Category Archives: Common Sense

The Sweetest Spot

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In the markets, we often lose our balance.

Then we find it. Only to lose it again.

The key is maintaining this balance over long periods of time.

There’s a spot, where everything, suddenly, goes into balance. I like to call it the sweetest spot. What are its characteristics?

Firstly, at the sweetest spot, health is intact, on the physical as well as on the mental level. Then, one has identified a trade, entered it, and the trade is in the money. At this spot, the spouse respects you and your profession, because neither you nor your profession are bothering him or her for space. Relationship with him or her is harmonious. At the sweetest spot, you find time for your children. You’ve got a rapport going. Your off-spring learns from your every word and action.

Phew, sounds amazing!

Wait, there’s more!

At the sweetest spot, one is debt-free. Neither is one under-trading, nor is one over-trading. Reactions to market events are sharp, and one turns with the market, i.e. one is in the Zone. As profit levels increase, so does position-size, proportionately. You are getting your strategy basics right, one after the other.

At the sweetest spot, goodness wells inside the human being, and he or she does an extra bit for the benefit of society.

Life, profession, existence…it’s all one smooth, harmonious, automatic flow.

Then, in a flash, the spot is gone. One or more of the many factors mentioned tend to go haywire. That’s quite normal.

Which only means, that you start looking for the sweetest spot again.

Whenever you find it once more, your primary goal is to maintain it as long as possible, again, and again and again (to the power of n, with n > 1).

Before you realize it, you are then staring at financial freedom. You are there, financially independent of any other factor or being. You have arrived.

Some things in life are really sweet, and worth striving for.

Jesus and the Atkinsons

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The Atkinsons were a nouveau riche upper middle-class couple. He was a finance geek. She liked to spend.

Wait, I think I’m forgetting something. At least twenty times a day, each of them would call out to Jesus. Not because of spiritual or religious reasons. Just as an exclamation. As in, “Jesus, what a beautiful dress!” Or, “Jesus, a 4% drop in the Dow!” At least they didn’t abuse.

Neither wanted kids. He was happy putting in 14 – 16 hours a day, sometimes more, tapping world markets. Jesus would be called upon for a wide range of underlying entities ranging from Uranium to Gold to Soy Beans to Lean Hogs to Goldman Sachs. He was thorough, meticulous, systematic and successful.

She was a by-word in the local malls. Upon her foot-fall, shop-keepers would scurry to put their most expensive exhibits forward. He once sat her down and gave her a 20 minute lecture on saving. “Jesus, we need to save…” were his opening words. It had an effect, and she started to save 10% of his now 7-figure income. She would listen to her man.

As long as she adhered to the 10% savings cut-off, he would never deny her anything. The sheer words “Jesus, I love those shoes!” just needed to escape from her, and he would get her those shoes. No matter how ridiculous or how expensive her desires were, they would be fulfilled.

He would work from home. At times, when he was working on mergers and acquisitions, he would wake up with New Zealand, and shut shop with New York. That left just one and a half hours for sleep. At these times, she would serve the best coffee every few hours. “Jesus, what amazing coffee!”, he would exclaim now and again. She would bribe the pesky neighbour kid with a bar of chocolate to make as little noise as possible. This is when the Atkinson kitchen would go gourmet. She would sense his stress levels and would up the ante in hospitality notch by notch. Was it surprising when words like “Jesus, what mind-blowing food!” boomed through the Atkinson corridors at every meal?

Her worst of spending habits did not make her a bad human being. On the contrary, she was a faithful, doting wife and a very large-hearted donor. Most of last year’s purchases would be donated. She derived pleasure from making others happy.

The Atkinsons had an excellent balance going. They were careful with their words, and with the company they kept. Slowly, she learnt how to cut cheques and keep books. He would fool around in the kitchen now and then and dish up a pasta. He made it to Fortune 500. She became the head of one of the world’s largest charity organizations.

Of course they’re still together. I wish for every couple that they find the happiness and balance enjoyed by Chris and Jane Atkinson.

Making the 99% See Reason

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Hey 99%,

Fine, fine, #OccupyWallStreet and all…

To be honest, this needs to be more about brains than brawn. The 1% are where they are because they’ve used their devious and canniving brains to become super-rich. Now you need to use yours to first extract yourself from your debt-trap situation and then to work towards financial freedom. Something like this can only work long-term. Using brawn, you’ll probably break the law and land up in jail, simultaneously exacerbating your predicament.

The first step is to SAVE. That’s what your forefathers did. They saved. They made your country a super-power because of their SAVINGS. If you’re not in a position to save, please get yourself into such a position. There’s no way out. To attain financial freedom, you have to start saving.

Tear your credit cards into two. Don’t consume. Don’t use and throw. Use, repair and reuse. Eat less if you have to, but extract yourself from the debt-cycle at any cost. There’s no other way.

Once you’ve started to save, you’ll need to learn how to manage your savings. Don’t ask the 1% to manage them for you. Instead, learn how to manage them on your own. With that, you’ll be putting yourself into the business of money- and asset-management, and then you can truly and totally boycott the 1%. That would be a message to the 1% that could make them scramble for survival. Believe me, to survive, they’ll be forced to change their ways. They don’t understand your brawn. It just aggravates them.

There’s enough material on the web available, that’ll get you going. The best thing is, most of it is free of cost. Go for it. Learn how to manage your savings on your own and make them grow. You can start by reading this very blog.

Continuous savings, over years and years, and the intelligent and independent management of these savings – these two acts will lead you towards financial freedom. Perhaps you will be too old to fully benefit at that time, but your children will benefit.

There’s no point beating about the bush – this is a long-term pursuit. No short-term effort or remedy is going to solve it.

Do it for your children.

When Cash is King

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I don’t like crowds.

The last thing I ever want to do is to conform to crowd behaviour.

That’s one goal defined.

What does this mean?

Very clearly, for starters, it means singing one’s own tune, i.e. defining one’s own path.

It also means not listening to anyone. That requires mental strength, and the power to resist. Very tough.

In life, generally, one likes to be in tandem with the Joneses. And then, smart cookies that we are, we like to go one up on the Joneses, which would be the cue for the Joneses to catch up and then overtake us. Hypothetically, this is how the Joneses and the Naths could blow up all their cash.

It doesn’t stop there. To keep up, the average citizen doesn’t think twice before leaping into debt.

Bottomline is, when cash is king, hardly anybody has cash. In fact, most people owe money at that time.

This is the age of black swans. Crisis after crisis, then a bit of recovery, then another crisis, then some recovery, followed by a mega-crisis.

When a master-blaster crisis ensues, cash becomes king. Quality stuff on the Street starts to sell so cheap, that one needs to pinch oneself to believe the selling prices. Margins of safety are unprecedented. Now’s the time one can salt away a part of one’s cash in Equity, for the long-term.

That’s if one has cash to spare. This is report card time. How have you done in your REAL investment exam? Have you learnt to sit on cash? Have you learnt to buy with margin of safety? The Street doesn’t care for your college degree, in fact, it vomits on your college degree. Your college degree has no value on the Street, it’s just a piece of paper.

Learning on the Street happens everyday, with every move, every investment, every trade, every observation. Unless and until your own money is on the line, this learning is ineffective.

Get real, wake up, so that when cash is king, you feel like an emperor!

An Elliott-Wave Cross-Section through a Crowd Build-Up

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At first, there’s smart money.

Behind this white-collared term are pioneering investors who believe in thorough research, and who are willing to take risks.

Smart money goes into an underlying, and the price of this underlying moves up. Wave 1.

At the sidelines, there are those who have been stuck in this underlying. As the price moves above their entry level, they begin to off-load. There’s a small correction. Wave 2.

By now, news of the smart money has perforated through the markets. Where is it moving? What did it pick up? Who is behind it? Thus, more investors following news or fundamentals (or both) enter. The price moves past the very recent short-term high of Wave 1, accompanied by a surge in volume.

This is picked up on the charts by those following technicals, who enter too. By now, there are analysts speaking in the media about the turn-around in company so and so, and a large chunk of people following the media do the honours by entering. Wave 3 is under way.

Technical trend-followers latch on, and soon, we are at the meat of Wave 3, i.e. the middle off the trend.

Analysts on the media then speak about buying on dips. All dips are cut short by a surge of entrants seeking to be part of the crowd.

The first feelings of missing the bus register. The pangs of these cause more people to enter.

Meanwhile, the short community has been getting active. Large short positions have been in place for a while, and they are bleeding. Eventually, the short community throws in the towel, and there’s massive short-covering, causing a further surge in price.

Short-covering is sensed by gauging buying pressure despite very high price levels. It is the ideal time for smart money to exit. That’s exactly what it does, without any dip in the price of the underlying whatsoever.

Short-covering is over. Smart money starts boasting about its returns of X% in Y days, openly, at parties, in the media, everywhere. This causes pangs of jealousy and intense feelings of missing the bus in those still left out. Some enter, throwing caution to the wind.

The price has reached a level at which no one has the guts to enter. Demand dries up. With no buying pressure, the price dips automatically. Bargain hunters emerge, and so do shorters. The shorters sell to the bargain hunters right through a sizable dip. This dip happens so fast, that most of the crowd still remains trapped. Wave 3 has ended, and we are now looking at the correcting Wave 4 in progress.

At this stage, technical analysts start advising reentry upon Fibonacci correction levels. Position traders buying upon dips with margin of safety enter, and so does the second-last chunk of those feeling they’d missed the bus. The price edges up to the peak of Wave 3 and past it. That’s the trigger for technical traders to enter.

We now see a mini-repeat of Wave 3. This is called Wave 5. Once Wave 5 crosses its meat, the last chunk of those still feeling they’d missed the bus makes a grand entry with a sharp spike in the price. These are your Uncle Georges, Aunt Marthas and Mr. Cools who know nothing about the underlying. They cannot discern a price to earnings ratio from an orangutan. They desperately want to be a part of the action, since everyone is, at whatever the price. And these are the very people that traders sell to as they exit. With that, the crowd is at its peak, and so is the price. There are no more buyers.

What’s now required is a pin-prick to burst the bubble. It can be bad news in the media, the emergence of a scandal, a negative earnings report, anything.

The rest, they say, is History.

Dealing with Distraction

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I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.

The stand-out quality I admire about Holmes, apart from his mastery in observation and deduction, is his ability to switch off.

In the midst of the most engrossing case, Holmes will switch off for half a day or more, and will visit the museum, or will play the violin. While having switched off, there will not be a single thought on his mind concerning the ongoing investigation. He will be fully and totally involved in the recreational activity. Of course he switches off at a juncture where he knows that nothing of consequence is happening for the next so many hours, but that’s not the point.

The ability to switch off is a huge asset to the trader. It allows the trader’s mind and body to recuperate. Also, it does away with overtrading. If a position is showing good profit, the trader who installs a trailing stop, and then switches off, opens the window for still larger profits.

At many times, one is distracted. It is potentially dangerous to trade while distracted, just as it is dangerous to drive while communicating on the cellphone. While distracted, the trader needs to switch off. As long as it takes. Till the source of distraction is nullified, at least in the trader’s mind.

Just a minute, forget about the trader. Investors need to be experts at switching off too, after having entered into an investment. If they don’t have this ability, they’ll be thinking about their investment day in, night out, for years at a stretch. The investment will eat into their life. If we’re looking at the average investor with 10 to 20 investments and without the ability to switch off, we’re also looking at a mental and emotional wreck.

Traders and investors both need to learn how to switch off from Sherlock Holmes.

Taking Compulsion Out of One’s Trading Equation

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Mr. Cool’s next trading cameo starts a few months after his last blow-up. He keeps coming back, you’ve gotta give him that.

This time around, his girl-friend wants a fur coat. Cool is determined to buy a fur coat for her from his trading profits.

Thus, Mr. Cool has put himself in a position where he is compelled to trade. Compulsion adds pressure. A trader under pressure commits basic blunders. There’s no question of getting into the Zone while pressure mounts.

Sure enough, Cool overtrades. Apart from that, he fails to cut his position-size after the first run of losses. These are two basic mistakes. They are being caused by compulsion. Mrs. Market is ruthless with players who commit basic blunders. As usual, Cool blows up, yet again. The fur coat is not happening. In fact, there’s no girl-friend anymore.

Meanwhile, Mr. System Addict has been evolving. He’s achieved a large-sized fixed income by ploughing previous profits into safe fixed-income products. He’s under no compulsion to trade. His fixed income allows him to live well, even without trading. He has a lot of time to think. Often, he gets into the Zone, where he’s moving in tandem with the market, and is able to swing with the market’s turn. What makes him get into the Zone so often?

It’s the lack of pressure. He’s comfortable. A free mind performs uniquely. There’s no question of making basic mistakes, because full focus is there. Addict is a human being who is aware. He knows when he is in the Zone. That’s when he doubles up his position-size and logs his trade. His win : loss ratio is 70:30 by now. His trading income surpasses his fixed income for the year.

Is Commodity Equity Equal to Commodity?

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Rohit likes Aarti, but has no access to her.

Priya wants to be friends with Rohit. Priya looks a bit like Aarti and behaves like her too, at times.

Rohit and Priya become friends.

Is Priya = Aarti?

Can this question be answered with a resounding yes or no?

Of course Priya is not equal to Aarti. Priya is Priya and Aarti is Aarti. Ask Rohit about it during one of Priya’s temper tantrums.

And, at other times, Priya is just like Aarti. At still other times, Priya is as calm as the Pacific Ocean. Even calmer than Aarti. At those times, Rohit feels he is even better off with Priya than he would have been with Aarti.

After this short diversion into human relationships, let’s study the correlation between commodities and commodity equity.

The average working individual does not have access to commodities as an asset class. He or she is not a farmer, and doesn’t have the time or the nerve to play futures and options, in an effort to put some money in commodities.

Is there any avenue such a person can access, to invest a piece of his or her pie in commodities.

It’s time to study the world of commodity equity.

For example, we are talking about agriculture stocks, precious and non-precious metal mining stocks, oil and natural gas stocks etc. etc.

Do such stocks always behave as their underlying commodity?

Can one put one’s money in commodity equity, and then feel as if one has put the money in commodities?

These questions can be answered in terms of correlation.

There are times when Gold moves x%, and Gold equity also moves x%, in the same direction. At such times, the correlation between Gold and Gold equity is 1:1.

At other times, the levels of movement can be mismatched. For example, the correlation can be 0.8:1, or 1.2:1. Sometimes, there is even a negative correlation, when Gold moves in one direction, and Gold equity in the other. At still other times, one moves, and the other doesn’t move at all, i.e. there is no correlation.

You see, Gold equity first falls under the asset class of equity. It is linked to the mass psychology of equity. When this mass psychology coincides with the mass psychology towards commodities, here specifically Gold, there is correlation. When there is no overlap between these psychologies, there is no correlation. When the public just dumps equity in general and embraces commodities, or vice-versa, there is negative correlation. These relationships can be used for all commodities versus their corresponding commodity equity.

What does this mean for us?

Over the long-term, fundamentals have a chance to shine through, and if there is steady and rising demand for a commodity, this will reflect in the corresponding commodity equity. Over the long term, the discussed correlation is good, since truth shines forth with time. That’s good news for long-term investors.

Over the medium-term, you’ll see correlation at times. Then you’ll see no correlation. You’ll also see negative correlation. Position traders can utilize this information to their benefit, both in the long and the short direction.

Over the short-term, things get very hap-hazard and confusing. It would be wrong to look for and talk in terms of correlation here. In the short-term, for trading purposes, it is better to treat commodity as commodity and commodity equity as equity. If you are trading equity, a gold mining stock or any other commodity equity stock might or might not come up in your trade scan. When such a stock does get singled out for a trade as per your scan, well, then, take the trade. Don’t be surprised if at the same time your friend the commodities trader is trading oil futures instead, or is just sitting out. That’s him or her responding to his or her scan. You respond to your scan. In the world of short-term trading, it is hazardous to mix and correlate commodities with commodity equity.

Phew, that’s it for now. It’s taken me a long time to understand commodity equity, and I thought that I’d share whatever I understood with you.

The Short-Term History of Idealism

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1989, Konstanz, Germany.

I’m quietly eating a Nutella sandwich in the commom-room of our student-hostel. There’s a commotion near the TV area. The Berlin Wall is falling. A few students rush to pack their bags. They are off to Berlin. The one’s not going, including me, request them to bring back a few extra pieces of the Wall. That’s one Nutella sandwich I’ll never forget in my life.

Slowly, communist infrastructure in the Soviet Union starts to fall apart too. With the exception of a few strongholds, most of it is gone today.

The most repeated pro-communism argument I have heard after the fall of the Wall is this: Communism failed (wherever it failed) because it was too idealistic for mankind. So, according to this argument, mankind could not live up to the ideals of communism. All people were equal, but some were more equal than others, to analogically quote George Orwell.

Maybe, maybe.

And here is mankind again, trying to be idealistic. The epicentre of this idealism is, well, Germany. Its leaders, including the Pope, are asking its citizens to dig into their pockets and support the Euro against breakdown, come what may.

No other European nation is financially capable of bailing out the Euro. France’s economic problems are visible. It is now up to Germany. The question that remains is: IS THIS FAIR to the German citizens, who will have to take on pressurizing austerities for the follies of others to achieve this idealistic goal?

Well, what’s fair in life and the History of the world? Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. Is the existence of the Euro “greater good”?

There exist discrepancies between the Euro nations regarding work-attitude and work-ethics. Europe is NOT one nation with one government. We are looking at diverse nations with diverse needs. Some hate to work overall. One likes its retirement age to be 57. The call to behave like one nation to tackle bankruptcy is the imposition of an artificial existence. History has shown mankind, that artificial existences tend not to last.

Left to sink or swim, people much rather decide to swim. Although a sovereign default will impose upon the concerned nations huge austerities in the short-term, they will opt to stay afloat rather than sink. Long-term work ethics will change. Attitudes will change.

Never-ending bailouts will tend not to affect faulty or wanting work-attitudes. That’s the danger here, a repeat loop mechanism, till the bulk of Germany’s resources are drained in supporting the Euro. That’s what we are looking at. First there’s 370 billion Euros for Greece to clear. The figures for Spain, Portugal and Italy are still unclear to the common-man. Figures are being revealed one by one in the media, from mini-bailout to mini-bailout. How long can this go on? Is Germany some kind of holy grail with a never-ending supply of funds and resources?

The questions Germany and its leaders need to address are these: Is the short-term mayhem after a possible Euro collapse the worst-case scenario for Germany’s industry and people? Or is it the slow, long drawn sucking out of its hard-earned life-time earnings and resources, drop by drop, possibly to the last few drops.

Only after answering these two questions will German leaders be ready to vote for or against the Euro in parliament.

Jumping Jackstops

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Recently, Mr. Cool and Mr. System Addict decide to get into a trade.

Yeah, surprise surprise, Mr. Cool is liquid again!

They’ve decided to trade Gold, and are pretty much in the money already. Their trades have come good first up. Both are leveraged 25:1, which is common with Gold derivatives. Mr. Addict has bet 5% of his networth on the trade, and Mr. Cool, true to his name, has matched Mr. Addict’s amount.

Gold prices jump, and Mr. Addict’s target is hit. He exits without thinking twice, and is pretty pleased upon doubling his trade amount within a week. He pickles 90% of the booty in fixed income schemes, and is planning a holiday for his girl-friend with the remaining amount. Instead of trading further, he decides to recuperate for a while.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cool rubs his hands in glee as the price of Gold shoots up further. His notional-profits now far exceed the actually booked profits of Mr. Addict. When’s he planning to exit? Not soon. He wants to make a killing, and once and for all prove to Mr. Addict and to the world, that he rules. He wants to bury Mr. Addict’s trade results below the mountain of his own king-sized profits. Gold soars further.

Mr Cool has trebled his money, and is still not booking any profits. He picks up his cell to call Mr. Addict. Wants to rub it in, you know.

Mr. Addict puts down his daiquiri by the poolside in his hotel in Ibiza. His girl-friend has at last started admiring him. They’ve been swimming all morning. “All right, all right, he’ll take this one call. Oh, it’s Mr. Cool, wonder what he’s up to?” Mr. Addict is one of the few people in the world who are able to switch off. He’s totally forgotten about Gold and his winning trade, and is really enjoying his holiday.

Mr. Cool tries to rub it in, but receives some unperturbed advice from the other end of the line. He’s being asked to be satisfied and to book profits right now. Of course he’s not going to do that. All right, fine, if he wants to play it by “let’s see how high this can go”, he needs to have a wide-gapped trailing stop in place, says Mr. Addict. Of course he’s got a wide-gapped trailing stop in place, says Mr. Cool. Mr. Addict wishes him luck, cuts the call, and forgets about the existence of Mr. Cool, dozing off into a well-deserved snooze.

As Gold moves higher, Cool starts to think about that wide-gapped trailing stop. Let alone having one in place, he doesn’t even know what it means. A quick call to the broker follows. The broker is ordered to install a trailing stop into Mr. Cool’s trade. Since Cool doesn’t know what “wide-gapped” means, he forgets to mention it. The broker doesn’t like Cool’s attitude and his proud tone. He installs a narrow-gapped trailing stop.

Circumstances change, and Gold starts to drop. It’s making big moves on the downside, falling a few percentage points in one shot. Cool’s narrow-gapped trailing stop gets fully jumped over; it doesn’t get a chance to become activated in the first place, because it is narrow-gapped and not wide-gapped. The price of the underlying just leaps over the narrow gap between trigger price and limit price. Happens. Cool does not install a new stop. Stupid.

Next morning, Cool’s jaw drops when he sees Gold down 15% overnight. On a 25:1 leverage, he’s just about to lose his margin. The phone rings. It’s the margin call. Cool panics. He answers the margin call. His next call is to Mr. Addict, asking what he should do. Mr. Addict is shocked to learn that Cool has answered the margin call. He asks him to cut the trade immediately.

Cool’s gone numb. Gold drops another 4%. Phone rings. Second margin call. Cool doesn’t have the money to answer it. In fact , he didn’t have the money to answer the first one. In the broker’s next statement, that amount will show up as a debit, growing at the rate of 18% per annum.

Mr. Cool’s not liquid anymore. Actually, he’s broke. No, worse that that. He’s in debt. Greed got him.

A Fall to Remember (Part 2)

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Part 1 was when Silver fell almost 20 $ an ounce within a week. Like, 40%. Swoosh. Remember? Happened very recently.

And now, Gold does a Silver, and falls 20 % in a few days. These are the signs of the times. “Quick volatility” is the new “rangebound move”. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The wrong question here is “What’s a good entry level in general?” Why is this question wrong?

When something new becomes the norm, there is too little precedence to adhere to. It becomes dangerous to use entry rules which were established using older conditions as a standard.

I believe there is one way to go here. The correct question for me, were I seeking entry into Gold or Silver, would be “Is this entry level good enough FOR ME?” or perhaps “What’s a good enough entry level FOR ME?”

Let’s define “good” for ourselves. Here, “good” is a level at which entry doesn’t bother YOU. It doesn’t bother you, because you are comfortable with the level and with the amount you are entering. You don’t need this sum for a while. It is a small percentage of what you’ve got pickled in debt, yielding very decent returns. If the underlying slides further after your entry, your “good” level of entry still remains “good” till it starts bothering you. You can widen the gap between “not-bothering” and “bothering” by going ahead with a small entry at your “good” level, and postponing further entry for an “even better” level which might or might not come.

If the”even better” level arrives, you go ahead as planned, and enter with a little more. If, however, your “good” level was the bottom, and prices zoom after that, you stick to your plan and do not enter after that. This would be an investment entry strategy, which sigularly looks for a margin of safety. Entry is all-important while investing, as opposed to when one is trading (while trading, trade-management and exit are more important than entry).

Trading entry strategies are totally different. Here, one looks to latch on after the bottom is made and the underlying is on the rise. Small entries can be made as each resistance is broken. It’s called pyramiding. Trading strategies are mostly the complete opposite of investing strategies. Please DO NOT mix the two.

Sort yourself out. What do you want to do? Do you want to invest in Gold and Silver, or do you want to trade in them? ANSWER this question for yourself. Once you have the answer, formulate your strategy accordingly. U – good level – how much here? U – even better level – how much there? U – no more entry – after which level?

Life is so much simpler when one has sorted oneself out and then treads the path.

Putting it all Together – The View from the Mountain-Top

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Remember getting into the driver’s seat for the first time?

It all seemed so difficult. You got the brake-clutch-accelerator coordination all wrong. Proper gear changes were a far cry. There was no question of looking into the rear-view or the side-view mirrors, since you were looking straight. And the shoulder-glance – just forget about it, you said to the instructor.

Slowly, it all came together, perhaps after a 1,50,000 km behind the wheel. Now, driving is a piece of cake. It’s all there in your reflexes. It’s as if the car is connected to your brain, and is an extension of your limbs.

It took time and effort, didn’t it? And why would it be any different in the markets?

Flash-back to 1988 – high school – our Chemistry teacher Frau Boetticher used to teach us to strive for the “Ueberblick”. Roughly and applicably translated, this analogical German word means “the view from the mountain-top”. In Street lingo, the Ueberblick is about life in the Zone. Frau Boetticher used to push us to get into the Zone. She knew that then, our reflexes would take over. She passed away before our A-levels, after a very fulfilling and successful lifetime of teaching. She was the best teacher to ever have taught me.

When your reflexes make you enter a market, or exit it, or decide on the level of a stop, or a target etc. etc., you’ve managed to put it all together. Doesn’t happen overnight, though. The ball-park figure of 1,50,000 km behind the wheel changes to roughly 7 years of market experience, before one can expect to put it all together on the Street.

Where does that leave you?

As a thumb rule, money-levels at stake in the first 7 years on the Street need to be low. When you’re getting the hang of things, you just don’t bet the farm. That’s common sense, a rare commodity, so I’m underlining it for you.

On the Street, you only learn from mistakes. They are your teachers, and they prepare you to deal with Mrs. Market. No books, or professors or college will make you fit enough to tackle Mrs. Market, only mistakes will. Make mistakes in your first seven years on the Street – make big mistakes. Learn from them. Don’t make them again. Get the big blunders out of the way while the stakes are small. Round up your learning before the stakes get big.

Once your reflexes all come together, you can start risking larger sums of money, not before. Also, in today’s neon age, it’s difficult to stay in the Zone for prolonged periods of time. Something or the other manages to distract us out of the Zone, whether it is internal health or external affairs. When you feel you’re out of the Zone, just cut back your position-size. When you feel you’re back in, you can scale up your position-size again.

It’s as simple as that. Useful ideas have one characteristic in common – they are simple.

Blowing up Big

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Derivatives are to be traded with stops. Period.

Stops allow you to get out when the loss is small.

Common sense?

Apparently not.

Who has common sense these days?

Also, the human being has embraced leverage as if it were like taking the daily shower. Bankers and high-profile brokers have free flowing and uncontrolled access to humongous amounts of leverage.

Apart from that, the human being is greedy. There’s nothing as tempting as making quick and big bucks.

Combine humongous amounts of leverage with large amounts of greed and brew this mix together with lack of common sense. That’s the recipe for blowing up big.

Every now and then, a banker or a high-profile broker blows up big, and in the process, at times, brings down the brokerage or the bank in question. In the current case at hand, UBS won’t be going bust, but its credibility has taken a sizable hit.

Bankers are to finance what doctors are to medicine. Where doctors manage physical and perhaps mental health, bankers are supposed to manage financial health. Bankers are taught how to manage risk. Something’s going wrong. Either the teaching is faulty, or the world’s banking systems are faulty. I think both are faulty. There exists a huge lack of awareness about the definition of risk, let alone its management.

Trained professionals lose respect when one of them blows up big. Such an event brings dark disrepute to the whole industry. Most or all of the good work to restore faith in the banking industry thus gets nullified to zilch.

A doctor or an engineer is expected to adhere to basics. I mean, the basics must be guaranteed before one allows a surgeon to perform surgery upon oneself. A surgeon must wash hands, and not leave surgical instruments in the body before stitching up. Similarly, an construction engineer must guarantee the water-tightness or perfection of a foundation before proceeding further with the project.

Similarly, a banker who trades is expected to apply stops. He or she is expected to manage risk by the implementation of position-sizing and by controlling levels of leverage and greed. Responsibility towards society must reflect in his or her actions. A banker needs to realize that he or she is a role model.

All this doesn’t seem to be happening, because every few years, someone from the financial industry blows up big, causing havoc and collateral damage.

Where does that leave you?

I believe that should make your position very clear. You need to manage your assets ON YOUR OWN. Getting a banker into the picture to manage them for you exposes your assets to additional and unnecessary stress cum risk.

In today’s day and age, the face of the financial industry has changed. If you want to manage your own assets, nothing can stop you. There exist wide-spread systems to manage your assets, right from your laptop. All you need to do is plunge in and put in about one hour a day to study this area. Then, with time, you can create your own management network, fully on your laptop.

Your assets are yours. You are extra careful with them. You minimize their risk. That’s an automatic given. Not the case when a third party manages them for you. Commissions and kick-backs blind the third party. Your interests become secondary. Second- or third-rate investments are proposed and implemented, because of your lack of interest, or lack of time, or both.

Do you really want all that? No, right?

So come one, take the plunge. Manage your stuff on your own. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, and it will definitely teach you a lot, simultaneously building up confidence inside of you. Go ahead, you can do it.

Baby-Stepping One’s Way Up the Financial Ladder

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Everyday, without fail, I get a few opportunities to make this a slightly better world. I’m sure you do too.

And I’m ok with that. No further ambitions. Just doing what comes my way. I’ve always done what I believe in. Have never followed crowds. Have never joint someone’s battle which I don’t fully understand.

Baby-step contributions are drops in the ocean. Nevertheless, they are contributions. I’m proud of the fact that opportunities to contribute come my way regularly. I don’t act upon all of them. Have become very discerning of late. Don’t want to be involved with any frauds whatsoever. And India is brimming with frauds. For me, the world of contributing is about baby-steps. I’m content with that.

I believe that baby-stepping is the way up the financial ladder too, as far as one’s investing or trading activity is concerned.

In the world of trading, there exists the concept of position-size (developed to the nth level by Dr. Van K. Tharp). In a nutshell, this concept teaches one to scale it up one baby-step at a time as one’s account shows a profit. Also, one learns to scale it down a notch upon showing a loss.

Common-sense? Then why isn’t everyone doing it?

Why does everyone around me behave as if he or she is gunning for the big hit? The bringing down of institutions. Of governments. The desire to make it big and in the limelight in one shot. The desire to bring about sweeping change within a week’s time. Ever heard of speed of digestion and incorporation? Metabolism? Assimilation? Speed of evolution?

Life takes time to happen. Let’s give it that time. Let’s not hurry it up with our over-ambition. Do we want life to blow up on our faces because of over-ambition?

Frankly, I want to evolve with equilibrium. Really, really not in one shot. My system will explode if it tries to evolve in one shot. Many people are going to find that out the hard way on their own systems.

And I’m really satisfied with baby-stepping it up the financial ladder, using the concept of position-sizing. Slow and easy, little by little, tangible progress, day by day. No nuclear blasts, no tense situations or mood-swings, lots of time for the family, small quantums of realistic progress and its assimilation… what more can one ask for?

You should try it too.

US Treasury Bonds, Anyone?

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Panic is something I felt during 2008.

It was actually good that I did, because now I know what it feels like.

Meaning that if a similar situation starts to arise again, now there are internal warning signals in my system.

Investors learn from mistakes. That’s the good thing about mistakes.

It will not take a Moody’s rating agency to tell even an average investor that US treasury bonds don’t deserve a AAA rating. Most investors I know have shunned any investment product with US treasury bond exposure since 2008.

Didn’t such ratings agencies give CDOs a AAA rating? Frankly, I don’t even feel like acknowledging the existence of ratings agencies. I’d much rather just use my common sense.

So, one’s learning curve freed one up from dangerous exposure after 2008. Are one’s investments still going to be unaffected from the ongoing and critical developments in the US?

Globalization is in. Decoupling seems to be out for the moment. If the US economy crumbles, investments worldwide are going to be affected for the worse. To lessen such shocks, God created hedges.

The best known hedge to mankind over the last 100 years has been Gold. After 2008, central banks worldwide started scrambling to find an alternative to the USD to hold their wealth in. Only Gold is standing their test. More and more central banks have started converting their USD holding to Gold.

Much as I don’t feel like acknowledging the existence of ratings agencies, unfortunately, I have to. If there’s a ratings downgrade in the US, Gold purchases by central banks are going to escalate. The astute investor will need to position him- or herself accordingly if he or she has not done so yet, starting right now.

As we bathe in the glory of Gold, let’s not forget that it is just a safe haven, a crisis-hedge. If economic stability returns to the world this or next decade (or whenever), Gold is going right back to where it came from.

Something else used to enjoy the safe-haven status till a few years ago. I think one calls them US treasury bonds.

Seasons change. If Gold is the flavour now, it’s possibly a temporary flavour.

Keep your eyes open, and keep using your common sense.

Wishing you safe investing.

Investing in the Times of Pseudo-Mathematics

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First, there was Mathematics.

Slowly, Physics started expressing itself in the language of Mathematics with great success. Chemistry and Biology followed suit.

The subject of Economics was feeling left out. Its proponents wanted the world to start recognizing their line of study as a natural science. So they started expressing their research results in the language of Mathematics too.

Thousands of research papers later, it was pointed out that what mathematical Economics was describing was an ideal world without any anomalies factored in.

The high priests of Economics reacted by churning out a barrage of research papers which factored in all kinds of anomalies in an effort to describe the real world.

Where there’s money, there’s emotion. The average human being is emotionally coupled to money.

Either Economics didn’t bother to factor in the anomaly called emotion, or it couldn’t find the corresponding matrix in which it could fit human emotions like greed and fear.

And Economics started getting it wrong in the real world, big time. The Long-Term Capital Management Fund (run by Economics Nobel laureates as per their pansy and sedantry office-table cum computer-programmed understanding of finance) collapsed in 1998, with billions of investor dollars evaporating and the world’s financial system coming to a grinding halt but just about managing to keep its head above water. It was a close brush with comprehensive disaster.

The human being forgets.

The last leg of the surge in dotcoms in 1999 and the first quarter of 2000 did just that. It made people forget their investing follies.

What people did remember though was the high of the surge. Investors wanted that feeling again. They wanted to make a killing again. Greed never dies.

And Economics rose to the occasion. This time it was not only pseudo, but it had gotten dirty. Its proponents were not researchers anymore, they were investment bankers, who had hired researchers to develop investment products based on complex pseudo-mathematical models that would lure the public.

Enter CDOs.

For just a few percentage points more of interest payout, investors worldwide were willing to buy this toxic debt with no underlying and a shady payout source. People got fooled by the marketing, with ratings agencies joining the bandwagon of crookedness and giving a AAA rating to the poisonous products in question.

All along, the Fed (with the blessing of the White House) had been encouraging citizens to “tap their home equity”, i.e. to take loans against their homes and then to invest the funds in the market. (The Fed creates bubbles, that’s what its real job is). And the Fed, the White House, the leading investment banks, the ratings agencies and the toxic researchers were all joint at the hip, a very powerful conglomerate creating financial weather.

So, from 2003 to 2007, there was liquidity in the world’s financial system, and a lot of good money was invested in CDOs. Nobody really understood these products properly, except for the researchers who came up with them. Common sense would have said that something with no base or underlying will eventually collapse as the load on top increases. And there was no dearth of load, because the same investment banks that sold the CDOs to the public were busy shorting those very CDOs (!!!!!), with Goldman Sachs taking the lead. So a collapse is exactly what happened.

This time around, the now pseudo and very, very dirty economics (almost)finished off the world’s financial system as it stood. It was revived from death through frantic financial-mathematical jugglery and a non-stop note-printing-press, with the Fed looking desperately to bury the damage by creating the next bubble which would lure good money from new investors in other parts of the world which were less affected for whatever reason.

That’s where we stand now. Certain portions of the world’s finance system are still on the respirator. Portions are off it, and are trying to act as if nothing happened, shamelessly getting back to their old tricks again.

I get calls reguarly from Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, StanChart and other investment banks. The only reason why Goldman hasn’t called is probably because my networth is below their cold-call limit. Anyways, it doesn’t matter who let the dogs out. Point is, they are out. And they are trying to sell you swaps, structures, forwards, principal protected products, what-have-yous, you name it. I remain polite, but tell them in no uncertain terms to lay off.

As a thumb rule, I don’t invest in products I don’t understand.

As another thumb rule, I don’t even invest in products which I might eventually understand after making the required effort.

As the mother of all thumb rules, I only invest in products that I understand effortlessly.

That’s the learning I got in the 2000s, and I’m happy to share it with you.

Anatomy of a Ponzi Scheme

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Charles Ponzi came up with the brilliant idea of paying early investors dividends from the investment money put in by later investors.

It’s as simple as that, and it’s called a Ponzi scheme.

After the first few dividends, promoter disappears, having lured many investors into a fake scheme with no underlying business.

Latest famous example of a Ponzi schemer – Bernie Maddoff.

Or, if you’ve not seen Damages – Season III, that’s about a Ponzi scheme too.

So what lures the common investor into a Ponzi scheme?

Simple. It’s called greed.

What triggers the greed?

The Ponzi schemer concocts a scheme that promises a rather too lucrative return. This return does not look unrealistic, so the average investor’s alarm signals don’t go off. Nevertheless, it’s more than high enough to make the average investor’s mouth water.

And what’s normally promised is a quick return, mind you. The average investor buys smoothly into the idea of doubling his or her money fast.

Then there’s lots of advertisment. Billboards everywhere. The Ponzi schemer wants to hit the public with ads about the tremendous returns.

The sales-people who sell the scheme are glib-talkers. They are smart, wear expensive stuff, basically exuding sophistication. They want to rub it in that they’ve made it big in life.

A Ponzi scheme’s documentation generally cracks under close scrutiny. I mean, when something is being sold to you without any underlying business, all you have to do is your dose of due diligence. Just pick up the phone and start asking questions.

What works for the Ponzi schemer is human nature. The first investors (who get paid dividends from newbie investor money) start talking. Actually, they start bragging. The human being likes to show off. And, the human being hates missing the boat, even if the boatman is a disciple of Charles Ponzi.

The Dark Side of Private Equity

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Greed is the investor’s nemesis.

I’ve been guilty of greed at times.

Luck has been on my side, and I’ve been saved from losing money. I’d like to tell you about it.

In my experiences with private equity over the last four years, the one thing that stood out was the pitch of each scheme proposed. The average pitch just sucked one in by describing a world that would appear utopic to somebody in a balanced frame of mind. When greed sets in, balance and common sense go out the window. One gets taken in by the pitch, and without doing any due diligence, one is willing to bet the farm.

The private equity teams of today have a tool up their sleeve that creates pressure on the investor, and leaves little time for due diligence. It’s called the time-window. Most schemes are proposed to the investor with a very short time-window. Either the investor is in within the window, or he or she can sit out. Lesson learnt: if one’s due diligence is taking longer than the time-window, then the scheme can go out the window rather than putting one’s hard-earned money on the line.

One of the worst starts a newbie investor can make is a good one. This happened to me as a newbie private equity investor. I got involved with the Milestone group in the middle of the financial crisis, and I invested in their REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts). These people were honest, and the investments have yielded steady quarterly dividends since, apart from the property appreciation. I started thinking private equity was the holy grail, and that all forthcoming institutions and schemes would be like Milestone.

Big mistake. When Edelweiss knocked on my door with an 8 year lock-in real-estate scheme, I was lapping it up. One thing kept going around in my mind – the 8 year cycle they were trying to make me believe in. Wasn’t convincing, but I wanted the profits they were promising. Before signing on, it occured to me to do at least some due diligence. I insisted on a conference call with the management. During the concall, I became aware of one wrongful disclosure. The pitch had spoken of a large sum of money from overseas, already invested in the scheme. In the concall, it became apparent that these funds were tentative and had not arrived yet.

A wrongful disclosure is a big alarm bell for me. I have programmed myself in such a way that when I come across wrongful disclosure during due diligence, I axe the investment. Luckily, the mind was not totally taken in, and I stuck to this rule.

Then came Unitech. Second generation real-estate magnate. Big money. Big leverage. In a joint venture with CIG, Unitech was redeveloping the slums of Mumbai, we were told in the pitch. Each slum-dweller would be relocated with ample compensation, we were told. The scheme had a multi-page disclaimer protecting the promoters against anything and everything. Alone that should have been an alarm bell. Of course I wasn’t thinking straight when I signed the documents.

In the next few months this scheme got a few investors interested, but its corpus wasn’t enough for the first leg of investments planned. Then, Adarsh exploded. I’m talking about the Adarsh real-estate scam. CIG / Unitech could not find a single new investor for their scheme. Everyone was scared of real-estate. Then there was another explosion: the 2G scam. Sanjay Chandra, CEO of Unitech, was one of the prime accused. What would happen to my money? Was it gone?

I got together with my bankers, and for more than a month, we steam-rolled the CIG / Unitech office in Delhi with emails and phone-calls, asking for the money to be returned with interest, since the scheme had not gotten off the ground. Luck was on our side, and after a thorough documentation process from their end, I received my entire amount with interest, one day before Sanjay Chandra was sent to jail.

Moral of the story: double your due diligence when you feel greed setting in. Don’t get taken in by fancy pitches. Don’t get pressurized into time-windows. Tackle the dark-side of private equity with a clear mind and full focus.

Is Silver in a Bubble?

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When the chauffeur or even the doorman has an opinion, the underlying asset-class is in a bubble.

That’s my definition of a bubble.

And that’s not the case for Silver yet.

A bubble is something psychological. The mind gets twisted into believing that one’s found the holy grail. And then one can’t get enough of it.

Bill Bonner predicted in the year 2000, that Silver and Gold would be the trades of then commencing decade. What a prediction! He went on to say that in the last stages of its run, Gold would rise at the rate of 100$ an hour. You can proportionate that for Silver. That’s how a real bubble behaves. Just go back to first quarter of 2000 and observe the financial behaviour of dotcoms.

This is not a bubble yet. We are nowhere near bubble behaviour. The common households have not started selling off their household Silver. The man on the streets is not obsessed with Silver as of now. (I still look at common-man behaviour, even for Silver, because in a bubble, one forgets affordability. Apart from that, Silver can be bought by the gram).

So, where does one go from here?

Simple.

The trader keeps trading with the flow and an appropriate, risk-profile-tuned stop. For heavens sake, he or she needs to be long.

And the investor keeps buying small stakes on dips.

Nothing fancy or complicated. A simple, common-sense strategy is all that’s required.

Of Kalyuga and the Skewed Nature of Growth

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Once or twice a day, I need to remind myself that this is Kalyuga. Gone are the times when people were honest in general, and the human mind was not corruptible. In Kalyuga, one refers to the price at which a human mind is corruptible. That it is corruptible in the first place is a given.

One of the economic characteristics of Kalyuga is the fact that wherever there is growth, it is skewed in nature, and not uniform. Nations claiming uniform growth are often surprised by a black swan event which nullifies years of financial penance by the founding fathers of such nations. Few examples are the Iceland bankruptcy, the sub-prime crisis, a near default by Greece on its sovereign debt, with possible defaults brewing in Portugal, Spain and Ireland in the near financial future of world economics. Even 9/11 was an event that was triggered due to skewed growth. Of course that is no justification for such an event.

What meets the naked eye in developed nations on the surface is – development. Showers, telephones, infrastructure, emergency services – everything functions. So where are the anomalies that skew the path of uniform growth in such nations? These anomalies are found beneath the surface, in the corruptible minds of those in power. Whether it is the nexus between high-level politicians and bankers, or that between the former and the armed forces, such examples successfully dupe the low-level but honestly functioning majority of the population in developed countries. Ask the pensioner in Greece, who suddenly finds his pension reduced by half due to no fault of his. Or the 9/11 rescue worker, who then contracted complications and died a dog’s death because he wasn’t entitled to healthcare due to no health insurance, which he couldn’t afford. These are example of growth going skewed, that very growth that first seemed uniform in nature.

Emerging nations have never boasted uniform growth. The definition of an emerging market that you won’t find in the text-books speaks of high economic growth at the cost of a segment of the population or a culture. In India for example, 500 million citizens are enjoying growth at the cost of 645 million others, who a UN study has found to be devoid of the very basics in life. Here, corruption from the top has sickered through to the bottom, and the 500 million concerned are able to grow at about 9 % per annum. The crafters of this growth plan believe that the growing millions will pull up the stagnant and deteriorating millions ultimately; i.e. growth will sicker through. Of course that can only happen if it is allowed to by the corruptible minds in-charge.

In Russia, high growth is enjoyed by those who’ve joined hands with the Mafia. Those who take the plunge commit all kinds of crimes from murder to child pornography. Those who choose not to, lead endangered, poor and suffocating lives in their efforts to stay clean.

China has a labour portion of its population and an entrepreneur portion of its population that are growing economically. The former has no time to enjoy the USD 750 – 1000 salary per month because of a 12 hour working day and perhaps 2 or 3 free days a month. Mostly, man and woman both are working, and due to non-overlap in free days, they rarely see each other. Their economic growth will be enjoyed by their children perhaps. The entrepreneur portion is of course splurging. What of the farmers? They haven’t really grown economically. And the vast and spiritual Chinese culture of olden days, i.e. the Mandarin essence of China? Gone into hiding, where it cannot be prosecuted or finished off by the mad-men in-charge. And what of Tibet? Suppressed and destroyed. Some parts of it filled with nuclear waste. And what of freedom of speech and expression? Never existed, and when it started to exist, was finished off from the root in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Heights of skewed growth.

So where does one put one’s money to work? After all, there are problems everywhere. Good question, and one that needs to be sorted out by everyone on a personal level. One thing is certain though. These are times of uncertainty, and in such times, Gold gives superlative returns. So, one needs to get into Gold on dips. There’s no point leaving money in fixed deposits, because inflation will eat it up. Also, one can start identifying debt-free companies with idealistic and economically capable managements, who can boast of uniform and clean growth within their companies (yes, there are encapsulated exceptions to skewed growth on the micro-level). It’s these exceptions one needs to be invested in.