Tu chal, Main aaya.

Its ISEP season in AIM right now. Including me, 40 students have been declared (on the basis of GPA) eligible to go on exchange. Since AIM has tie ups with a number of good colleges around the globe, all eligible students can go on exchange if they opt for it.

Going on exchange is not free. It has some undiscountable costs:

1) Air fare and living expenses, which goes up to 300K INR in some cases.

2) The extra pressure of finishing MRR in less than 10 weeks (Others will get 18 weeks).

3) In all probability, one opting for exchange will not be able to attend campus interviews.

4) Those opting for exchange will not be able to attend elective on offer in final sem.

I've decided not to opt for exchange mostly because of reason number 4.

I firmly believe that the choice of a school for ISEP (International Students Exchange Program) should be guided only by its "fit" with my short term & long term plans. e.g If I want to specialize in finance, I'd look for the electives on offer and faculty, as well as college's reputation in finance. In some cases, the Reputation of college may overwhelm everything else (who would not like to go to Wharton or Columbia).

However, the way my batch mates are selecting their school, really perplexes me. Barring a few, most of them seem to be die hard believer in hindi saying, "Tu Chal main aaya" (U please proceed, I'll follow). Or may be I'm wrong, they are all making intelligent choices, only i'm not able to see it.

Whatever! Why should I be worrying?

Hmm... may be because I'll miss some of them as they used to take level of discussion in the class to next higher level.

If you want something...

"If you want something, all the universe will conspire to help you achieve it".

Alchemist, Paulo coelho.

I fell in love with this line the moment I read it. This is so very inspiring. It always pushes me to dream, and work hard to convert that dream into reality.
A couple of years into my previous job and I'd realized that I'm going no where. There wasn't anything very challenging about what I was doing. I've not taken birth to do these mundane job all my life - This feeling was getting stronger with each passing day. Things had come to a point where neither the promise of reward nor punishment was able to get me interested in my job. Although, my boss never complained, but I used to feel that I'm drawing salary for contributing nothing. I was certainly looking for a change.
I decided that I'll do MBA. Wrote CAT to get into IIMs... the first choice for any MBA aspirant in India, but failed. I took it up as a challenge and decided to write CAT again. I came close, but cudn't clear it again. At some point of time, I'd also thought of doing MBA from abroad, but there wasn't enough money. So I wrote CAT again, this time too I came close but ultimately could not succeed.
I thought, its time. I should give up my dream of doing masters and start looking for opportunities in other companies.
But then, I wasn't aware that some conspiracy was already going on. One after another, bit by bit, everything started falling in place. All of a sudden, one day I filled up form of AIM and took a flight to Mumbai to write AIMAT. All of a sudden I got a call from XLRI. All of a sudden one day I took a decision that even if I don't get ADB scholarship, I'll take education loan and will join AIM MBA. It looked impossible, but I got edu loan too. One by one, everything fell in line and I realized that against all odds, I'm in Manila atending classes.
Its almost a year, and I can feel that some kinda conspiracy is again going on. I'm destined to get, what I so desperately want. Amen!!!

In KualaLumpur

Its been a while since I posted on my blog. Afterall so many things were happening at once that it had become difficult to find time for writting anything. First and foremost was ever present pressure of preparing for CFA level-II exam. Although the syllabus is not infinite, its taking more time to cover than level-I's syllabus.
Then the project work in China Bank had also started taking its share of time. Good thing is that with each passing day the work here is getting more interesting and challenging :)
I'm bringing my wife and daugter here in june, so was also busy selecting a condo. Good thing that I was able to find one :).

My portfolio which I started last month also took its own share of time. By the way, its doing good. However, I have yet to start trading in forex which will certainly help me diversify some of the systematic risk associated with Indian stock market.

Apart from all this, what took most of my time during past month was certainly the uncertainty asociated with my internship/Action Consultancy. I was supposed to go to Singapore, however my application for training pass/VISA started taking more time than it should have in normal circumstances. It was nothing less than devastating to know that after waiting for more than two weeks, my training pass request has ultimately been rejected for the industrial quota for that sector had already exhusted. It was really magnanimous on my company's part for they gave us an option of coming to their KL office where they also arranged for our accomodation. So this is how I landed up in KL instead of Singapore for my AC. My internship here would focus on commodity trading and finding a mathematical model for maximizing pofits.

Yesterday, with Russ, I went to KLCC where this boy was trying hard to capture both his parents as well as petronas tower in the frame. This pic certainly explains the height of this building which for a couple of years claimed the title of "World's tallest building".

SHEKHAR's Portfolio

Many a times in our Classes, during class discussion the topics used to revolve around a question: What makes one happy? I believe everyone will have a different reason to feel happy about. But for me... I guess, its always the challenge of doing something different from the rest. Something new and chellnging.

For past few days, I'm feeling good, because I was finally able to convince two of my friends to invest a sizable amount of their money in my portfolio. A portfolio which guarantees a minimum return in the time when the market is most volatile and is clearly not taking any direction. My special thanks to Gaurav sharma and Pankaj Dhawan for they were the first to show confidence in me (Of course, its a different matter that I offered them a highly lucrative, guaranteed annual return of 20% )

Today, I formally announced opening of my portfolio investment services and started marketing it to potential group of investor. All day, instead of preparing for exams, I was busy preparing terms and conditions for investing in Shekhar's portfolio. It took me an hour to come up with a formula to calculate return of my portfolio for a quarter. And throughout the evening , I was busy marketing it to different set of investors. It felt good when number of investors showed confidence and promised to invest their money in my portfolio.

Lots and lots and lots of more work remains to be done. Have to prepare Balance sheet, Proforma Income statement, Ledger account of all investor, Proforma for account statements that I'll be sending to investors and most importantly my model of equity valuation on the basis of which I'll decide whether I'll go ahead and invest in a particular stock or not.

Many people have asked me why am I doing all this? Why not I limit all this activity to my own money only. The answer lies may be in my past ventures where I used to invest on gut feel only. I used to lose money and then get out totally, then reinvest, and again commit same mistakes. I'm expecting that the sheer fact that this time I own the responsibility of generating money for others, will force me to "inculcate an investing discipline" in me.

There is one more angle to it. I'm thinking that today, I've less money but enough time to experiment and learn. In future, I'll certainly get busy with job and then I'll have money but no time to learn and experiment.

Whatever, I'm looking forward to the day, when people will start investing in my portfolio for the returns that it'll generate and not for the 10% annual return that I'm guaranteering now.

Night Outs

Another night out. 4th in a row.

I've forgotten, when was the last time that I slept at a proper time. As far as I remember, in last one and half month, only one night I slept at 8 in the evening. Most of the other nights I sleep only after sunrise (after 5:20 am).

Again, I've realized that without any fail, if its an off day at college, I sleep after well past 8 am, only to get up after 3 pm and hence miss my lunch.

Somebody told me today, that for every night that one doesnot sleeps, he actually looses one day from his life.

If true, this certainly is not a good news for me. I've already lost many days and don't know how many more days I'm going to loose, in case I've to pass CFA level-II.

Only 60 more days to go. I gotta be reading ...!!!

Sleepy tour of Pagsanjan fall (Laguna)

SSAR officers and specially our overseas student president had announced Pagsanjan fall tour well in advance. Going by the signatures on sign up sheet, it was expected that more than 50-60 students would join this tour.
The result for our quanti papers came on 14th evening, and with this came jubiliation for some and disappointment for some. All the enthu for laguna visit kinda disappeared in one go.

As I wasn't feling very elated after seeing my result, I was also not sure myself if I wanted to come. Then came Sandeep, with a plausible logic that probably this is the only chance that most of our batchmates are going together on a trip, so I shud definately come. Many of us six floorites acceded to this logic and decided to get up early in the morning so that to be on time for our trip starting 07:00 am.

However, most of us were up till late in the morning. In fact I cud not sleep all night. This reflected in most of us sleeping all through the trip.

After 4 hrs long bus jorney, when we reached our first stop, river view resort, from where we had to take small boats (Kayak), I was so tired I decided to stay in resort only and take rest. Preetam Chandra and Saurabh arya also decided to stay with me. After taking some rest in the resort, we went to see an exhibition in the city.

We finally came back 10:00 in the evening only to sleep till very late the following morning :)

My first stage performance

When I chose learning guitar as my walkabout I'd never thought that I'll perform on stage. As deliverable, I'd said that I'll perform in front of class only.

In fact, we weren't ourselves sure, till this morning, that we are going to perform during the international week's cultural night. However, the organizers confirmed to us by 15:00 hrs today, that they have included a performance from us in their list. Myself and my HBO walkabout partner, Preetam Chandra, were both happy and scared at the same time. none of us had ever performed anything in front of an audience. We were nervous because we knew that we have not got enough time to practice together. In the hindsight, I think we did good by sleeping few hours before our performance as it certainly helped in calming us a bit.
In the end, it was good to know that almost everyone liked our performance & appreciated it more when they came to know that we had less than 6 weeks time to learn from the scratch.
In he video here, Myself and Preetam (Me on right) are playing Instrumental version of "Can't help falling in love" by Elvis presley.