Check

Hey.

Facing some basic issues on the other side.

Life has changed.

Race became more intense.

There’s greed in the equation, the desire to achieve as much as possible in as little time as possible.

Everything’s moving…

…faster.

As if…

…from one day to the next…

one just…

…shifted.

It’s clear to me that we don’t shift till we are ready.

Was a hard nut to crack.

Had to be literally goaded into the AI trajectory, several coaxings required. Hard skepticism took its time to be broken down.

Not happy about the greed.

Speed of coasting is also very high.

Need attunement.

Unable to slow down easily.

Need to be careful about a ‘now I’ve got this and to hell with you attitude’. Can develop unchecked.

Addiction. Need to stay de-addicted.

All non-electronic activities in the day go up immensely in value.

Reading – books. Check.

Chanting. Check.

Basic verbal conversations. Check.

Human interactions. Check.

Helping someone. Charity. Check.

Non-distracted eating. Check.

Bringing down multi-tasking levels. Check.

Whole detox days. Day travel. StayCation. AutoCut the system. Check.

Evening chanting session. Lengthen. It’s not electronic. Check.

Anything not connected to a device and creates value. Check.

Not going to fall sick in this hyperactive space.

Check.

Incorporating before proceeding further.

Check.

Whetting

What does it take…

…to convince my mind…

…that something’s a very long-term hold?

What am I looking for?

Longevity. Actually, perceived longevity. Perceived in my mind. Mind matters. When the mind is shaken, one lets go. For something to be a long-term hold, the mind needs to be long-term convinced.

Lack of dependency. On water. On other natural resources. On CapEx. On real-estate.

Immunity to trend-change.

Adaptability to disruption. As much proximity to a state of anti-fragility as possible. Entry price and cost-free-ness will reinforce proximity to anti-fragility.

Diligent, share-holder friendly management with good track record, with repeated examples of wealth-creation through exploitation of multiple avenues available.

A product line that is more dependent on human capital than on machinery.

Copious, intelligent, reasonably priced human capital. With that we’ve knocked out inflation.

Very decent margin of safety at entry point. With that we’ve accounted for any remaining idiosyncrasies in capable managements and / or otherwise humane promoters.

Lack of debt. We’re ok with reasonable amounts borrowed at reasonable rates for day to day working capital, but not a big fan of long-term debt.

No smoke cloud. Talking about scams, frauds, bribes, court-cases and the like.

That’s ten things already.

I take these ten, sift through the Nifty 500, and get 43 underlyings, which, for me, satisfy these criteria.

That’s it.

I play with these.

That’s all the whetting I need.

You’re saying I didn’t mention numbers. Metrics. Ratios.

Numbers come and go. Basics remain. When the basics are right, numbers will be intact for long, and for a few quarters they won’t be. Those are re-entry opportunities.

Good basics create good numbers, repeatedly. We are making sure that we are only entering into good basics.

Now the ball’s in your court.

Create your criteria.

What works for you?

Sift through.

Narrow down.

What remains are your whetted stocks.

Start your game.

It’s a long one, so…

…wishing you stamina!

🙂

The Pinch of Minuscule Loss

Did I drop the 200 bucks this morning?

Hmmmm…

…naehhh.

I don’t drop cash.

It was probably nicked from my rucksack.

You know what, this incident is pinching me.

I’m trying to brush it off.

Was I careless?

Yes.

Why?

God knows.

Over-confidence?

Maybe.

Do you see?

Even minuscule loss has it’s thought-process-baggage.

Minuscule loss pinches too.

Where does that leave us?

We’re market-people.

We’re faced with minuscule losses everyday.

Hopefully miniscule.

Meaning, hopefully everyone has by now graduated to putting stops.

Don’t underestimate the business of stops.

The human mind gets used to stops very slowly indeed.

Society teaches us to win at all costs. It doesn’t teach us to take a small loss and get out.

Trading works differently, however.

You can’t will a losing trade to win.

Society teaches us to book a winner and post it on social media immediately.

Again, trading is so different.

A small winner needs to be left alone, so that it can grow into a multibagger.

When we enter into the world of trading, we have to first swear to ourselves that we will start to program our minds from day one.

Otherwise, we’re dead-meat.

We need to teach our minds to let winners win some more.

And, we need to programme our minds to cut many, many small losers while they are still small, simultaneously and slowly getting immune to the pinch of minuscule losses by taking these in stride, one, after another after another…

…, till, the rest, as they say, is recorded as successful trading by History.