Last weekend was the first long weekend I didn't go anywhere out of state. With an eye on optimal spending and another on possible shopping I decided to spend 4 days at home. Come Thanksgiving and there was a buzz among all my friends here. Everyone started planning for shopping on Black Friday. They checked out the deals, identified the shops and mapped out the strategies. I had only one item in mind, an external harddrive for my laptop. So I didn't bother at first. Then the enthusiam caught on and by 9 o'clock at night, I was cruising from shop to shop, checking out the queues. All my friends were dispersed in various shops. Best Buy offered laptops at $ 249 and $379, a steal! My friend who went at 2 in the afternoon was not the first in the queue. One of our brethren beat him to it. The time I went, it had swollen into a 70 + strong queue with still 7 cold hours to go.
To cut the long story short, I took position at another store and joined the fun of waiting. What started out as a plan for an external harddrive ended up with me getting that, a thumb drive, SD card, camera, surgeguard, Ferrari toy car with remote, Microsoft Flight simulator, some more toys, some jewellery (silver chain and strands of pearls), blank DVDs and some more! By evening, I was driving like a zombie checking out shops. I got some things for my friends who stood at other stores and they got me some other things which I couldn't get. Quite a bit of shopping! :-)
This led to me thinking what if this happens in India. With Walmart about to open shops in India with a tie up with Bharti, this looks very much possible. But things will be pretty much different.
1. Queue will start 100 hours before, not a mere 20 hours.
2. Queue positions will be sold.
3. The store will get calls from bureaucratic highups asking those deep discount items be allocated to them.
4. All tenous connections with the store employees will be recalled and friendships emphasized.
5. Fistfights will be common. In US too, this occurs at places.
6. Political TV channels will blame each other for the possible riots that will happen. They will shove a mike at some bleeding loser and let him have his 10 seconds of fame.
Thank God we don't have this Black Friday concept. As it is, the Deepavali shopping spread over 2,3 weeks makes everyone crazy. A special sale concentrated on a single day will bring the nation to a boil.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Nonsensical niceties
Last week I caught a cold. By Thursday it became acute, setting off concerns from colleagues with my incessant sneezing, coughing and sniffing. I left early and on my way home stopped at Walgreens, the pharmacy chain.
I slid a box of Tylenol across the counter for payment.
The cashier emitted a cheery "Hi! How are you today?", while scanning the medicine barcode.
I, tired looking and reddish faced, replied with "Obviously I am not doing well".
The cashier's jaw dropped at the unexpected reply.
She looked at me, a bit perplexed.
I repeated myself while pointing at my purchase.
She then sheepishly said, " We never look at what people buy."
She must have rolled her eyes after I left.
Sometimes when you are already down and out, saccharine polite conversation kills you.
I slid a box of Tylenol across the counter for payment.
The cashier emitted a cheery "Hi! How are you today?", while scanning the medicine barcode.
I, tired looking and reddish faced, replied with "Obviously I am not doing well".
The cashier's jaw dropped at the unexpected reply.
She looked at me, a bit perplexed.
I repeated myself while pointing at my purchase.
She then sheepishly said, " We never look at what people buy."
She must have rolled her eyes after I left.
Sometimes when you are already down and out, saccharine polite conversation kills you.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Green is the colour of Greed!
In the past 30 days, I finished 2 books. Normally this would be a shock as I'd go through a tome in hardly 2,3 days. Not these days. Maybe it's that I've almost stopped reading pulp. I find that non-fiction is as racy and rivetting as well.
The two books I read, both of them, are about the rarefied worlds of finance. The first one, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, is a quite old one. It is a cult classic now and a prescribed reading for many business schools. It is about the sale of the tobacco and food giant, RJR Nabisco. Then in the 80s the sale was for a record 24 odd billion dollars. The peculiar thing is that the buyers, a consortium led by KKR group, put a fraction of the sale amount from their own pockets. Rest was borrowed money to be repaid from the company's cashflow itself. The borrowed part was made up of different flavours of junk bonds. After the bidding war starts, the management group led by chairman Ross Johnson tries to buy the company for its own. The advantage was they knew exactly how much the company was worth and hence how high they can bid. Still they fail in their bid and the tale is taut and spell binding given the fact that everyone knows the end. Poker play with nail-biting finish.
The other book, "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management " is a much recent one. It is about the late 1990's boom and implosion of a firm called, Long Term Capital Management. The name might be dreary, but not the people behind it. The option pricing gurus, Myron Scholes (of Black Scholes equation fame) and Robert Merton lead the think tank. All the trades (derivative contracts) are made by using the formula they devise and fine tune. They indulge in global arbitraging and shrewdly build up their portfolio. The unique thing is it is very little of their money as in derivative contracts only the margin is required to be paid upfront. So entire cash available need not be allocated to a single investment and multiple "trades" can be done by small investing margins in each. So compared to the investment amount, the returns are huge (leveraging), even obscene.It is a sort of a gamble, no matter how educated their guess is. The downside is when the contract is out of the money, they have to pay, and how! But the traders of Long Term Capital Management are sure about their formulae and bell curves and calculate that the tail of the bell curve will occur only once in a million years! Ofcourse, it doesn't happen that way and there the story begins. While they are part of the firm, both Scholes and Merton are awarded the economics Nobel (Fischer Black is dead by then) and their prestige increases. Way to go before a fall! The story makes rivetting reading. Only problem is while the Barbarians at the gate was constructed from interviews with all the persons involved, "When Genius Failed.." author Roger Lowenstein was given no official interviews. He has constructed the book purely based on hearsay and painstaking research work.
The authors of both the books give cursory treatment to the finance theory which is the bedrock of the dealings, almost afraid of scaring off the lay readers. Maybe they should have explained a little bit more even though it would've meant less drama and action. For example, the spine of "When Genius Failed" is the premise that the present discounted value of a bond will converge to its face value plus interest, over time; And how it didn't work out that way. The LTCM bets on the convergence. They pick out the tiny divergent "wrinkles" that exist in the market making money when the "wrinkles" are ironed out. When the two values (traded and guaranteed) diverge, the bottom falls out of the firm. I couldn't understand how such a scenario will happen naturally. Ofcourse artificial bear "hugs" of the stock market are possible but they last for a very short time. The LTCM geniuses too failed to understand such a thing will happen and thus they went bust. Atleast here I am in exalted company!
I'd recommend both the books to anyone. And to my friends I'd insist they buy them so that I can borrow for a second reading and subsequently decorate my bookshelf!
:-)
The two books I read, both of them, are about the rarefied worlds of finance. The first one, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, is a quite old one. It is a cult classic now and a prescribed reading for many business schools. It is about the sale of the tobacco and food giant, RJR Nabisco. Then in the 80s the sale was for a record 24 odd billion dollars. The peculiar thing is that the buyers, a consortium led by KKR group, put a fraction of the sale amount from their own pockets. Rest was borrowed money to be repaid from the company's cashflow itself. The borrowed part was made up of different flavours of junk bonds. After the bidding war starts, the management group led by chairman Ross Johnson tries to buy the company for its own. The advantage was they knew exactly how much the company was worth and hence how high they can bid. Still they fail in their bid and the tale is taut and spell binding given the fact that everyone knows the end. Poker play with nail-biting finish.
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The other book, "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management " is a much recent one. It is about the late 1990's boom and implosion of a firm called, Long Term Capital Management. The name might be dreary, but not the people behind it. The option pricing gurus, Myron Scholes (of Black Scholes equation fame) and Robert Merton lead the think tank. All the trades (derivative contracts) are made by using the formula they devise and fine tune. They indulge in global arbitraging and shrewdly build up their portfolio. The unique thing is it is very little of their money as in derivative contracts only the margin is required to be paid upfront. So entire cash available need not be allocated to a single investment and multiple "trades" can be done by small investing margins in each. So compared to the investment amount, the returns are huge (leveraging), even obscene.It is a sort of a gamble, no matter how educated their guess is. The downside is when the contract is out of the money, they have to pay, and how! But the traders of Long Term Capital Management are sure about their formulae and bell curves and calculate that the tail of the bell curve will occur only once in a million years! Ofcourse, it doesn't happen that way and there the story begins. While they are part of the firm, both Scholes and Merton are awarded the economics Nobel (Fischer Black is dead by then) and their prestige increases. Way to go before a fall! The story makes rivetting reading. Only problem is while the Barbarians at the gate was constructed from interviews with all the persons involved, "When Genius Failed.." author Roger Lowenstein was given no official interviews. He has constructed the book purely based on hearsay and painstaking research work.
.jpg)
The authors of both the books give cursory treatment to the finance theory which is the bedrock of the dealings, almost afraid of scaring off the lay readers. Maybe they should have explained a little bit more even though it would've meant less drama and action. For example, the spine of "When Genius Failed" is the premise that the present discounted value of a bond will converge to its face value plus interest, over time; And how it didn't work out that way. The LTCM bets on the convergence. They pick out the tiny divergent "wrinkles" that exist in the market making money when the "wrinkles" are ironed out. When the two values (traded and guaranteed) diverge, the bottom falls out of the firm. I couldn't understand how such a scenario will happen naturally. Ofcourse artificial bear "hugs" of the stock market are possible but they last for a very short time. The LTCM geniuses too failed to understand such a thing will happen and thus they went bust. Atleast here I am in exalted company!
I'd recommend both the books to anyone. And to my friends I'd insist they buy them so that I can borrow for a second reading and subsequently decorate my bookshelf!
:-)
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Whose life is it anyway?
Whom does one's life belong to? To self? If you think you own your life, think again.
When a child, mere some days old, smiles, who takes pride in it?
When a child starts babbling, who goes ga-ga over it?
When a child starts standing and walking who goes crazy over it?
When a kid starts for school, who drives all others crazy over how the kid scribbles something that in an abstract art form looks like an alphabet?
If a person is x, x's life is owned by x's mom.
x can also be a mom herself. Still x's life will be owned by x's mom.
If x is a male, whatever the age is, this theory holds good.
If x is married x's ownership, at times, is transferred to x's wife. But not always.
Bachelor xes sometimes blog about it, still owned by their moms however.
The typical mom has an obsessive pride and possessiveness in her creation.
My mom has evangelized ad infinitum about my brilliance and genius, eventhough in my one score and some (that's some some! ) years, I've never exhibited even a modicum of proof of that. She is an one woman church spreading her word (ofcourse no believers!) about how brilliant her son is.
She never even allowed her son to ride as much as a bicycle on the highway, fearing that her precious gem would be lost in an acccident. Ofcourse even motor cycle accidents went unreported. Chennai's Mount road aka Anna Salai has seen me up close, countless times. Quite dashing was I. :-)
Men can never feel that way about their offspring, I think. The closest a male comes to experience that feeling would be when he customizes his bike/car. Yeah, I'm possessive about my motorcycle still, eventhough someone is driving it now! :-(
Coming back to moms and stuff, I thought by now, my mom would've relinquished her feeling of ownership. I recently discovered I was wrong.
When a friend of mine went back for a visit to India, I gave him a DVD of me skydiving, to scare my mom. I half-expected a call from my mom berating me for risking the handsome life she gave me. That kind of call never came. I forgot about that. On this Deepavali, I called up every friend and relative I could reach, to wish them. Every single one of them mentioned about seeing the DVD! To my horror, I came to know that it was even lent to people who could not come to our place! Continous shows of me skydiving is on, courtesy my mom advertising my "daring" to all who care and a few who do not. I guess she is hardpressed for my achievements.
- Written by a dumbass son who is not with his mom on her 60th birthday. 60 years of weathering countless severe storms and still steady. Wishing the mother ship countless number of smooth years in future before riding onto the sunset.
When a child, mere some days old, smiles, who takes pride in it?
When a child starts babbling, who goes ga-ga over it?
When a child starts standing and walking who goes crazy over it?
When a kid starts for school, who drives all others crazy over how the kid scribbles something that in an abstract art form looks like an alphabet?
If a person is x, x's life is owned by x's mom.
x can also be a mom herself. Still x's life will be owned by x's mom.
If x is a male, whatever the age is, this theory holds good.
If x is married x's ownership, at times, is transferred to x's wife. But not always.
Bachelor xes sometimes blog about it, still owned by their moms however.
The typical mom has an obsessive pride and possessiveness in her creation.
My mom has evangelized ad infinitum about my brilliance and genius, eventhough in my one score and some (that's some some! ) years, I've never exhibited even a modicum of proof of that. She is an one woman church spreading her word (ofcourse no believers!) about how brilliant her son is.
She never even allowed her son to ride as much as a bicycle on the highway, fearing that her precious gem would be lost in an acccident. Ofcourse even motor cycle accidents went unreported. Chennai's Mount road aka Anna Salai has seen me up close, countless times. Quite dashing was I. :-)
Men can never feel that way about their offspring, I think. The closest a male comes to experience that feeling would be when he customizes his bike/car. Yeah, I'm possessive about my motorcycle still, eventhough someone is driving it now! :-(
Coming back to moms and stuff, I thought by now, my mom would've relinquished her feeling of ownership. I recently discovered I was wrong.
When a friend of mine went back for a visit to India, I gave him a DVD of me skydiving, to scare my mom. I half-expected a call from my mom berating me for risking the handsome life she gave me. That kind of call never came. I forgot about that. On this Deepavali, I called up every friend and relative I could reach, to wish them. Every single one of them mentioned about seeing the DVD! To my horror, I came to know that it was even lent to people who could not come to our place! Continous shows of me skydiving is on, courtesy my mom advertising my "daring" to all who care and a few who do not. I guess she is hardpressed for my achievements.
- Written by a dumbass son who is not with his mom on her 60th birthday. 60 years of weathering countless severe storms and still steady. Wishing the mother ship countless number of smooth years in future before riding onto the sunset.
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