Category: BookReview

The Book ‘The Drunkard’s Walk-How randomness rules our lives’ is written by Leonard Mlodinow.

Uncertainty, randomness, chance or luck is an essential part of our lives.

Yet we understand very little of it. Of course, in India, we attribute good luck or bad outcomes to karma or “God’s wish.”

The book tries to explain randomness using mathematics,probability and statistics.

Written in a humorous way, the Book explains with numerous instances how these basic tools can help us understand randomness.

One example which strikes me is the example of a Frenchwoman called Jeanne Calment

When she was 90 years of age, she made what is possibly the first reverse mortgage deal.

She stuck a deal with a 47 year old lawyer that in return for a small monthly payment, he will get her apartment on her death with no further payments.

The lawyer thought this was a great deal.The average life expectancy in France was 80 years and obviously, this lady had overstayed her welcome on Planet Earth by 10 years.

He took the offer, not realizing that the relevant issue was not whether she should die in minus 10 years but that here life expectancy,given that she had already made it to ninety, was about six more years.

The lawyer kept making the payments and waited for Jeanne to die.

The result was not what he expected.

Jeanne passed away at the age of 122.The lawyer had died long before that !

If the lawyer had known Baye’s theory, he would not have taken up this deal.

Do buy the book if interested in probabilities, randomness and luck.

The Book “Dream Big-Let your Financial Plan make your Dreams come true” is written by Dr.Mukesh Jindal and Arunraj VS.

This book was gifted to me by Dr.Mukesh Jindal and hence I feel a bit obligated to write about it.

The Book is basically “Financial Planning-101” for the beginner investor.

The Book covers the basic concepts of financial planning and explains how to go about financial planning to meet one’s goals.

The authors do a good job in explaning ,in an easy to read manner, concepts such as Mutual Funds,Insurance,NPS,Other Financial Savings Instruments etc

The Book also covers on how to protect your legacy via Wills,Private Trusts etc

Do buy this Book if you are a beginner investor or just starting on your investment journey

Exhilarating. 

This is the adjective that comes to mind when on reads “Take Me Home” by Rashmi Bansal, which covers the stories of 20 entrepreneurs from small town India.

The entrepreneurs come in all varieties and sizes-some are Engineer-MBA types, some are 12th pass etc.

They hail from all parts of India-Srinagar to Coimbatore to Cuttack to Rajkot to Guwahati to Meerut etc

And yet the stories of their struggle to get their businesses up and running,tangling with the bureaucracy,attracting talent,getting capital…there is a quintessential Indianness about them

I enjoyed reading each one of the entrepreneurship stories and some common takeaways I found across each one of them were as follows:

• Importance of a supportive spouse…no entrepreneur can survive if his spouse doesn’t support him !
• Customer centricity-Customer Bhagwan Che…you have to give quality products/services…don’t shortchange your customer
• Determination & Grit….there will be thousands of setbacks…don’t let any get you down…In one of the stories, a Kashmiri Lady entrepreneur was fired upon with 900 rounds of ammunition by people who opposed her College.Yet she did not give up.
• Importance of a good backer with Capital.Was surprised to see how so many of these enterprises were supported by our much maligned PSU Banks
• Importance of inspiration.You can be inspired by successes in other countries,other Indian entrepreneurs etc.One entrepreneur returned to India from the US when he read Abdul Kalam’s message “What is the fun of basking in the glory of another’s country?”
• The importance of networking…in our huge, complex and diverse country, commonalities of religion,region,caste,alumni etc can open doors

The book is peppered with Hindi phrases as some of the entrepreneurs are not comfortable with English.Yet this gives the Book a “Mitthi Ki Kushboo” which is charming and earthy.

One observation which I particularly liked was by Murugan, an entrepreneur from Coimbatore:

As a child, he observed stray dogs in his locality.

He wondered where they lived, what they ate? Though he never found specific answers to such questions, a few months later he could see – they had grown, they had survived.

“I understood that survival is automatic, it is natural, it is not in our hands. So every human being should try to do something beyond survival.’

Do buy this book if interested in Indian entrepreneurship.

“Not just an Accountant” is the Memoirs of Vinod Rai, who as Comptroller & Auditor General of India shocked the country with the expose of mammoth scams in the Govt.

Just as T N Seshan changed the profile of the  Election Commisioner’s Office, similarly Vinod Rai changed the profile of what was considered to be a low profile Audit office.

The early chapters of the Book cover his career when he was an IAS officer belonging to the Kerala state cadre.

He narrates some of the challenges he faced there…the diversity of the challenges makes me aware of the tough conflicts IAS officers face while performing their duties.

The later chapters cover the role of the office of CAG and goes into depth of the five key scams unearthed there:

1. Telecom Scam – The truly shocking scam where he exposes that Manmohan Singh knew what has happening but did not stop it.
2. Coal Scam- Another scam which Manmohan Singh tried to stop but was too weak to implement his own orders.
3. Commonwealth Scam- This scam is astounding in its audacity-Suresh Kalmadi floated a private entity to use Govt funds for the Games !
4. KG Gas Scam- How Reliance ran rings around the Govt in its negotiations is again breath taking.One is by turns amused and shocked at the shenanigans that Reliance got away with.
5. The Aviation Scam-How the then Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel murdered Air India by needless purchase of aircraft and also screwed the Indian aviation sector by giving non-reciprocal flying freedoms to foreign airlines.

The book is written in a very easy to read manner and the integrity and professionalism of the author leaps from every page.

However it is also a depressing read as one realizes the extent to which our tax money is stolen and frittered by the powers that be.

Do buy this book if interested in knowing how Govt of India functions.

This is an interesting book for me to review as I am not really a technical analysis kind of guy.

There is no denying that, many times in the markets, it is better to be in cash than be fully invested.

The Book “5 Moving Averages that beat Buy and Hold” by Steve Burns & Holly Burns give 5 Moving Averages that one can use to protect oneselves in a falling/sideways market

These averages are to be used on the index and not on individual stocks as “the index can’t go bankrupt,issue false earnings etc”

The five moving averages are as follows:

• 200 Day Average.Buy/Hold when index is more than 200 Day Average on the last day of the Month.Else move to cash
• 250 Day Average.Buy/Hold when index is more than 250 Day Average at the end of the day.Else move to cash
• 50 Day SMA & 200 Day SMA. Buy/Hold when the 50 Day SMA is more than the 200 Day SMA.Else move to cash
• 20 Day SMA & 200 Day SMA. Buy/Hold when the 20 Day SMA is more than the 200 Day SMA.Else move to cash
• 50 Day SMA & 100 Day SMA. Buy/Hold when the 50 Day SMA is more than the 100 Day SMA.Else move to cash

The Book has back tested these formulas and makes a decent case.

There may be additional factors such as whiplashes,trading costs,impact costs etc which may impact the results in an actual trading environment

Do buy this book if interested in an introduction to Moving Averages.