“I believe that our society’s “mistakephobia” is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested andthose who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to real learning. Asa result, school typically doesn’t prepare young people for real life unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasingothers. In my opinion, that’s why so many students who succeed in school fail in life”.-Ray Dalio
Category: Quotes
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How Marwadis got screwed by NSEL
“Maximum brokers are marwadis and their clients also are marwadis and number of marwadis who were invested in this do not want to take risk in the equity market. They wanted some assured type of scheme. We have burnt fingers in real estate funding and number of places, though some money, some stake should be there and assured return will be coming. That is why maximum marwadis are there because our brokers are also marwadis.”-said Arun Dalmia, Secretary NSEL Investor Forum
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Prem Watsa Quotes
Considered as Canada’s Warren Buffett, he is in the news for purchasing Blackberry
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How Twitter will be priced
Goldman Sachs will start with the latest transaction value for Twitter, approximately $10.5 billion, and adjust it up for the improvement in both the overall market and in social media companies (especially Facebook) since the start of the year. They will then create a sales pitch for that value, using the pricing of other social media companies (Facebook and Linkedin, in particular) to argue that Twitter is a bargain at their estimated price. (My guess is that they will focus on the number of users and how Twitter looks like a bargain on that basis.) That sales pitch will be tried out on institutional investors for effect, with the salespersons’ ears especially attuned to either too much enthusiasm from these investors (a sign that the price was set too low) or to little (a signal that it is et too high). The institutional investors, not having a clue about the fair value of Twitter, will talk to each other and ratchet up or down their own enthusiasm based upon what they sense in their compatriots. The investment bank, having tweaked the price based on investor reactions will then do a discounted cash flow valuation, reverse engineered to deliver that price as the final value. (A good test of their valuation skills will be in how well they hide this reverse engineering to make it look like the valuation led to the pricing rather than the other way around). Finally, having learned from the Facebook fiasco that it is better to under price rather than over, they will knock off about 15% off their estimated price/value to set the offering price. At the risk of being hopelessly wrong in hindsight, I would be very surprised if I saw Twitter priced lower than $10 billion or higher than $15 billion, unless there is a major market disturbance- Aswath Damodaran
We are shutting down mines and our few factories, convinced that these actions are pro-poor. We de-industrialise Coimbatore and Ludhiana, by forcing 16-18 hour power cuts on them, even before we have successful industrialisation. Incidentally, while by no means the only one, power-cuts were a significant factor in de-industrialising West Bengal. Some 20 years ago, I had gone to pay a visit to Mr Dugar, who was my company’s landlord in Kolkata. After several generations of Dugars doing business in difficult terrains in Assam, he was busy selling his tea gardens in Assam and buying some in Munnar. I congratulated him on the improvement of the power situation in Kolkata. “Dugar saab, ab to power cuts ka problem chala gaya hai, aapke Kalkatte mein.” He actually started crying.
“Rao saab, aisa mat kahiye. Kalkatte key sab kaarkhaane band ho gaye hain. Isi liye power ka problem kum ho gaya hai. Yeh koi tareeka hai power cut ki samasya ko solve karne ka? Yeh to bahut hee bura hua hai.” As you look at the chunks of land all around Kolkata, Howrah, Sealdah, Garden Reach, where factories are shut, the equipment is rusting, grass is growing in areas that were earlier paved, one begins to understand Dugar. In the coming years, get prepared to see these sights in other parts of the country too. There is a saying: What Bengal thinks/ does today, the rest of India thinks/ does tomorrow. We are determined to create a de-industrialised moonscape across India. All of India in 2035 could, and probably will, look like Bengal does today.-wrote Jerry Rao