Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Conference

Today I got my pass to the most awaited event of the season. Yes the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder

Conference at Qwest Center in Omaha. I have always wanted to get a chance to meet with Mr. Warren

Buffet, Mr. Bill Gates and the like. Tomorrow will be a long day indeed and I need to do some homework

and be prepared to at the least be able to spark a conversation with Mr Gates and Mr Buffet, the duo who I have admired for the knack of business skills and of-course Bill Gates for his technical ingenuity.

I'm so waiting for tomorrow! Keep checking this space. I will be posting updates from the event.

Prolly, I might live blog from the event some key highlights if I'm able to. 

Zen Mango

I love the taste of this tea. It has a very nice Mango flavor. Its humbly sweet. It has an enchanting flavor to it with a scent of Mango.

Google's Larry Page Tips for Entrepreneurship

Times are challenging for the new CEO of Google (Larry Page) especially when Google is at a war with the other hot pre-ipo start-ups like Facebook, Twitter, Groupon etc. My inquisitive mind wanted to know more about the personality traits of Larry Page and see how he'd be currently leading Google so I started searching on him for his leadership attributes / personality traits.

I stumbled upon a bunch of videos uploaded on the Stanford website. I specially liked the following one.

In this 4.5 minute video he gives some tips for entrepreneurship. The most important
aspect that he is touching on is "why you should start-up a company"; because you have a better solution to a problem. His is a very software engineering point of view and which I think is a correct approach. Had Google not mastered the search engineering they would not be successful. Search was not new when Google started. Google was in-the-works for a couple years in the Stanford labs while there were giant IT companies employing search websites. Theirs was an engineering approach to solving the problem the best way. It did pay off.

He brings up interesting points which are good take aways for the entrepreneurs like how to be focussed
more on the problem your company is solving than on the funding/VC aspect.

If your idea is not anything new but you have the best solution to the problem in that space the 

 world is bound to come to you.

I had one of my favorite quotes which I am reminded of : "If you don't know the solution it is not a problem but if you don;t understand the problem then this is the real problem!".

So as he says, and which is quite makes sense is your ingenuity in solving the problem. Maximize that!
That will bring you customers and hence the revenues! So I'm thinking Larry is on the right track not paying too much attention to the wall street "clutter" and he is going back to solving problems that Google is facing.

The important thing is he understands what Google's problem is and focusing all effort and eyes on solving those. He is on the right track. We don't care what solutions they come out with. But they are on it!

The problem for Wall Street is that they don't understand Google's problem. I am thinking this might end
up as a problem for them.

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Make the most of your stock position. This works for all types of investors.

Hello All,

I am going to be discuss the trick that I use to make the most of my stock position.

First of all you want to be careful and protect your stock investment when a high volatility is anticipated.

You can subscribe to market news channel or stock news feeds using Google Finance, Yahoo Finance or

your broker etc. 

The most conservative and the best way I find to protect my stock is to buy a put option against the quantity

of my stock. I always make sure I'm buying a quantity of 100 for every put that I want to buy to reduce

my total cost on protecting the stock I own. 

Next the times when the stocks plunge / take a deep dive / gap down by few percentage points. This usually happens in extended hours (Pre-market and after hours) or when there is some PR announcement (expected / unexpected). The best example I can take is the earnings announcements every quarter for a given company.

Earnings are announced pre-market (before the market opens 9.30 a.m. EST) or after markets close (4.00 pm EST). 

Usually you would pay 2-3.5% of your total investment on the put option for a given month. During and post earnings announcement the stock may jump up or down a few percentage points. If it jumps up then you 

are making money of your stock and once it breaks even with the cost of the puts you are in the green line.

If the stocks starts taking a dive as a result of the announcement (in case people did not like the earnings result) then the bleeding would usually continue through the session and may lead into the next day trading session. One way to benefit from this is you can set up an "after-hours stop-limit order" to sell your stock

if it starts falling down .For e.g. if AAPL (APPLE stock) at market close is at 350 and on earnings announcement if the stock starts falling lets say u see the selling (and the price dropping) you can set a comfortable stop - limit and sell your stock as soon as possible. Next day when the market opens most likely 

you will have your put gained by a huge percentage (depending on how much the stock drops). 

Next day if it still keeps dropping you can wait and then when you feel you want to take profits you can sell your puts position with profits.

If you had not sold your stock in the extended house then you would have accumulated a loss on your stock which would be compensated by the put you would have bought on your stock position. Selling your stock position earlier prevents an additional loss on the stock and any additional gain on your puts becomes your profit. 

In summary, the key is to have the ability to trade your stock in the extended hours. Options House / Ameritrade do provide this facility to investors. There may be other brokers too. Also, this tactic

does not require any margin privilege on your trading account. So this works for conservative investors too.

The other key thing is to be very attentive during the news announcements and watch the stock price --

a piece of important advice : You should not try to read the earnings report when it is release; let the wall street guys or the BIG Money guys do it and react because thats what most influentially drives price up or down. You only focus on the real time price (in your brokerage account) and follow the herd. 

As they say trade first ask questions later!

Happy trading!

For more tips you may subscribe to my blog or contact me.

This one's for Chris Paul!

Wall Street slammed Google (GOOG)...

Google stock price fell nearly 8.5% today and was traded 7 times average daily volume. 

1) Google's market share dropped about $15 billion in value. 

2) Todays drop was investors reaction partly due to Larry Page's very short appearance in the earnings conference call. He did not stay to answer potential questions (from wall street analysts and mutual fund investors) on company's future strategy and partly due to increased operational expenses. 

a) Google has hired nearly 2000 employees in the first quarter and plans to add another 4000 by the enod of this year (2011). 

b) Google increased salary compensation by 10% across the board. 

c) Google acquired a new building in New York. (Well this is a real cost which cannot convert into value except appreciation) 

The above 2 costs (a) and (b) are key factors that worried the investors. But does an increase of nearly $1 billion in operation expenses justify the erosion of $15 Billion in market value in one trading day?

The above 2 costs (a) and (b) have already been factored in to the stock price in the earlier part of the quarter when they were (PR) announced. 

So why a drop of $48 in the stock price today? To me it seems like the investors and the smart money managers did not like Larry Page's 349 word act in the earnings conference and hence they dumped their GOOG holdings. 

Larry stated: Unlike Eric Schmidt he is not a wall street focussed CEO; he is a technologist, a product manager to the core. He is what he was when the company began. He is not working for short term investors 

who are looking for quick profits. To this fact he had also mentioned that the operation expenses would give a  beating to the stock. Larry, to the contrary, is focussed on making the company nimble, restructure the management and put the company on the growth track. Google is a huge company and like every other it needs to continuously foster innovation into its existing products and derive and build new ones. To that extent 

it really takes highly skilled talent which takes money to retain and the talent not being lost to the likes of Facebook/Groupon/Twitter/Zynga (the so-called latest hot start-ups in the silicon valley).

Another point I'd like to highlight is that Patrick Pichette, Google's CFO, pointed out that the cost investment in the past paid out this time and which is why Google is doing the act. Considering this claim, we are yet to see the revenue generation due to the current quarters expenses which are to follow in the subsequent quarters. 

Google does search best. It is the leader in the search market with nearly 65% market share (the others being Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo and the rest). As more an more people come online and start using Google, for e.g. Android devices (350K are being activated each day across the world which is a stunning growth) would

increase Google's ad revenue from the existing Google's popular products like Search, Youtube, Android (mobile OS and applications).  

What Google is investing in which could foster growth like Youtube, Android, Chrome?

Driverless car, Solar, Wind farm, Google TV (TV ads is a $60 billion industry). Imagine google getting a significant piece of that. Consider the increasing number of online users each day. 

Google is an innovation-in-the-works company. It has about $36 billion in cash and is confident that it can

generate value with it instead of returning it back to the shareholder. Its not like an oil company where a company ceases to grow at some point in time due to demand/supply dynamics but we have to ask ourselves

have we reached that tipping point in technology sector. 

Google is a workhorse behind a lot of new products and technologies in the Information Technology sector

and there is plenty of growth left in it until we have all the people in the world come online and start searching for information. Until then I see upwards for more cash flow just like in the last couple years.

Hence I think the todays dip creates a big buy opportunity. With the remaining investment money that you 

would have load Goog with 1% of money per day on every dip. It will come out like a soaring green star!

Japan and its series of earthquakes on April 7, 2011

Today April 7, 2011, Japan faced a series of earthquakes after the most severe one that happened on March 11, 2011 followed by a tsunami.

The Worlds most Desirous

Had just another usual day at work. After coming home I check emails, missed calls etc then I hit the gym.
After a lil bit of work out I dived (not literally) myself into the hot tub (spa) to get rid of the workout sores building up since yesterday.

I came back from the gym and had nothing much to do just lazying on the bed wondering to myself "Should I really start playing with that laptop...I thought for a bit and then I dragged myself to snatch the laptop from the table underneath. I opened the browser and typed "www.facebo.."...I was like what the hell!! don't I have anything else "natural" and un-indulging act to do? I quit the browser..and asked what is it that I should focus on...whats the priority item...what needs my attention!!!?...the mundane household stuff...paying those bills...mailing receipts for reimbursement etc...or should I learn something new today. I asked myself what I really wanted..I stopped pondering for a bit and I asked myself again what do people in the world really want! All this pondering lead me to compile a list of the "Worlds most Desirous xyz's...

Okay so here I go and start googling the worlds most desirous things (in order of thought):

1. The worlds most desirous pen : Aurora Diamante fountain pen

Price: $1,470,600
The Aurora Diamante is the most expensive writing instrument till date. Only one is for sale per year. The Aurora Diamante contains over 30 carats of De Beers diamonds on a solid platinum barrel. It has a two-tone, rhodium-treated, 18KT solid gold nib and is personalized with a coat of arms, signature or portrait. Aurora Pens says it is the only over 30 carat pen in the world.

2. The worlds most desirous chocolate: Chuao







3. The worlds most desirous personal car: Bugatti Veyron


This is by far the most expensive street legal car available on the market today. It is the fastest accelerating car reaching 0-60 in 2.6 seconds. It claims to be the fastest car with a top speed of 253 mph+. However, the title for the fastest car goes to the SSC Ultimate Aero which exceed 253 mph pushing this car to 2nd place for the fastest car.





4. The Worlds most desirous house:US $1 Billion

5. The Worlds most desirous computer: iPhone 4g





6. The worlds most desirous brand:Coca Cola





7. The worlds most desirous women : Blake Lively

8.The Worlds most desirous Luxury brand: GUCCI







9. The worlds most desirous male: JOSEPH GORDON LEVITT (Spiderman, The Inception..etc)





10. The worlds most desirous sport : Cricket (goes without saying) ..soccer was..Cricket is!




11. The worlds most desirous cup: ICC world cup 2011

12. The Worlds most desirous cricket celebrity: Sachin Tendulkar a.k.a "God"





13. The worlds most desirous "winning moment": No words only visual...see below:



14. The worlds most desirous nation: Germany


15. The Worlds most desirous vacation spot: Paris, France







16. The worlds most desirous politician: 

Luiz Ináio Lula da Silva

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/02/obama-lula-is-most-popula_n_182433.html


17. The worlds most desirous career: Unemployment with employment benefits (this is my own).


18. The worlds most desirous color: ? ( I think it is blue / black)

11 Gods of Cricket woke up the Space gods and the Alien Gods- Power of a billion plus fans!

Every thing about today April 2 will the biggest...and in billions.. billion plus fans...billions celebrating...billions this billions that...I am just wondering if I could take the birds eye view of India from the satellite how wonderful would it be...just missing t "Energy and passion of the billion plus people"...just imagine every single human alive in india celebrating the victory and singing to the song of praise and pride in chorus...galaxy gods and aliens would wonder what the hell just happened on Earth ...lets go check...The GOds of Cricket have woken the Gods of outer space and the alien world

Is it Mr. Obama? No, it’s cricket

Wankhede stadium before the final. Fotocorp SECURITY ■ Security second only to that for Barack Obama’s November 2010 visit ■ Two-point security for crowd control and counter-terrorism ■ 15,000 security personnel across city — 5,000 at the Wankhede Stadium ■ Paramilitary forces, National Security Guard, Mumbai police’s riot control squad, Rapid Action Force, commando units, Quick Response Team and Force One (elite anti-terror force) on vigil ■ Fire brigade units & multi-speciality ambulances parked outside stadium ■ South Mumbai declared no-fly zone ■ Snipers on high-rise terraces around stadium ■ Ban on parking on streets, even by residents, around Wankhede ■ Navy & coast guard have deployed Fast Attack Craft, patrol vessels and Fast Interceptor Craft to prevent 26/11-like landings ■ Fishermen around Mumbai asked to report any suspicious activity ■ Chopper-aided Marine Commandos (Marcos) on standby ROAD TO STADIUM ■ Two-tier checks: Police to allow only valid ticket-holders in, and CISF to frisk every ticket holder at Wankhede. Police and hospitality and service staff, given bar-coded ID cards, to be frisked too ■ Once inside stadium, it will be difficult to get out. No one will be allowed back in once they leave ■ Only VIP convoys can drive to stadium; rest must walk at least a 10-minute distance from parking lots ■ Crime branch to check on all foreign fans TEAM ■ Force One commandos to escort teams from the Taj to stadium and back ■ Gateway of India, opposite the Taj, off bounds for the public since Thursday ■ Combat vehicles and Quick Response Teams on 24x7 vigil at the Taj

Read More : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110402/jsp/nation/story_13800355.jsp#

More security at ICC Cricket worldcup finals than for Obama - Hindustan Times

The scale of security provided for the World Cup final to be played at Wankhede stadium on Saturday will probably go down in history as the biggest-ever organised by the Mumbai Police. The mammoth security arrangements have dwarfed that extended during US President Barack Obama's historic visit to the city in November 2010 on may counts.

While Obama's visit was essentially a heightened protocol affair, security for the World Cup final match is an extremely complex and elaborate affair.

The Mumbai Police have called upon all state and central agencies for help to protect the entire city while India battles with Sri Lanka to lift the Cup. Obama's security cover was restricted to south Mumbai.

“I am witnessing this kind of security arrangement for the first time in my life,” said Mumbai police commissioner Arup Patnaik.

He added that the state police, Anti-Terrorism Squad, several central agencies like the National Security Guard and Central industrial Security Force. Even the country's defence forces — the Army, Navy and Air Force, are pitching in.

In anticipation of the VVIP flights, the airport has suspended runway repairs on Saturday.

The presence of President Pratibha Patil and her Sri Lankan counterpart Mahinda Rajapaksa, who features high on the LTTE radar, at the stadium has necessitated stringent security measures.

Moreover, the presence of several high-profile dignitaries, including Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party senior leader Nitin Gadkari, has further complicated the security scenario. In addition each player and the support staff of both cricket teams too have to be provided tight security.



More security than for Obama - Hindustan Times

212 degrees - The Extra Degree

Did you know the difference between the good and the Great?

A degree makes all the damn difference!!!