holdyourthoughts

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson is the first part of the three-part Millenium trilogy that has become a cult series in the last few years in the mystery thriller genre. Larsson is the first author to have sold more than one million copies on the kindle store in amazon (that is, he has sold a million copies in the ebook format). So, decidely I was very excited when I got hold of my copy (I also read an ebook on my Infibeam PI). The book has two main characters - Mikael Blomkvist, a financial investigative journalist and Lisbeth Salander, a young social misfit cum computer hacker cum investigator. Blomkvist rund a small magazine and tries to expose the misdeeds of a large businessman in Sweden. He also gets commissioned by an ageing patriarch of a large Swedish conglomerate to investigate the murder of his niece over forty years back. Blomkvist takes up the challenge when Vanger, the old patriarch, promises to give him evidence of some criminal activities by the person h...

After six months of starting to closely track my portfolio on an NAV basis, here are the results: Primal Value Fund (this is what I call my fund)=30.03% Sensex=12.48% Relative Outperformance=17.56%

The Polyester Prince is a banned book. I am not sure why it is banned and after reading it I can guess. McDonald's narrative points fingers at the Congress government and some very senior ministers and leaders of colluding to help Dhirubhai in his endeavours. It is a fascinating read and goes over the life and time of Dhirubhai Ambani. It details the famous Dhirubhai versus Nusli Wadia battles, Indian Express' taking up the cudgel against him and focusses mainly on the dark side of the man. The primary feeling that I had while reading was the author started with a negative bias against the man. In my opinion, no supremely successful business in a controlled economic regime can be either just black or white in character shade. He has to be some shade of grey. So, the book should have explored the various shades instead of focussing just on the darker side. Another major issue with the book is that it tells very little of Dhirubhai Ambani the man and more of Reliance and its oper...

This book delves with the idea that super successful people are not a result of their innate greatness but a result of two factors - opportunity and cultural background. It shares stories of extremely successful men like Bill Gates, Bill Joy, Robert Oppenheimer, The Beatles and others and digs deeper to show that all these people had had an extraordinary opportunity which was not available to others at that point in time. So, there success cannot be attributed to their greatness but to their circumstances. The book tries to debunk the "individualistic" model of success so popularized by the western media of the "self-made-man". Gladwell argues that there is no self-made-man and the success is a combination of the opportunities and culture (which includes the genes the person is born with). The idea is not to demean the achievements of the super-successful people. It is not that they did not do anything. Obviously, to be a superlative success in anything, it takes a...

After nearly ten years in the markets, I started tracking my portfolio as a fund this February. The idea was that if I was not making better returns than the index then it is better to invest in index funds and concentrate on other things in life. I started with a NAV of Rs. 10. The objective of the fund is to outperform the Sensex on a long (3 years plus) term with securities chosen primarily with a focus towards value and mid and small cap. The idea is to have a concentrated portfolio of between 5-12 stocks at any given point in time with a investment horizon of an average of 3 years. So far, as you can see from the chart, the Primal Value Fund has managed to outperform the Sensex. Sensex return has been 10.04% and the funds return has been 15.54%. So far so good. I will try and update the performance on a quarterly or half yearly basis. Also providing the current portfolio and percentage allocation.

Timothy Ferris' The Four Hour Workweek is a book devoted to people who do not want to spend the rest of their lives working in their cubicles. It makes a case for automating your cashflow so that you are no longer dependent on your job. It introduces the concept of freedom as one where you are both free from money and time pressures. Just having a great deal of money is not enough to be really rich, according to Ferris. You also need to have a lot of time to do all the things your heart desires. Ferris makes a very compelling case for setting up some business major components of which can be outsourced to generate the free cash flow. He then goes into how to setup a "outsourced" business and life. The book in this stage becomes a bit "silly" at times. Ferris, when he wrote this book was a 30-something person without a family. So, going away to foreign countries and staying extended periods may be possible for him but is practically not possible for most people. ...

This is an excellent collection of quotes from mostly contemporary American personalities. What is good about the book is that most of the selected quotes are relatively fresh and are not overly quoted everywhere else!! There were only two complaints I had were that i) the quotes are all lumped together and not grouped into categories so looking up a specific quote at a later point in time would be very very challenging and ii) the quotes are not really for the "professional" only, they are equally applicable to life in general. In fact, that is why this book makes it such a good read.