Wisdom Pill – Vol 2

First of all, let me thank you for an overwhelming response and feedback on the first edition of this newsletter. I was really occupied this week with a lot of talks that were planned.

With the little time had, following are articles I found worth reading this week.

1. Technology fascinates me and I always get amazed by the imagination of human beings to think the unthinkable and then go on and achieve it too. The pace at which technology is changing, it’s a great feeling but on occasions scares me a bit too. This week I read few very good articles on technology. One article discussed how robotics is playing an increasing role in the world and discusses 6 companies which are heavily using Robots. Read here. Another one was TED Talk where Chris Urmson gives some interesting statistics on road and traffic related information and explains the basics of the technology behind the Google’s effort to create a driverless car. Have a look. Simply superb!!!
2. I got introduced to the topic of mental models around 8 years back. Since then, I got hooked. I became a learning machine and read loads of interesting stuff on it. Long back, I started writing on some of them for a prominent website on the Value Investing. After many years, a friend and a fab writer have joined the same website and writes on mental models (much better than I did). Read Anshul Khare’s write-up on ‘Critical Mass’ for Safal Niveshak. Another good article on Mental Models was by Farnam Street explaining few mental models from Engineering. Read them here.
3. Steven Romick of FPA fund gave a good speech to CFA society of Chicago. Please read the transcript here.
4. Bruce Greenwald has been the torch bearer of Value Investing for many years now. He is currently the faculty for Value Investing at Columbia business school. A very good summary of his methods and philosophy has been compiled and presented here.

5. Harvard Business review does some amazing refreshers on many concepts very frequently. This time they did it on ‘Breakeven quantity’. Do read, it might have few points you never thought about and are not taught in colleges. Here is the link.
6. An interesting article explaining how the returns from an investible idea/strategy vary with time. Written by David Merkel of Alephblog.com here.
7. I got introduced to ‘Jana Vembunarayanan’ via his comments on some of my articles any years back. His comments were as insightful as the man himself. He is a learning machine himself. Post than I am a fan of his blog. In case you don’t read it, it’s a one you should subscribe too. He recently wrote an interesting article on the theme of ‘getting up wiser than when you sleep’. Interesting thought. Read it here.
8. Business Today magazine has a very nice story on how the concept of ‘Food Parks’ launched under Mega Food Park Scheme (MFPS) by the UPA government, has failed to pick up due to lack of adequate funding, issues with land acquisitions and few more roadblocks. A good read

Other good articles but no links available on them

1. Being a biking enthusiast myself, I love the Harley Davidson bikes and appreciate the cult of it. Outlook Business Cover story on Harley Davidson was a very nice read and it also gives a good insight not only on the strategies of Harley Davidson in India but also gives a fascinating glimpse in the minds of the Indian biking enthusiast
2. Forbes India did a cover story on Aditya Birla and his new expanding businesses and his focus on financial services division. In case you get your hands on it, do read it.

Interesting week and some updates

Over the last few days, I was at an investor’s meeting in Bangalore, where I presented on ‘Portfolio Construction Techniques’. Also, I was invited by a prominent brokerage house to give a talk on ‘Behavioral Biases in Investing’ and then on weekend, I took a full 2 day workshop on Valuations for the employees and clients of a brokerage house.

This left me with very little time to read but the satisfaction of a successful presentation and amazing feedbacks from the workshop participants made my week worth celebrating. After some modifications, I will put all the presentations and content on the website

The presentations at the investor conference was appreciated by very senior veterans of the industry and on recommendation of few of them, I am planning to re-do the presentation via a webinar. The dates are not yet fixed but if you are interested to attend, please keep an eye on either my website or twitter handle where I will share the updates.

Quotes of the week