On my travels,I met a property developer from Karnal,Haryana.
He gave me some priceless advice in Punjabi on Real Estate:
“Barah saal mein roni property bhi soni ho jaandi hai”
i.e “In 12 years, even a horrible property will become lovely”
Category: Anecdotes
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A lesson for Equity Analysts
“I particularly remember the time I gave (the research director) my paper on the banking industry. I felt very proud of my work. However, he read through it and said, ‘This is useless. What makes the stock go up and down?’ That comment acted as a spur. Thereafter, I focused my analysis on seeking to identify the factors that were strongly correlated to a stock’s price movement as opposed to looking at all the fundamentals. Frankly, even today, many analysts still don’t know what makes their particular stocks go up and down.”- said Stanley Druckenmiller
“When I first went to work at Citibank in 1968, they had a slogan “Scared Money Never Wins”
It’s important to play judiciously, to have more successes than failures,and to make more on your successes than you lose on your failures.
But it’s crippling to have to avoid all failures, and insisting on doing so can’t be a winning strategy.It may guarantee you against losses , but its likely to guarantee you against gains as well.”-Howard Marks
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Management Lessons:Adani Style
In the late 1990s, an employee of Adani Exports took a wrong call in sugar trading, resulting in a Rs 20-crore loss. Fearing he would be sacked, he apologized for the grave mistake and handed in his resignation letter. Gautam Adani, in his thirties then, tore up the resignation and told him with a smile: “I know you will not make a similar mistake in future because of this lesson. Why should your next employer benefit from this learning when I have paid the price for it?”
Close associates say Adani has a great ability to win over people, political or otherwise. When Mundra port was being built, a consultant came up with a novel idea of building floating break-waters to contain sea waves at the cost of Rs 7 crore. The experiment sunk — literally — within 20 minutes of its execution. Adani, who watched the disaster calmly, turned to the consultant and put his arm around his shoulder. “Well tried,” he said before leaving. The consultant broke into tears and worked for the group for the next 15 years.-from ET
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How to be a contrarian Fund Manager
In 1999, when his portfolio was composed of everything no one wanted, Walter Schloss was asked how, even if his own convictions were unshaken, he could ensure that his investors stuck with him. Being a true contrarian required just one rule, he said: “Never tell a client what they own.”-from Economist