for the right opportunity rather than swing after suboptimal opportunities.
Lessons from a lost sheep
In this blog, I connect the Parable of the Lost Sheep from the Bible to investing in turnarounds. Just as there is extra happiness in finding the lost sheep, there is extra rewards for a turnaround that is successful.
Redistribution
This blog is about redistribution of assets, capacities and other resources across locations and time horizons. Redistribution allows you to have staying power during bad times and inability to redistribute causes fragility.
The greatest wonder
People don't think of survival as much as they should. This blog provides examples to prove that.
Slack – the good bad word
Slack is like margin of safety. Slack helps countries, companies, portfolios and individuals to survive.
Strong swimmers
Survival is far more important than performance. To survive, we must negate all risks that threaten survival. One way to survive in the stock market is to have adequate diversification.
Everyday Opportunity costs
Opportunity cost is one of my favorite ideas. In this blog, I am sharing some everyday examples of opportunity costs.
Economics for the irrational man
Classical Economics assumes humans make decisions rationally. But in reality we are all messed up. Behavioral Economics explains our biases and why/how we make irrational decisions all the time.
Moments of happiness
This is blog # 125 and is a guest post by my friend Bharath Mahadevan. In this he talks about the philosophy of his life.
Susan and Sally
We see in others what we ourselves are.
Loss cutting
In investing as in life, occasionally things will not go as per our plan. What should we then do? Cut our losses and move on, no matter how hard it is. This is what lucky people do.
How to remain unlucky
Charlie Munger's favorite idea was inversion. In fact, he even gave a speech titled: Prescriptions for a miserable life. In the same vein of inversion, I have tried to prescribe how one can remain unlucky.
Fogged Windshield
This is blog is about selling is much, much harder than buying. I have mentioned anecdotes of successful investors and their selling related mistakes.
Predicting rain
Warren Buffett said: Predicting rains does not count, building ark does. This blog takes the idea of working on the "arks" of our life now so that we are much better off in the future.
Shanka dinda teertha
Who says it, how it is said, when it is said matters more than what is said.
Importance of destroying ideas
Periodically we need to purge our minds of old cherished but outdated or incorrect ideas. That will make our minds fresh and nimble and we begin to take notions less seriously.
Our two lives
How we live our days is how we live our lives. And therefore we must learn to spend time wisely.
Science in Finance – 2
Scalar just has magnitude whereas Vector has magnitude and direction. This is a concept taught in Physics. But it can be applied to business as is shown through many case studies.
Swimming Naked
This is a blog about an NBFC that almost went bust because it got rich while doing stupid things. But it managed to survive and change course. However the lesson is that arrange your affairs so that you can survive large events like say Covid and even thrive when other less prudent people struggle.
A bird in hand
Our natural wiring makes us veer towards certainty and away from uncertainty. But certainty comes at a cost. And it's okay to seek some certainty too.
Hope Diamonds and Rhinestones
In this blog I share my thoughts on investing in mediocre as well as high quality companies.
Simple and Compound Interest
This is a simple blog on Simple Interest and Compound Interest. These concepts are everywhere in nature, life, business and investing. We just need to train our minds to see them.
Portfolio lab
I came across on the importance of experimenting in Bezos' letters to shareholders. I presented a simple idea on how to use this idea in your own portfolio and with luck to get outsized returns.
What’s on your mind?
A blog on how we tend to see and act based on what's on our mind instead of thinking and acting better.
Bed of Procrustes
The Bed of Procrustes is a metaphor for fitting reality to meet the reality to our internal narratives rather than the other way around. When we confront our Bed, better to discard it than to behave like Procrustes.
Reciprocation at play
I take a current example to show Reciprocity Bias.
Growth and Optionality
This is a blog on the importance of growth in investing and how companies can create optionalities for their shareholders.
Fragility and Optionality
To survive we need to avoid fragility and to thrive we need to embrace optionality.
Conservative Banker
This is a blog on the incentives of a conservative banker and why they say No a lot more than they say Yes.
Sarala’s tale
This is a small story of my cook Sarala and her journey towards home ownership and Financial Inclusion.
Perspectives
Today's market crash that wiped out Rs 13 T of market capitalization may actually be a great opportunity to buy more. Just need a different perspective.
A few things I have changed my mind about -1
For long we have believed that we must not quit. It has been drilled into our psyche. But microeconomics teaches us that if after a reasonable effort we don't succeed, we must move on.
Dangerous games
A blog on Russian Roulette and it's real life equivalents played by some really smart people and how they usually don't have happy endings.
3 Simple Principles Of My Investing Philosophy
This is the 100th blog and has written by Ankit Kanodia. He has detailed his investing philosophy through 3 simple principles.
99 not out
This is the 99th blog. This blog looks back on how and why I started blogging.