The Intelligent investor by Ben Graham

The Intelligent investor – Source: http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Revised-ebook/dp/B000FC12C8

This book is so heavy on the head with it’s concepts that I had read a few hundred pages and took almost a 1-year sabbatical from it. This had to be the second book on my kindle in order of my Guru’s – Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett.

Needless to say, this book was my second purchase on amazon.com kindle device via amazon.com kindle’s Whispernet service which is flawless. I also liked the level of personalization that the kindle device provides to avid book readers like me and this itself makes for the switch from the deadtree version to the kindle version more effortless! Thanks amazon.com for this nice touch!

I will post reviews as I read up the next hundred pages from where I left off last year (Oct 2008).

Older posts on this book read can be found here and here

IIFT EMIB

IIFT EMIB 2004 - 2006 (Source: http://www.iift.edu)

It’s been exactly five long years since I joined for my EMIB (Executive Masters in International business) from the prestigious Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi! I joined it on 9th August 2004. Time flies! But can say for sure that this degree has been my best investment made on education till date. With zero opportunity cost (it was held only on weekends – non stop for one and a half years) and the schedule was honestly grueling with no respite and kept us busy on weekdays with assignments, quizzes every weekend, mid-term exams, classes and of course, the end terms.

Berkshire Hathaway Annual report 2008 / a must read

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2008ar/2008ar.pdf

You can’t be mistaken when you are reading from the greatest punters in the Financial space – Warren Buffett. The Chairman’s letter to shareholders did not dissappoint me. It was filled with the usual interesting titbits on his insurance ops and business, the concept of insurance ‘float’, his profit margins, the stake he took in Goldman Sachs, GE etc. during the troubling cashflow starved times of late 2008, the usual caveats on on the derivatives business and the future of Berkshire! Oh btw – there was no mention of “fruit of the loom” as marketwatch said there would be!

As I have said many times before, I am a self proclaimed protege of Warren Buffett and anything he does interests me. His annual reports are always looked forward to by much ado and this time was especially different to get the views of the man who I consider is king in stock market investing alongwith with his mentor Ben Graham and associate, Charlie Munger.

Wall Street – the movie / 1987

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_(film)

I saw this captivating movie on TV today and it really sums up what has been happening. A great movie about a young broker who decides to go the fast track unethical way of conveying insider information but thankfully stops short but does get nailed towards the end.

Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko in the movie) and Charlie Sheen (Bud Fox in the movie) have acted well! Can’t believe that 21 years ago, they still had good old PC’s and big satellite phones to communicate which is pretty much what we have today but more compact and sophisticated machines – as one would expect. But, the point is, it could well have been 2008 and not 1987!

The age of turbulence – Alan Greenspan’s memoir

http://www.amazon.com/Age-Turbulence-Adventures-New-World/dp/1594201315

I am going to start reading up this book starting next week once I am done with ‘The Snowball – Warren Buffett and the business of life’.

While critics are holding Greenspan responsible for advocating ARM’s way back in his testimony to Congress in 2004 and his keeping of interest rates low from the days of the dot com bubble burst, I still admire Greenspan for what he did for the US economy. Its easy to criticize the Federal reserve Chairman but what were the Wall Street companies and their hugely overpaid CEO’s doing? Who will track Dick Fuld (CEO of the now disgraced/bankrupt Lehman Brothers that sold itself to Barclays some weeks back) or who will track the activities of Merrill Lynch’s ex-CEO who was fired or who will track the activities of AIG’s ex-CEO who insured a whole load of CDS that nearly sunk AIG.

Will post my review once done but it will take some time to read up both books!

The Snowball – Warren Buffett and the business of life

http://www.amazon.com/Snowball-Warren-Buffett-Business-Life/dp/0553805096

I bought this book from Strand book stall at Manipal chambers, Bangalore today. This book was just released 2 days ago on the 28th September 2008 and lo and behold it’s already in circulation in India – that is cool.

I am a self proclaimed Warren Buffett protege and fan since I first read his books by Mary Buffett (Buffettology) and the Warren Buffett Way (2nd ed.) since 2003.

Anything about his investment habits interests me. This book written by Alice Schroeder – a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley is going to be my food for thought in the coming days! Will post my detailed review once I am done reading through this massive book that I will be forced to read at home due to its huge size – its almost 960 pages! The book I bought is Printed in Great Britain and is not the US print.

Buffett swoops down with $5 billion capital infusion into Goldman Sachs

http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/investors/financials/current/annual-reports/entire-2007-annual-report.pdf

This was expected. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), an exceptionally run institution could not beat the heat of Wall Street and lately its stock was also hammered down by investors. They converted themselves to a bank a couple of days ago and this immediately meant the ’smartest man in any room’ – the legendary Warren Buffett and my guru  swoop down and make a minimum $ 5 billion dollars in preferential stock and an option to purchase another $ 5 billion at a later date.

AIG struggling to stay afloat – no pun intended!

http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/the-us-subprime-crisis-increasing-chance-of-a-us-recessionburst-of-the-us-housing-bubble/

If you have read Warren Buffet’s letters to shareholders and his book – The Warren Buffet way (2nd ed.), then you know what a float is. I am not trying to strike a relation or anything to this problem but am just stating that insurance business is supposed to insure others and AIG (American International group) had that obligation to keep but something clearly went astray.

Ecofinglobe.com and its statistics from an year ago

I was chancing to look upon my blog’s readership and it has skyrocketed in last few months. To give you an idea of how much the readership for http://www.ecofin.wordpress.com has gone up by, Alexa rating has shown a consistent rise in my webpage ranking (it currently stands at 755139 worldwide and its India ranking is better at 58137. Furthermore, my year old blog stats shows my blog to have averaged 9999 hits way in May 2007. The current count stands at 77791.

Above means nothing if people don’t read posts. Simple page views/hits serve no value absolutely. The most important indicator that indicates the health status of a blog is its post:comment ratio. My blog’s average post:comment ratio is at about 1:2. This means, for every post I put up, I get double the # of comments. This ratio was about 2:1 last year at about the same time and it had not even reached breakeven. So, it is a satisfaction that my blog is a success in terms of these critical metrics.

Thank you, all for making this blog readable! Its only my readers who can turnaround this blog and I hope to keep you as repeat readers so the value of this blog is enhanced further!

Keep visiting back – you know where to look for me: http://www.ecofinglobe.com!

Texas Instruments – BA II Plus Professional Financial calculator acquired!

I bought this advanced financial calculator (the Texas Instruments BA II PLUS Professional) for all my complicated calculations and to manage my portfolio of assets. Actually, this is primarily used only by CFA’s and CPA’s as its one of the only two authorized calculators for their examinations etc. Its cool!