Category: Links

Short links post today because I don’t want to miss out on watching the Olympics opening ceremony.

Here are 7 great things I read during the week.

Howard Marks: Active Management is the Search For Mistakes (Latest Memo)

Worlds’s Lightest Material: Aerographite Might Hold the Key to a Battery Revolution

Greenlight Q2 Letter to Investors

London Eye to be transformed into Twitter sentiment pie chart during Olympics

BuzzFeed’s Strategy

Economist has a brilliant chart on median age of cabinet ministers and populations

Tongue in cheek: John Kay – The Parable of the Ox

Enjoy your weekend!

 

First let’s start with a great story that Hemant shared about his experience with Club Mahindra and the lesson learned from it. The comment section on this post is quite amazing too and I’m sure many people will find similar examples of their own too.

I was really shocked to see that MCX has sued Ajay Shah who is perhaps the only noteworthy Indian economist blogger. These type of stories make me feel that blogging in India is just not worth the trouble it is.

Mani gets inspired by Satyamev Jayate and writes about rewiring with retirement planning.

Microsoft posts a rare loss writing off goodwill on a previous purchase.

RP Seawright writes about investor’s 10 most common behavioral biases.

WSJ writes about how financial advisers are helping out their customers by doing things that you wouldn’t normally associate with planners like negotiating car sales.

Finally, see why the end of the Great Wall of China is called Laolongtou Great Wall, or “The Old Dragon’s Head.

Enjoy your weekend!

Before we start this week’s links, there is a small change that I’m going to experiment with over the next few weeks. Everything that I share on the weekend links has already been shared by me on my Twitter feed and in a lot of cases, I discover these articles on Twitter as well. I’m going to credit links by linking back to the Twitter profiles of the people who shared these articles and if you were so inclined, you could follow these people.

That said, let’s start this week with Ajay Shah’s post on the Pew Global Attitudes Project which has some interesting takes on how Indians think about the current economic environment and how it compares with other countries. This is a very good post which is a quick read and is well worth your time.

The third most interesting thing for me was that 92% of Indians blame the government for our ills (perhaps the remaining 8% surveyed were politicians) and there is just one country with a higher percentage blaming its government, which is Pakistan with 95% of its population blaming the government for their situation.

The second most interesting thing was that 61% Indians support market economy and there are only 4 countries above us. I would have guessed this number to be much lower but it looks like the better living standards of the last two decades have convinced people that free markets are much better than government run institutions.

The most interesting thing was that 74% Chinese favor market economy! This is only lower than 75% for Brazil and even higher than the US.

Next up, this fascinating article on what pieces of customer information big retailers are interested in and how they go after it. A quote: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”

The RBI Governor, Dr. Subbarao expressed concern that the government makes the financial institutions it has stake in take ad- hoc and detrimental investing decisions.

The Economist has a fascinating piece on Mr. Seth Klarman who is the boss of the 9th biggest hedge fund in the world – Baupost Group, which has an incredible track record over 3 decades that includes just 2 negative years since this fund started in 1982.

Digg, which is one of the earliest social media sites sold for what is a paltry sum of $500,000 last week, and the WSJ has an interesting interview with its founder. (via @Liz Heron)

I used to be a heavy Digg user but was never able to successfully promote OneMint on Digg. At that time I mainly attributed that to the fact that I don’t write things that are viral in nature, and my writing style doesn’t help either.

Since it felt so difficult to share links on Digg, I finally gave up altogether. This is a point that comes up in this article also when comparing it with how easy it is to share something on Twitter or Facebook versus how hard it was to do it on Digg.

This has been really true with my own experience where the traffic that OneMint gets from Twitter is so tiny that spending more than a few seconds sharing the link there would be a waste of time, but the service is so good that it just takes a few seconds to share the link there.

Kiran writes about Coromandel International’s bonus debenture issue which was a special situation investing opportunity, and while that opportunity doesn’t exist any longer, I think is an excellent post to learn how to track such situations and then track them in real time. (via @Kiran D)

Finally, you may or may not have liked to hear who the under-achiever is, but there is no doubt who the Wonderachiever is. (via @Sunil Srinivasan)

Enjoy your weekend!

How can you start this week with anything other than the Higgs Boson? For most of us – this is the kind of news which is important because people smarter than us are telling us it is, and like it or not, some things are just like that. Here is a Reuters article about the god particle.

An interesting story from Businessweek about Indian companies’ push into the retail sector and two things about the story stand out in my mind.

First one is that big Indian business houses are investing heavily and rapidly in this segment and so far that hasn’t affected the kirana stores that everyone is so worried will die due to FDI in multi brand retail.

Secondly, even though they are investing heavily, this is not a very profitable business for them right now, and that also shows that foreign companies won’t come in and start making money from day one and drive everyone else out of business.

Financial Express had another interesting story about retail where they wrote about a new concept of connecting farmers to the urban market pioneered by Mr. Harsha Moily, who is the son of Corporate Affairs Minister, Mr. V. Moily.

I’ve written about 3D printing several times, and I’m really fascinated with it because there is no doubt in my mind that this is going to make a huge difference to how we live a few years from now. Here is an article on 3D printed blood vessel network.

Brad Feld has a fascinating take on what it means to be busy and he talks about his own work schedule and how we create a busy trap to avoid our fear of death.

Fast Company has an interesting article on Google Glass, which makes them sound quite useable (at least to me).

Finally, Indexed has a brilliant take on things you run from and things you run to.

Enjoy your weekend!

Let’s start with BeyondBrics this week who reported a study released by Lloyds TSB International about global housing prices which places India at the top of the list as far as rise in house prices are concerned. Prices in India grew 284% in the last decade while Russia was second with a 209% price rise.

If anything, this number will seem low if you live in any of the major cities, and one of the three big reasons cited for these high prices is the red tape that plagues land acquisition and permits to build houses.

On a related note, Financial Express had an editorial last week that cited a CMIE study which said that 8 out of the top 20 projects that were shelved last year were due to land acquisition problems.

The Rupee gained by a massive 119 paise today and that was triggered by a draft on GAAR released on thursday that was a lot better than the original version. While you shouldn’t make much out of a one day move, it does point to the direction that fixing underlying problems with the economy and not tinkering with things like NRE interest rates or debt limit are what will solve the current problems.

On the question of the Rupee – Jamal Mecklai talks about a range of 47 – 57 for the Rupee this year.

The Economist has an interesting chart which shows how much of a currency can be bought in a dollar.

Random Roger comments on some articles that spell gloom and doom and makes the small but important point that end of the world has always been a bestseller.

Finally, the question that’s been on your mind all week long – why does a zebra have stripes?

Enjoy your weekend!

The bad news today was the Rupee sliding to another all time low and The Hindu has a small article on the steps that the RBI is taking to halt this slide.

The RBI’s first step though is quite weird and I don’t think it does anything at all. Deepak Shenoy has a detailed post on why this is so.

Bemoneyaware has a great article on Chapter VI A of the Income Tax Act. This act contains the various deductions that you get like the 80C or the 80D deduction, and this is a great article to see all of that in one place.

Fred Wilson talks about the art of important work, of making a ruckus and of inventing the future

BBC has a short article on India unblocking The Pirate Bay.

All Things Digital has this great interview with Larry Ellison and Ed Catmull about the lessons that can be learned from Steve Jobs’s life and what makes this interview so fascinating is that the two of them constantly repeat that you just can’t become like Steve Jobs or just can’t copy him.

This is a great interview.

 

Finally, The Atlantic has this interesting article on why crowded coffee shops fire up your creativity.

Enjoy your weekend!

I think all regular readers are familiar with Shiv, who has been commenting on the site for about 2 years now, and must have answered hundreds of reader questions in that time. I’ve asked him several questions myself and he has always given me accurate answers to my queries.

A few weeks ago, I asked him if he would be interested in writing for OneMint and he agreed to give it a try. This is the second time someone is helping me with content here (Gurpreet did a few tax articles last year), and I’m really looking forward to this.

You will start seeing his posts from next week onwards, and they will be marked as written by Shiv. This will not impact the frequency or topics of the posts that I write, so overall, you will see increased posting frequency on the site, it is hard to say by how much at this point.

I’m really glad to welcome Shiv as a blogger here and I’m sure this will add to the quality of the site.

Now, let’s get on to this week’s links.

Let’s start with this beautiful commencement address given by Atul Gawande on failure and rescue. I’ll quote my favorite part from the speech.

Scientists have given a new name to the deaths that occur in surgery after something goes wrong—whether it is an infection or some bizarre twist of the stomach. They call them a “failure to rescue.” More than anything, this is what distinguished the great from the mediocre. They didn’t fail less. They rescued more.

Next up, China is the source of fastest growing international buyers for US real estate. The US real estate market is estimated to be $928 billion in the year till March, and while Canadians were the largest international buyers, Chinese were the second largest at $9 billion. Interestingly, Indians also figure in that list and account for 6% of the sales done to international buyers.

A fascinating conversation about the future and what technologies will shape our lives 30 or 40 years from now.

The Economist laments India’s slowing growth in this piece titled Farewell to Incredible India.

This is a fascinating little experiment where they teach words to a baby robot.

Hemant has a thoughtful post on planning for your retirement versus planning for your children’s future.

Finally, I think this is the most beautiful picture I’ve seen in quite a while.

Enjoy your weekend!

Let’s start this week with an excellent article in The Economist about the Piramal group that touches upon the history of the group and where they are currently focusing.

The Financial Express has a great article on the problems that exist in Indian organised retail today. This article has some great statistics on organized retail as well.

I was relieved to learn that cracking knuckles doesn’t cause arthritis, and of course it annoys people around you so that’s an added bonus.

Smart Money has an interesting take on why sex sells better on e-books.

Martin Wolf writes about taxation, productivity and prosperity in the Financial Times.

Ajay Shah writes about the hollowing out of the Indian financial system.

Finally, can someone explain to me why they didn’t move the deer crossing sign already?

The big news today is that Facebook barely traded above its listing price and had it not been for the bankers behind the issue, the stock would have surely ended the day in discount. This probably doesn’t bode well for the future but then with the market you never know.

There were a number of articles about Facebook’s valuation the whole week and most people expressed skepticism about the valuation, however none of them come even remotely close to the excellent valuation done by professor Aswath Damadoran.

All this excitement took all the attention away from the other big thing that’s on everyone’s mind these days – Grexit.

Hemant has a good article on what you need to think about when you start your own business.

Deepak Shenoy laments the recent moves to curb freedom as evidenced in a court order to ban Vimeo and the new set of  IT Rules announced by Kapil Sibal this week.

Harvard Business Review on building your personal user interface. 

Finally, the best thing I’ve read in a long time – pearls of wisdom from Paul Kedrosky on Facebook in particular, and investing in general. 

Truly horrible IIP numbers were released yesterday and Financial Express has a short column on how things have soured since last year, and without much needed policy reforms even 7% GDP growth will be difficult this year.

Sandip Sabharwal laments the multiple whammies that the market has had to take and says that the actions of government and regulators are clearly testing the patience of most investors today.

The delightful Psy-Fi blog asks if your CEO is a psychopath?

Meanwhile, the state of Nevada gives a license to Google’s self driving car, which sailed through the driving test.

In Star Trek fashion, you can now beam your 3D holographic images to someone and have a conversation with them as if you were really present there, well almost.

Greece’s woes are hitting center stage again, and Reuters examines the preparation that Greek banks are doing if they have to give up the Euro and get back to the Drachma.

Finally, NYT Magazine does a fascinating profile on Joe Weisenthal who is a financial blogger for Business Insider, and not only is this a great profile, it is a very instructive article for people who consume financial news. It gives you an opportunity to look at the perspective of someone writing the news, their motivations and goals, and that helps look at something that you don’t normally think about.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy your weekend!