kondum Quest

9 weeks away stands an MBA degree. Am I ready for re-entry into the real world?

2010-03-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

Christ The Redeemer in Rio - We were there on a foggy day. Still looks cool!

9 weeks. Yes. Fortunately or unfortunately it is 9 weeks. As we head into Spring Break at Sloan it is impossible not to look ahead and wonder: “Wow, 9 more weeks”. My last semester at Sloan ends in the 2^nd week of May. Graduation is on June 4.

After almost $150K (ok, lesser than that for me), Merton model, Modigliani-Miller, Marginal Cost/Revenue, “building off that”, co-branding, term sheets, “enhancing” a CEO, Convertible Preferred Shares, Redeemable Preferred Shares, Memo to Jeff Immelt on how to get GE back on track, trying to sell batteries to Chinese bicycle manufacturers, Direct approach presentations, Ad Networks, East Coast Vs West Coast in Private Equity, Five Lenses, 7S Models, Cialdini, and many more. It feels strange to be leaving this Business School bubble.

Sooooooo where were we? Ah yes, last time I wrote in this space I was in Sao Paulo. In January! Feb has passed and March is almost over – and I’ve not written in a while. Some things don’t change I guess. I’ll try to summarize Jan/Feb/March now.

If what I write does not make sense, it’s because I am on a Bolt Bus from Boston to NYC and the lady sitting next to me is wolfing down a delish bacon sausage breakfast sandwich. It is 10 am on Sunday morning, I am hungry, and I have Jay Z yelling in my ear “Yeah…I am at Brooklyn. Now I am down at Tribeca, right next to DeNiro. But I will be hood forever. I am the new Sinatra….” (btw Jay Z’s Empire State of Mind is my new fav tune.).

January 2010 – Brazil and Argentina

Three things that I remember from this trip:

1. Live Football match in Buenos Aires: Absolutely recommend it if you are in BA. One of the best live sports experiences I’ve had (if not THE best). Fans went crazy the entire duration of the match. And the opposing team’s fans were guarded by gun wielding police for the entire time.

2. Weekend (or a week) in Floripa, Brazil: This is a beach island to the south of Brazil. About 40 Beautiful beaches – lots of them for surfing. Try the Brava and Mole beaches. And make sure to hang out at some of the beach bars. People stay there for a while and start dancing and singing for no reason. The Brazilians are one happy bunch (at least on the beaches). Oh also, the women here are in super shape. Apparently they prepare for the summer by dieting for the entire year.

3. Ipanema Beach in Rio, Brazil: We got lucky and ended up staying at a sweet spot in Rio. ½ block from Ipanema and 2 blocks from the Lagoon. So I went running in the morning by the Lagoon and chilled on the beach the rest of the day. The Ipanema beach area is simply the best. You can walk to any grocery store to buy whatever you like, or go to an expensive restaurant. Very relaxing.

February and March 2010 – Back in the US

Needless to say it was a rude adjustment when we got back to a wintry Boston on Feb 1. Although I was actually ready to be back (30 days away from home is a bit much, especially without a certain person not being with you, even if it’s in nice and hot weather).

WARNING: If you are averse to reading about typical Business School stuff, please stop reading from here on.

This semester I am in two really good classes:

-CEO perspectives

-Global Economic Challenges

In CEO perspectives we have a Fortune 50 CEO address us (some of us get to go to dinner with the CEO too) for 2h every week. We are free to ask him/her any questions.

It may not seem like a big deal but if I sit back and think about it is an incredible opportunity to be in the same room with the following CEOs:

Jeff Immelt (GE),

Jim Sinegal (Costco),

Dan Mudd (ex-Fannie Mae, now Fortress),

Strauss Zelnick (ex-20^th Century Fox, this dude became the head of Fox at age 32), Ray Elliott (Boston Scientific),

Nigel Travis (Dunkin Donuts, he introduced bacon-topped donuts to our class!).

We have about 5 more in the next few weeks including the

CEO of Sprint,

Boston Celtics,

Citrix,

NBC Universal,

Ford Motor Company,

and SAP.

No question is out of bounds. In general students ask expecting questions but some of my classmates asked very probing and insightful questions. Dan Mudd got asked real tough questions about why let things get out of control at Fannie Mae. Actually one of my classmates really pushed him – they got into a shouting match. For the most part Dan handled it well but it was clear that he was not super comfortable talking about it.

Most notable quote from these peeps so far in class:

Immelt: “Yeah you go home every night beaten up, tired, listening to complaints, and wondering why you want this job. But then you get up the next morning and look at yourself in the mirror and go “You are the man!”

Immelt (classmate asks him, what does he think about this Leno and Conan): "Look, I respect them both. At the end of the day, the TV business is small. CBS (top TV station) makes $400M a year. Margins are low. I can make that much by selling 2 aircraft engines and at a high margin! I dont worry too much about TV"

In Global Economic Challenges we have a professor who was in the George W Bush White House. She is a very good teacher. We learnt how to look at warning signs for financial and currency crises from a macro-economic point of view. We analyzed some of the euro area countries that are in trouble (yes, that includes you Greece). Will the euro survive. And just how credible is this Brazil and India taking over the world thing.

Bottom line from this class: we are in for a hard time in the US in the next 5-10 years. Slow growth, inflation, and high taxes are unavoidable. (we looked at hard numbers for this and I can’t imagine how this will not happen). Brazil, India, and China will experience a phenomenal growth period (unless something crazy happens). China is expected to take over the leadership in GDP by 2020 (on a PPP basis). India is not going to be far behind.

All signs point to focusing on emerging markets (BRIC or what are now called the Frontier bloc) for investing, business ideas, or natural resources. Let’s see how this turns out.

Until next time: laters.

Ola from Sao Paulo - The World never ceases to surprise you!

2010-01-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

View of Sao Paulo from our Hotel Rooftop

Those of you who know me probably are aware that I think that I am one of those who has traveled the world and know most of what there is to know about it. Well, this is one of those situations when I am made aware how little I know about it.

My team and I arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil on January 3 for a 3 week consulting project as part of our course work at Business school. We finished our first week here and whoa it has been a whirlwind week full of surprises, shock, moments of awe, and helplessness (is this a word?).

- Sao Paulo and its confines house 27 M people. Yes, you read it correctly : 27 Million people. Making Sao Paulo the world's largest urban dwelling in the world. And here I was thinking Sao Paulo is Rio's poor cousin with about 1000 people.

- The infrastructure in Sao Paulo is nothing short of awesome. Wide and organized highways, paved streets with clear signs, tons of bridges and tunnels. etc. Why am I harping on this? Well, let me tell you why. The World likes to compare Brazil to India and China and if what I've seen so far in Sao Paulo is any indication Brazil is about 20-30 years ahead of India in terms of infrastructure.

-The demographic of people here is so diverse that we (as people of Indian origin) can pass off as Brazilians. There are a lot of native Brazilians who have the skin tone as us. No wonder we have everyone come upto us and speak in rapid Portuguese - and we have to be lame and say "sorry we dont speak Portuguese". Decades of cross-breeding has led to a diverse mix of races here. No doubt about it.

-Lifestyle of people (again from a week of observation) is crazy. We hit up bars near our hotel on Wed and Thu and they were packed at all times in the evening. We went to an Irish pub to watch Florida Vs Alabama on Thu nite and the bar was packed with young Sao Paulans. Of the 200-300 people there there about 5-10 watchin the game. People walk into restaurants at 11 pm to start dinner and hang out till 1 am. Not sure when they have time to sleep and work!

-Food has been very good. I would not call it great yet but people tell me we still have not gone to the better places. Grilled beef ('Grelhados picanha') and Grilled Pintada (Pintada is this Brazilian fish only available here) have so far been my favorites. Chopp is a Brazilian beverage that looks and tastes like beer but only lighter with lower alcohol content - tasty!

-Our project has been super intense. We are working hard (to my surprise). We are working with the largest publishing firm in Brazil. Our project goal is to help them better monetize their online advertising revenue. They print and manage online about 50 magazines in Brazil (including Playboy!). They would like to improve their online advertizing revenue. We are talking to competitors, partners, and anyone that we think is relavent. Our final presentation will be to the CEO and President of the publishing house - so we better do a good job!

-I realized how much I would have hated my life if I recruited for management consulting and accepted a job in traditional managament consulting. We are living that life now. Housed in a conference room all day our team of four is constantly bouncing ideas of each other, interviewing people (sometimes asking the same questions), and in general trying to learn a $5 B illion business in 3 weeks. Tiring and energy sapping!

-Our host at the firm has been great so far. In general the people we've met so far for work are all young and smart entrepreneurs who realized huge potential for the internet in Brazil before the rest of the world. 3 of them in their mid-30s are visiting professors at the best universities in Brazil because of this. I am surprised at how visionary and passionate they are.

-Language. whoa. It's been a while since I've been at a location where I have no freakin' clue what people are saying. Seriously. Portuguese is not an easy language. We have had to resort to writing everything down and pointing to it or in general to pointing to things at restaurants, cabbies, and stores. Helpless feeling. Although we are picking up the language slowly.

-Planning on hitting a beach near Sao Paulo tomm (Sunday).

-Rooting for the Bengals today (hate the Jets!).

hope everyone is doing well.

later

2010 - How is it going to be?

2009-12-31T05:39:00.000-08:00

I am going to keep the excuses to a minimum - it's been a super busy semester at school and it kept me from blogging. On the other hand I have an account on Twitter now (@maheshkonduru) and tweet regularly.

So a lot has been going on in this world since the last time I wrote something in this space. You all know all about that. What I am saying is that I am feeling too lazy to write a summary of the last 5 months.

Instead let me Wish you all a Happy 2010! Hope things turn out the way you want.

One final update before I sign off. I (with a team of 4) am off to Brazil and Argentina for 4 weeks starting on Jan 2. We will be on a consulting project as part of a course at school. The first 3 weeks will be at our client's site in Sao Paolo and the last week will be spent in Rio and Buenos Aires. I am hoping to be able to blog regularly once in Brazil.

Until then Enjoy your New Year's Eve!

later

Thin line between Visionary and Crooks?

2009-08-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

so i just noticed that i've not written anything in this space in more than 2 months. That is quite a while huh. The summer has been busy - internship left no time to come home and collect my thoughts to write anything meaningful. Not that everything I write is meaningful. I did not want to come home and write after a day of work.

anyway, I just finished reading a book "The Smartest Guys in the Room" - the Enron story. It is a HUGE book, 470 pages but very densely packed words. Took me 4h of reading everyday for 7 days to finish it. Recommend reading it. Very well researched and written - for someone who went through a semester of accounting, economics, and finance courses recently it was easy to follow.

Here is my take on the guys who ran Enron: Visionaries who got greedy. Let me explain.

Why Visionaries?
Let me tell you why. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling envisioned quite a few scenarios atleast 5-10 years ahead of time. Lay envisioned (PhD in Econ) de-regulation in the natural gas and electricity (power) sector way ahead of his time. Of course he lobbied hard to get them through but there is something to be said for envisioning it. There might be hard arguments against free market capitalism, esp with what went on in the last 2 years, but in a society where there is enough supply, de-regulation makes a lot of sense.

Jeff Skilling to his credit envisioned that consumer like you and me would order movies at home via their broadband line and be able to play, stop, and rewind etc. Pay per view at home basically. This was in 1999. Voila you are doing it now - albeit it is via the cable line. Same difference.

Both strongly believed in free market capitalism (if the book is to be believed).

Why were they crooks?
Let me tell you. I am not sure I need to say more than what has already been written. They got carried away. Skilling wanted to be able to trade and hedge everything: broadband capacity, water, metals, weather whatever he could. That's just being megalomaniacal. There are limits to everything - key is to realize when.

Biggest problem of it all: Lay and Skilling were slaves to Stock Prices. Nothing wrong with it on surface. You would hope that your CEO/COO is keen on seeing the Stock Price being high - as long as they are making sure your business units are generating REAL revenues and REAL profits. Pushing your units to perform at their best efficiency is good. Unfortunately, Skilling and his CFO Fastow decided to generating ACCOUNTING revenues and ACCOUNTING profits. And they were obsessed with the meeting Wall Street expectations - so much so they took whatever path to reach those numbers.

The biggest surprise to me was:
How many people were involved and got carried away in the wave despite there being signs all along that something was fishy. The people who duped investors and their employers ranged from premier investment banks (Citi, JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Merrill Lynch), analysts at premier investment firms (Goldman, CreditSuisse, Prudential), of course accouting firms (Arthure Anderson shut down - 60 yrs of illustrious history down the drain), and tens of top level executives.

You know who were the first ones to have the courage to ask the tough questions: two guys who ran Hedge Funds. Of course these funds were always short and that is their main goal - to spot fishy firms. But there is something to be said for Short Sellers able to spot bad firms.

One final tidbit: Enron had a great Project Finance division. They were to me some of the pioneers in this space.

I recommend reading the book if you have lotsa time to spare.

I am now onto "Blue Ocean Strategy". Promised myself to read 2 books before school starts.

More later.

hope summer was great for all of you.

Why oh why, Manny?

2009-06-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER: My intention in writing this post is not to point fingers at anyone or defend Manny Ramirez. This is simply an amateur exercise in understanding some numbers in baseball. All raw numbers were obtained from ESPN.com, which in turn got the data from the Elias Sports Bureau. The average and stdev number calculations and time periods chosen are mine.

So here are some numbers, try to digest them for a few minutes.

Oh yeah, OBP = On Base % + Slugging %. For those who don’t know what On Base % is, it is the number of times a batter is on base via a hit or walk (as a % of the number of attempts of course). And Slugging % is the total number of bases a batter gets every time he gets on base.

So OBP is a good indicator of power and batting average.

I only considered years in which the player played for more than 120 games in a season.

Oh yeah, the numbers

Mark McGwire:
1987-92, Avg HR=36, Stdev HR=9, Avg OBP = 861
1995-99, Avg HR=57, Stdev HR=11, Avg OBP = 1116

Barry Bonds:
1987-95, Avg HR = 31, Stdev HR=8, Avg OBP = 961
1996-2004, Avg HR = 46, Stdev HR = 11, Avg OBP = 1194

Sammy Sosa
1990-95, Avg HR = 24, Stdev HR = 11, Avg OBP = 757
1996-2003, Avg HR = 51, Stdev HR = 12, Avg OBP = 976

A Rod
1996-2000, Avg HR = 37, Stdev HR = 8, Avg OBP = 956
2001-07, Avg HR = 47, Stdev HR = 9, Avg OBP = 990.3

Manny Ramirez
1995-00, Avg HR = 36, Stdev = 8, Avg OBP = 1022
2001-07, Avg HR = 36, Stdev = 8, Avg OBP = 1008

The two periods that I chose are specific to each player.
-For McGwire, the first period was his first 5 years in the league whereas the next period is when the supposed ‘steriods’ era began.
-Same as above for Bonds
-Same as above for Sosa
-For A-Rod the first period were his years in Seattle while the next period includes his stay in TX and NYY
-For Manny, the first period is the time in CLE followed by BOS

So what do you peeps think? Keep in mind that historically the prime years for a baseball player, for both power and average are supposed to be from age 26-32. Beyond that age, power numbers have declined for almost everyone all the way back from the 1900s (even for the Babe).

I can write and speculate about every player here but I will not. Let me write a couple of lines about each player that I used numbers for:

McGwire:
He came into the league with a lot of power. And his HR average jumped up 21 per year between the two periods while his OBP increased by almost 200 points (this is a HUGE increase by the way). Now that is a HUGE leap in both numbers. What was responsible for it, who knows.

Bonds:
His increases are not as dramatic as Big Mac’s but they did increase. For all the drama around him, BB hit more than 50 HR only ONCE in his career. Of course, managers probably did not want to pitch to him in the 2000 years, which probably affected his numbers. But keep in mind BB was 34 yrs old in 1998. That’s quite a significant increase in power after that age.

Sosa:
His numbers show the most dramatic increase in the two periods that I calculated. Keep in mind; Sammy’s official age in 1996 was 30. It is quite possible that he finally figured it out at age 30 how to be an elite baseball player. But he kept at that pace until age 37. Draw your own conclusions.

A Rod:
For all the scorn that he has been subject to, his numbers do not change as dramatically as the above peeps in this list. He has admitted to taking steroids when he got to TX (2001-03) when his HR average jumped to 52 ish something. That’s a 15 per year jump from his Seattle years. His OPS increased but not my much if you take into account his Yankee years.

And finally Manny:
I was surprised by the no change in averages – atleast for the years that I picked here. During his CLE years his HR numbers went from 22, 26 in 1994, and 1995 to 45 in 1996. Two caveats here, he played only in 91 games in 1994 and 137 in 1995. And he was officially 23 years old in 1995. Think about that, 23! His highest HR years were 45 (1998), 44 (1999), 43 (2004), and 45 (2005). He was 33 yrs old in 2005. His OBP numbers are remarkably consistent through out his career.

So WTF is going on then? Who knows? My speculation: in 2007 Manny had 20 HR with a OBP of 887 – both the lowest numbers since 1994 when he was a rookie. He was officially 35 that year. This was his last contract year in BOS and they were hesitating to give him a new contract (justifiably). Then his HR numbers came back to 37 in 2008 (split between BOS and LAD) and OPS back to his career average.

After 2008 LA dragged his contract talks for a long time. Is it perceivable that he took something after 2007 and/or in 2008? Or is it that he was always on something right from the beginning in 1994? Who knows.

What seems more plausible to me is that he probably panicked at the end of 2007 and/or when get got traded to LAD and took something the first time. And with his new contract in 2008 he went back on the substance. I find that more believable.

Of course that does not justify anything. I am not sure why athletes try to defy nature and ingest these things. Ok I know why ($$$$ and vanity) but why do they have to risk so much. Well, do these substances improve your abilities as a baseball player is another discussion altogether.

What I know is this, I loved Manny Ramirez hit a baseball from 1995-2008. I would religiously watch his at bats whenever I could in that period. It was pure joy knowing that this dude would do something remarkable every time he came to bat. I loved watching him in Cleveland and I have to admit I switched my baseball allegiance to Boston when they signed him. And last year, I would take peeks at the scoreboard whenever the Dodgers played if only to check his stats. I rooted for him.

When his suspension news was first released, I was at a competition, helping judge it when one of the judges (a Yankee fan) announced it gleefully to the world. I was in denial for 2 weeks and to this day I have not read any articles on him since the suspension was announced. I know a lot of mainstream are not objective about him (especially here in Boston) so who cares what they think. I’ve accepted the fact that he cheated. I only hope what he did in 1995-2007 was legit. Not sure how I would feel if that turned out otherwise.

Until, I am going to be positive about this. Manny, hope you learnt your lesson. Don’t freakin’ cheat nature, please!

Taking Stock of this MBA Thingy - End of Year 1 Review

2009-06-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, there are numerous topics to write a post about today but I am conveniently avoiding all that. Instead I am writing a summary, if you will, after the completion of the first year of my MBA program.

To make it simple I decided to list Pros Vs Cons of the MBA program – mind you this is after Year 1 of the 2-year program. And I am leaving out personal stuff (obviously).

Mind you this is not a judgment of the program I am currently at or of my decision, just a reflection piece. Not endorsing or criticizing anything.

To borrow a phrase from the latest edition of The Economist, What is there is to say after weeks of scoffing food and swilling booze?

So without further ado, here we go:

CONS
- $76,569 in debt – for tuition and living expenses (thank you CitiAssist and Fed Loans)

- Opportunity $ cost of not being at work (I computed the $ amount before school but will leave that out here)

- One year of not being at work and learning new skills, making new connections, and career growth in the old path. (my old employer has survived rather well in this atmosphere – only 1 person has been laid off if the past 9 months. This is a big deal considering that they are a tier II supplier to the automotive industry)

- Some loss of financial stability (you know saving up to buy a place, more savings etc)

- Lost opportunity to keep abreast of latest technology in the chemicals and automotive industry (I strongly believe that the upcoming decades are going to be shaped by advances in transportation and material technology)

- Lost chances to be part of multiple US patents. Just as I was leaving my firm decided to reverse its policy and file for multiple patents on a host of work that has been done in the past decade. I would have been part of that if I stayed.

- A good balance between professional and social life. School is reasonably good but when you are working you mostly (in my case) left work at work. After 6 pm it was my own time.

- Terrible eating, exercising, and drinking habits. I’ve gained a disgusting amount of weight since starting school (yuck!).

- Loss of sleep. While this is not too serious it still takes a toll on the body if not taken care of.

- Spending habits worsen. With reasonably good income I was very mindful of what I spent my $ on when I was working (at least the last 3-4 years!). At school with exactly zero income I’ve had an irritating habit of splurging: cabs, booze, eating out, without thinking about it twice. (why this is I have no reasonable explanation. Maybe subconsciously I am thinking this degree will get me rich!! Yeah right)

- Wish we had more of the good classroom teachers. Learning could be much more exciting and quick.

- And finally I have done a terrible job of keeping in touch/socializing with family and close friends outside school. This is bothersome. I promise to work on this more this upcoming year.

PROS
- A risk free opp to try something that I really like. I am fascinated by Finance and technology is in my pedigree (educational). A chance to marry both and see if a career in that is exciting has been presented to me - and guess what it is risk free! Try it in the summer and see how I feel. What more can you ask?

- Ability to develop “the big picture”. So this is tough to explain. I feel like I’ve become much better at understanding business enterprises at a macro level in the past year. Some of it is from academics, some from discussions with classmates, and some from personal reading/watching habits.

- Valuable fundamental understanding of how things work in the investment banking, asset management, sales and trading, private equity, venture capital, corporate finance, and consulting professions. Some may get this without b school but for me this was critical in choosing what to pursue. Again, a combination of academics and conversations with faculty and classmates greatly helped.

- Invaluable opportunity to learn how to manage people in a relatively risk-free environment. I was part of organizational teams for numerous conferences and learnt tremendously on how to manage egos, coax and cajole, and generally get things done. This can also be achieved outside B school but probably at a higher cost.

- Ability to think quickly and act faster than ever before (I am still learning). You should see the way I work my email Inbox now. For someone like me who would postpone replying to emails unless it was absolutely crucial this is great. Now, I am constantly in real time. This, to my pleasant surprise (duh!) increases productivity. There is no choice in B school but be in real time – there is so much happening and you don’t have to lag or be left behind.

- Chance to listen to thought leaders in person and debate with them. I am not going to list people’s names here but suffice to say it has been a great opportunity to be face to face and learn. I wish I did more this past year; one of my goals is to do that more in the upcoming year.

- Brand association. Everyone tells you how being a good school really helps when you get admitted. Guess what, IT IS TRUE. People think that just because I am at Sloan I am automatically smart. This never gets old. I ran into a Private Equity type the other day at my internship and he goes “MIT huh? Can you teach me this? I am sure you can explain it in your sleep.” This is obviously not just for vanity but opens up doors and careers that otherwise may not have been possible.

- Learning every day (or every day other day, whatever, you get the idea). Be it in class, or at school-organized competitions, while swilling PBR with classmates, at networking events, at forums you name it. There is so much to learn.

- Getting access to people you would only dream about. CEOs of real great firms, Govt people, highly placed executives, and famous thought leaders. While this may not be a tangible personal benefit it still helps to talk and gain insights from some of them. The way I look at it, if I can pick up one thing from each person that is pretty good.

- Relationship building. You are probably noticing that most of the pros (or all of them) and intangible and non-numbers types. What can I say? I now firmly believe that intangibles, which include relationship building, is one of the most important pillars to career building. Be it alumni or classmates or teachers this is a nice time period to let them know who you are, how you think, and whether you are dependable in class groups, projects, and club positions. 5 to 10 years down the line, if you need help or advice they are there – no question.

That is all I could think of right now. It is interesting that I list $$ amounts in the CONS and then go on to NOT list any $$ amounts in the PROS. Why you ask? Well, it is too early to gauge how this will improve my $$ potential. Ask me in 25 years!

Tokyo, Thailand, and a Wedding!

2009-05-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

So, to celebrate the end of the first year of my MBA program, I decided to spend 10 days in Thailand. I am writing this post from Bangkok (1:30 am here). Why Thailand? Well, let me tell you why Thailand. One of our classmates is getting married in Bangkok (the wedding was tonite) so a bunch of my classmates planned to combine that with some pleasure.

We got here 2 days ago - via a brutal 14h flight from Boston to DC to Tokyo to Bangkok. Spent a few hours in Tokyo and loved it. Am going to go back there at some point.

anyway, I will write more about this when I get back to Boston. It's been an interesting trip so far. Going to a kick boxing match tomm nite, then off to a beach in South Thailand (Ko Phi Phi) for 3 days. Ahh, vacation! Much needed.

hope y'all are having fun.

later

hmmmm....a lot to write about...BUT

2009-05-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

There is quite a bit to write about: my Man Manny's suspension, NBA playoffs, GM and Chrysler, End of first year at Sloan, and much more. But, as is the case, I dont have for it now. So, I will leave y'all with a video that was shot at school. I make my YouTube debut for a Sloan award nomination (all in jest of course). My classmate who made the video did a great job and made us all look cool:

YouTube link

I will be back with my regular post shortly.

later

Size 28 jeans, Busch beer, Saturn Cars, and much more!

2009-05-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

Do you get this feeling sometimes when you see someone operate and you are convinced that he/she can do nothing wrong? Check that, why use the double negative: he/she does everything the way it is supposed to be done? I am sure all of us have come across someone in our lives. Maybe the feeling is momentary/fleeting but you know when someone is in a 'zone' as the sports types like to say. Well, that is how I feel about our Branding professor at school.

Branding for the uninitiated (this was me 8 weeks ago) is a track in Marketing. I stumbled upon the course and boy am I glad or am I glad I did! I was on the waitlist but somehow managed to get in the course. Not knowing what to expect I went to the first class expecting the usual B school BS but oh noh siree, this dude was one of a kind. We imported this Prof from Australia where he currently teaches (he has taught at Wharton and LBS prior to that and has a PhD in Brand Management).
- He knows how to run a case
- He teaches concepts in a easy to understand and practical way
- He knows when to shut those annoying classmates who say something just to hear themselves speak
-He swears like a sailor (and it never seems vulgar)
-He has the comedic timing of a stand up
-He is never overbearing
-He is British

(ok I'll stop with my man-crush comments here!)

The result is that I am always excited to read the case for the next class. I even take notes - which is a rarity for me in B school. I always feel like I am learning something new. I now dont think people in marketing are a lower life form. I can now reasonably estimate how much accessories from Hermes, Luis Vitton, Coach, Gucci, and BV cost. And I am enjoying learning about how to build, sustain, re-build, brands. Some hightlights of the things that I learnt in class:

- Killer Brands: Sometimes firms start what are known as Killer Brands to kill competition. How do they do it? Create a new brand that the common public that does associate with the parent brand, make it cheaper, and release it into the markets. Most successful killer brand of all time: Busch Beer. Created by Anheuser Busch in the 1950s to kill several cheaper alternatives to Budweiser, it was so successful that not only did it kill all competition it outlasted several parent brands. Worst Killer Brand ever: Saturn cars. GM launched Saturn to kill the Japanese and German small cars in 1984. It worked for the first 2 years but then somewhere along the line management lost track of why it was started and went on build more than 10 sub-brands in different categories. This not only confused customers but also cannibalized GM brands. The result, well you know: GM is phasing out Saturn unless someone shows up to buy.

-Brand Positioning: Have you ever wondered why Diesel never makes jeans beyond size 28 or 30? Well, that's because they dont want "my fat ass" in their jeans (his words exactly). No firm will ever admit it publicly but this is done for a purpose. Certain items are made for a certain segment of population otherwise the Brand will lost its lustre (and in the end ability to make money). By catering to a certain segment of population the firm can charge a premium.

-Anglo-Saxons and Latin cultures are diametric opposites when it comes to looking at history. According to the prof, it is natural for peeps from Latin cultures to build things by learning from their past. This apparently is absolutely necessary in Brand Management. Did you know that "Snapple" was started by three hippies from the Lower East Side in NYC as an organic beverage? Quaker bought Snapple and tried to impose its own culture. The result: it lost nearly $800 million after buying and selling it eventually (numbers are probably off by a bit). Things were brought back to order when a thoughtful brand manager went back to the "roots" and re-organized the brands.

-We learnt about Burberry. Luxury branding is a totally different animal. Burberry was started in the last 19th century (1870s I think) by a tailor in England as a raincoat made with Gaberdine, a breathable material that was water proof. It gradually evolved into an aristocratic brand. But then lost its footing in the mid 1900s. In came Rose Marie from Saks Fifth Avenue (she was made the CEO in 1997) and transformed Burberry. She placed Burberry between Coach and Gucci and exploited that gap. By the way, did anyone know that a accessory handbag from Hermes costs $7000 (ouch!).

-Coke's worth is 66% from Brand Equity. The rest are the tangible assets.

I could go on and on. Have to stop and get some HW done. If anyone is thinking about learing about Brand Management for their business or as a consultant, I highly recommend looking up this professor at Sloan.

later

Entrepreneurship - WTF is it?

2009-04-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

One of things that I've wanted to look at since being at business school was to understand what entrepreneurship actually means. Who is an entrepreneur? Is it the person who has that great idea? Or is it the team that takes an idea and implements it? Luckily, some of the answers to these questions were answered in a few months.

If you are curious as to what those answers are, here it goes: Merriam-Webster defines an entrepreneur as "one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise." Pay attention to the word "risk". That to me is the core around which entrepreneurship is. So you dont necessarily have to come up with an idea to be an entrepreneur. If you can take an idea and build an enterprise around it, you are automatically taking all the above mentioned risks.

Once those questions were answered I asked myself "So it it is just a matter of taking risk, why do we need to go to business school to become an entrepreneur?" To answer that question I recruited a classmate of mine and off we went talking to entrepreneurs from Sloan. The result is an article published at Xconomy. Here is the link to it:

Can business schools teach entrepreneurship?

hope you have fun reading it?

later

Happennings - Summer internship, CEOs, Private equity etc

2009-04-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

So let me get this out of the way first:

-Summer internship! After months of networking like nobody's business I received two offers for summer internships in the last 10 days. It was an interesting feeling at first - I had to deal with the stress of taking one and saying no to another. Saying no to a VC is by the way something to be handled delicately (they are not used to hearing NO remember!) Anyway, I am psyched to be working at a Energy only VC fund for the summer! In Boston. I am not going to post the name for the obvious reasons but safe to say it is one of the biggest Energy only funds in the US and well known. 10 weeks from June to August. Excited to be learning from some of the veterns in the industry.

Moving on to other things:

-I noticed that Bloomberg online had an interesting article about Harvard Business School. Professors at HBS are going to prepare a case-study on the reputation hit that it has taken because of the CEOs involved in the financial mess. Apparently the brand has taken a bit hit and they are going to analyze it. Well, I would be interested in seeing what the case analysis brings out.

-I attended the MIT Private Equity symposium this weekend in Cambridge. I sat in on the energy panel and enjoyed what the panelists had to say. I ended up having lunch with them at the same table and got to hear what they are thinking of in terms of oppurtunity, affect of the stimulus package, and policy on investments in the energy space. (by the way I started using 'space' a lot in my writing these days, not cool!)

-We are going to have an Indian cultural function at MIT at the end of the April. yaay! Going to be exciting. Every ethnic group at MIT Sloan hosts a cultural event once a year and the Indian one usually coincides with Admit weekend II. Lots of dancing, indian beer, hopefully some skits etc. I am running logistics for the show and it should be a lot of work. There are supposed to be 400-500 people at the event and luckily one of my friends in the Boston area who owns an Indian restaurant will be catering the food. Should be a good time. If in the Boston area, you are welcome to join in.

-One of my roomates is a certified pilot with more than 400 hrs of flying. He is promising to take four of us on a flight from Boston to Cape Cod for Patriot's day weekend. Basically we will be flying out, eating lunch, and getting back! Sounds like an expensive lunch to me!

-My classmate and I just finished writing a new column for Xconomy about Business schools and Entrepreneurship. We interviewed several budding entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and it was a good experience. Everyone had interesting things to say. Will post the link.

-Enough school stuff. What's new? Movies, I ended up watching quite a few movies during Spring Break. "Gomorah" (Italian mafia flick) was one which ended up being too slow and nothing worth remembering. Oh yeah, finally watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona" and it was a good movie. Let's see can't remember anything else.

-March madness! yaaaaay! How about them 'Nova wildcats? The last second shot to beat Pitt in the Elite 8 was fantastico. I am about to head out in a few minutes to watch the final four. Go 'Nova. On the flip side, I am 3rd from the last in my old colleagues' Pool! Whatever.

-Looks like Baseball season is upon us. I am amazed at how little I have followed baseball since I've been back in Boston. Ahhh, what b school does to you. I am hoping to go to a few games at Fenway this summer! Would be interesting to see how the Phillies defend, how the Spankees do with all that moollah that they've spent, and of course how Boston does with no Manny for the whole reason. And all you peeps who doubted Manny, get a life.

Allrite peeps, enjoy your weekend. Will be back with more later.

-

CEO + MBA = ?

2009-03-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Looks like I had some time to waste on Saturday morning, so I went ahead and looked into education backgrounds of CEOs of some of the prominent firms that have been in the news since this period of economic malaise began. Yeah, I know I need to get a life but I figured what the heck, at the very worst I can start making fun of some of the schools!

Anyway, I have them tabulated below. A few things about this table:

-CEOs only

-CEOs during the troubled period (2000-2008)

-I wiki’d the firms to get the CEOs backgrounds. So if whatever the wiki page said about their education (MBA only) I listed here. If anyone spots errors please point out. I will be glad to correct as I should be.

-Banks, Govt institutions, and Automobile manufacturers are included. Oh, and GE too (it needs a separate category)

-Some of the firms have not done well as you all already know and some have done ok.

I am not going to draw any conclusion from this table. Nor am I claiming any correlation between their degrees and firm performance.

Firm-CEO-MBA?-MBA School

Lehman Bros-Dick Fuld-Yes-NYU Stern

Bear Stearns-Jimmy Cayne-No
Bear Stearns-Alan Schwartz-No

Merrill Lynch-John Thain-Yes-HBS

Citi-Vikram Pandit-Yes-Columbia

Fannie Mae-Daniel Mudd-No

Freddie Mac-Richard Syron-No

Wachovia-Ken Thompson-Yes-Wake Forest

WaMu-Kerry Killinger-Yes-Univ of Iowa

AIG-Edward Libby-Yes-George Washington

GE-Jeff Immelt-Yes-HBS

GM-Rick Wagoner-Yes-HBS

Chrysler-Bob Nardelli-Yes-Univ of Louisville

Bank of America-Ken Lewis-Yes-Stanford (executive)

Wells Fargo-John Stumpf-Yes-Univ of Minnesota

JP Morgan Chase-Jamie Dimon-Yes-HBS

Morgan Stanley-John Mack-No

Goldman Sachs-Lloyd Blankfein-No

Ford-Alan Mulally-Yes-MIT Sloan

RIP MBA? really?

2009-03-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

So I've had a chance to think about what this gentlemen wrote in his column about the death of the MBA (see previous post for link), here is what I think. I am going to argue two crucial points that he refers to-although to be fair he points to a few other things which in my opinion are not relavent.

Point #1
"Managers don't need to be trained; they need to be educated—in the sense of "civilized." Unfortunately, a business degree isn't just irrelevant to that purpose; it's positively detrimental."

I agree that classroom education is not the only relevant tool to being a good manager. I say it to my classmates all the time, what you can learn at work is invaluable and in most costs irreplaceable. Having said that, to state unequivocally that a business degree is not relevant to becoming a good manager is irresponsible.

I think it is fair to state that Management is not exactly a science that can be learnt via formulae or equations. Absolutely. Here is where being exposed to a pool of fellow students who bring diverse functional and industry experiences helps. Listening, debating, and learning from these experiences gives ammunition to professors in business schools to shape future managers. Combine this with industry relevant research that professors perform (operations and strategy in particular) and you have a fertile ground for brainstorming sticky managerial situations.

Look I am not one to say that there is a textbook solution to every specific managerial situation but having been exposed to different situations lets you expand your thinking and seek out new solutions.

Point #2
"The only semblance of a theory behind modern business education is that it purportedly produces "experts" in shareholder-value maximization who are capable of forming an ideal, self-regulating market"

Not sure where this comes from. The theory behind shareholder-value maximization and free-market philosophy is rooted in Economics not business school education. Yes there is a lot of cross "polination" between economics and finance in schools these days but to say that this originates in business schools is not true. I am about to finish my first year in a business school and I have not had this come up in any course so far.

Now, I can't see what is wrong with maximizing shareholder-value 'philosophy'. The expectation is that this is also tied to other metrics that point to a healthy and self-sustaining corporation. Maximizing share-holder value combined with consistent return on investments, profitability, and productivity should be what every corporation aim to do. That a few idiots decided to achieve this by meddling with accounting rules rather than organically achieving growth is not the fault of business school education.

What you are, you are. Going to business school should not (hope not) alter that. If a person is un ethical he/she will be un ethical regardless of whether they attend a education institution or not. To claim that the environment at a business school festers this behavior is irresponsible.

Look, just 'cause someone goes to business school does not make him/her a genius manager. There are a lot of factors that go into a successful manager. For every crooked manager you can find you can find multiple great managers. Maybe some of them went to business schools. A correlation or causation?

Should I have gone into government service?

2009-03-26T05:25:00.001-07:00

This dude on Slate.com posted an article on how overrated an MBA degree is. And he thinks students instead should have gone into public service. hmmm...interesting suggestion. I just read the article and have some instant retorts to some of his points but I will hold back until I can digest this more.

Meanwhile, if you have the time, do read it

RIP MBA - The Economic Crisis has exposed the myth of business school expertise.

I'll post more on this and other topics soon.

layyter

whoaa! AWOL big time!

2009-03-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

That's right I have not posted in a LOOOONG time. Too much going on dudes. I thought things would slow down in the second semester but as Austin Powers would say "Au contraire". We are free this week and the next (Spring Break!). And I am not going any where, boooo! Staying in Cambridge for a variety of reasons. So what's the delio? well....

-I had to skip McKool's wedding on the left coast. I am embarrassed about it and dont feel good. Unfortunately I had no choice. There was a conference that we were having at MIT that I had to attend given my choice in venture capital for the summer. So I cancelled my tkts at the last second. Sorry McKool. I heard the wedding was great though. Best wishes to you kids.

-The second semester at school has been SUPER busy. I signed up for only 4 classes but on the side am doing 3 separate projects. Add to that my summer internship search. I have been networking like a mofo since February. I am hoping it will pay off.

-oh yeah, one of the new webblogs (xconomy.com) asked me to be a regular contributor starting in January. I will be writing about energy, b school, recruiting, entrepreneurship etc from a b school student point of view. So that has been taking up my time as well.

-I couldn't believe it that the next class at Sloan will be here soon. We hosted the admit weekend for those who were admitted in the 1st round in late February. I still remember me attending the same event last year. How time flies peeps! I was asked to sit in on a couple of panels to answer questions and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of questions the new admits asked.

-I am in a couple of interesting courses this semester: Macro-Econ (highly recommend this to anyone, especially at MIT) and New Enterprises (course on how to write a business plan for a new venture). I am also in Finance II which is a good learning experience. We are being taught on how to evaluate the health of firms based on financial statements. Not a bad learning experience.

-Speaking of macro-econ. We were given three topics to debate in class (carried 50% of the grade). The team that I was on was voted the best in both the topics that we competed for. Topic 1: Should China be a Democracy in 5 years? Topic 2: Would you vote Yes for the stimulus package? We had a ball preparing for the debates. And ended up doing really well on both. Learnt quite a bit about China and how things work there in the process. And let me tell you, a lot things will surprise you. By the way, we argued that China did not need to be a democracy in 5 years (or possibly for a long time). Economic and Social well being has very little do with what form of government you have, we discovered.

-Recruiting has been progressing. I decided to focus solely on Venture Capital gigs for the summer with a sharp focus on energy and materials. I have a couple of solid leads but no confirmed internship yet. My goal is to spend the summer at a top tier energy VC shop and I feel that if everything goes well I will land a gig at one of those places.

-I managed to convince the student affairs office at Sloan to give me money to start a Squash club. So officially started the Sloan Squash club in February. We had a lot of interest from classmates and glad to see people show up on the first Sunday to practice. I also managed to connect with our B school friends up the river (aka HBS) and we are planning on having a Sloan-HBS squash tournament soon. Should be fun.

-Enough about me. Seriously. Are you peeps following the happenings in the world? Jeeeez. Where to start?

-AIG and the bonus mess. Well, I need to find out more info before jumping up and down like those idiots on TV calling everyone and their grandma thieves. How were the bonuses structured? Are people who made the wrong choices rewarded or is this for the new talent? How is the bonus structure setup, for long term or short term? I have not had a chance to check this out but if anyone knows please comment.

-Stimulus Package mess? As I wrote earlier we debated this in class and I have an insiders perspective on this since our professor is a well known economist. According to him this is a panic reaction from the govt. I will not get into details about this but one of the main arguments was that instead of giving consumers money to spend the govt should have incentivized businesses (by lowering corporate taxes etc) to invest. Great topic to debate by the way.

-I will end this by quoting our Macro-econ professor's views on politics and politicians. "Politicians should not govern based on what party and what philosophy they believe in, they should govern based on what the situation at hand demands". Exactly by beliefs about politics in this country.

Until next time (which should be soon hopefully!).

Ego Feeding time!

2009-01-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

From time to time I try to post links that have pictures of me or mention me in the media-you know a little vanity once in a while hurt no one right? Well, it's time for another one of these ego boosts!

So I co-organized a trek (no, not the ones that you go hiking on) to Energy related startups in Massachusetts in early January. A few of my classmates went on it and overall it was good trip. One of the web media sites asked me to write about it and voila I did! Here is the link to my article:

Mass Energy Trek - MIT Sloan

So? This is 2009 huh?

2009-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

yeah I have been AWOL for a while now but with good reason (or is there one?). Semester got done in the 3rd week of December and wtf have I been upto you ask. Let me tell you what I have been upto. Quite a few things actually. But that's not important. What is important is that 2008 is done and here we are 3 weeks already into 2009. Not sure how I feel about that actually. It was definitely a good year in a lot of ways. Anyway, let's move on before I get mushy.

So what to expect in 2009. This is the time to make predictions so let me do it as well. Some of you may know of intrade (link). You can bet on Paris Hilton's "assets" to those of Bernie Madoff's at that website or something like that. In that spirit, I give you Kondum's list of TEN for 2009:

#1
President Obama having a Monica Lewinsky type sex scandal. Probability: 0.001%.

Why you ask? Have you seen how Michelle Obama looks? Hello?!

#2
US Economy stays in recession. Probability: umm is there a 110% (of course there is, coaches and politicians always use that number).

By the way, I read a real interesting column in the Economist recently that talked about the differences between a Recession and a Depression. Check it out if you get a chance (link).

#3
The Big Three in Detroit turning into the Big Two or even Big One. Probability: 65%

I dont see how each of them can survive on their own. As I write this I saw a headline flash on wsj.com "Fiat to partner with Chrysler". hmmm...sign of things to come.

#4
Citi/BOA/any other other big bank in the US will fail. Probability: 40%.

Citi is splitting up and BOA get a little stimulus thing from Uncle Sam recently so that should keep both going for a while. If the economy continues to stagger and people hold onto their cash rather than investing in financial products, that could do it for atleast one of the banks.

#5
Atleast one of the cabinet or high-level govt appointees by President Obama will withdraw during or prior to the confirmation process. Probability: 78%

You know it. Someone would have hired an illegal nanny when they were not so famous or had an obsession for humping goats. As old as the profession itself (politics that is). This does not include Bill Richardson by the way

#6
Slumdog Millionaire wins atleast 4 oscars. Probability: 40%

I have not seen the movie but they seem to have done well with the Golden Globes. And the Oscars love these kinda rags-to-riches movies. Is this movie any good? I have zero motivation to go watch it somehow.

#7
Vince Vaughn/John Mayer will go out with another Hollywood hottie. Probability: 99%

Dude, this guy Vince (I mean he’s average looking) has hit the jackpot when it comes to Hollywood hotties. What is it? The sense of humor or his ‘tallness’? Mayer, well you can sorta understand his mojo: I mean which girl will not dig a croony singer-songwriter type? I mean c’mon.

#8
The Pittsburgh Steelers win the Souper Bowl. Probability: 110%

I mean should there be any doubt about this. Best Defense there is. And a bunch real hardnosed players with no prima donnas. The thing is I like Kurt Warner but not that much. (Waving the Yellow Towel)

#9
Over/under on the number of days the ‘ceasefire in Gaza lasts’: hmm I would say take the under on 30 days

This stuff is not amusing. Really, both sides have to cave in a little bit. Notably Hamas. Negotiation 101 dudes: you have to be in a state of strength to be able to dictate terms. And stop listening to those guys neighboring Iraq will ya.

#10
There will be an electric car vehicle on the road (something along the lines of Chevy Volt that is primarily battery driven) in the US. Probability: 35%

GM is saying that they will have the Chevy Volt ready in 2009 but you know how that goes. Renault is working on something. And what the hell is going on with Tesla? C’mon guys get something on the road.

Enjoy the new year kids!

Ego Boost II

2008-12-21T18:03:00.000-08:00

So a little vanity from me. MIT Sloan's Venture Capital Private Equity (VCPE) club just hosted the 11th Annual MIT Conference in Cambridge. One of the panel discussion was Clean Energy for which I was a co-lead. They just posted the webcast link to the entire Clean Energy panel and I've included it below. You need a RealPlayer downloaded to watch and listen to it.

MIT VC conference Clean Energy Panel link

Semester I done! What now? Let me tell you what now?

2008-12-20T19:04:00.000-08:00

well, so we finished our first semester (also known as CORE) this Wednesday. It was kinda strange to not have to do anything course related on Wednesday nite. Of course I had other things to worry about that were not course related but it still felt good. I have not slept well for the past 6 weeks or so and have not gone to the gym in the past 4 weeks. On top of that I have been eating greasy Chinese/Thai food every single day! Gaawwd, I feel like such a pig! So my plan for the rest of December is to sleep well, eat well, and work out regularly.

December also brings with it the anxiety of summer recruiting for most B school students. The last week in school was filled with a buzz in our building about someone receiving interviews from Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley or McKinsey or Bain or Amazon. "Did you make the closed list for MS?". "Dude I have not heard from McK" type of conversations are common in the halls. I did not have to deal with any of that. Why you ask? Well, let me tell you why. I did not apply to any banks or consultant firms. Zip. Zilch. And I did not even think twice about it. The only things I applied for via school were Investment Management positions (buy side). That too I was very lukewarm about them. My interest was not in them and that showed in my resume and coverletter. I found out that I did not get on the invite list of the four firms that I applied to. Big whoop! I can bid for an interview as Sloan allows that but I have no interest in an IM career. So what is it that I want to do then?

well, I decided to pursue Winter and Summer Internship positions at Venture Capital firms. I have been researching VC as a summer internship option for 2-3 months now and that's where my interest lies. The thing though is that there is NO campus recruiting for VC positions. Everything works through networking. Fortunately, I was lucky to have a few people at Sloan who have been pimping me to VC firms and I managed to land an offer at a VC firm for January. Let's see how it goes.

What else is going on? Let's see:

-The markets are still giving people the heebee jeebies. Any predictions for the upcoming new year?

-There was a lot of talk at school about this Madoff guy. I have to research this situation.

-The killings in Bombay. There was a lot of outrage at school and from a lot of my friends. I heard quite a lot of solutions being put forward but not able to judge which one would work.

-Obama cabinet appointments. Not sure what to make of Hill Dawg as the Sec. of State. I have to say that it was a political appoinment to appease some faction of the Dems. Hope she does not alienate too many foreign leaders. Steven Chu (Nobel Prize winner) as the Energy Sec. is on the surface a good appointment but it is hard not to notice that he does not have any industrial experience. There was a good point raised at the recently concluded MIT VC conference that the US Department of Energy's goals are not aligned with the Energy Policy of the US. You see the DOE was established originally to take care of the US Nuclear Program. Now most of the responsibility of the DOE is to oversee the disbursement of research funds to universities and national labs. Is there a need to have another agency that oversees the funding of energy innovation and implementation ideas at a practical scale? That is up for debate?

-The NFL season is coming to an end apparently. I have not watched any games this season! Unbelievable. I'll try to get caught up on what the situation is.

-The BCS championship line up is set. Should be a more even sided game than the past 2 years for sure (thankfully no weak Big 10 team is in there!). I am not a big fan of Urban Myers and moreover Bob Stoops has a buckye connection. Go Sooners!

-What the heck is going on in the movie world? It's been such a long time since I've watched a movie. Time to catch up.

-I will be chillin' at my sister's place in NJ until Dec 30. Then off to Cambridge for a week. Then will begin my Winter mini-internship (NYC + Boston).

Happy Holidays kids!

laters

what are we going to do now?

2008-11-24T20:34:00.000-08:00

President-elect Obama
"What are we going to do now?". That's the first thought I had when I saw MSNBC declare Obama to be the next President of the United States. I will be the first to admit that despite all the opinion polls and financial market predictions of a landslide Obama victory I was not convinced that it was actually going to happen.

I actually made several comments to my friends about how I did not rule out the possibility that a certain demographic was lying on their opinion polls. You see it is difficult to trust a certain demographic considering that history has shown us that prejudice ruled this country (and others) for years. Bigotry and ignorance dominated reasoning and rational thought. Ok, I will refrain from making this a rant on social and racial prejudices. But I will admit that I underestimated a section of this country's population. I am a very cynical person (as most of you know already) but I am glad to admit that I was too cynical in this case. And I am glad to be proven wrong. You can slice and dice the election result in as many ways you want to but there is no denying that it makes a STRONG statement to the rest of the world about racial prejudices in this country. Now now, obviously this does not mean one event wipes out the history or this is a monumental leap and things are going to completely different from now on but this is step in the right direction. Shalom!

Economy
I have to give props to Bill Gross of PIMCO who had a podcast in July 2008 which was titled something along these lines "Welcome to the Office President Obama-here now go handle a $1 Trillion budget deficit!". Amazingly both predictions came true. You dont have to be a superstar economist to realize that the next President will inherit the largest budget deficit in history. Someone has to calculate if after adjustment for inflation that is still the largest deficit. But you get the picture.

So what to expect in the next 6-12 months on a macro-economic scale? Well, let’s see here: Paulson goes out and orders a $700B TARP package and then promptly tells banks that he is going to back off. Which means more rescue packages (see Citi bailout part II today-interestingly a classmate of mine predicted this), a huge stimulus package. If you are wondering how the Government is going to pay for all this, well simple, print more $s. Uhuh. That is how this is going down people. More dollars printed means more inflation and more devaluation of the dollar. In the short-term there are signs of deflation (for obvious reasons) but believe me inflation is going to be back in a big way in mid-2009 (if not earlier). And if the interest rates are held this low for a while watch out for inflation!

So is there a bottom you ask? At this point I am not going to predict anything and eat it later. I believe the earnings season is upon us and who knows how that will shake up the markets. Gas prices are low, people are still driving less, discretionary income is low, people are spending less, unemployment is high, and home sales are regressing. There is a potential for the market to take a severe beating in the next 2-3 months. What is going to save them? Well, confidence in the next government; confidence on wall street to give more credit out; hedge funds who have loads of cash going out and buying assets that are valued low; people going out and spending like crazy during the holiday season among other things. So there is a chance it is going to get better soon but let’s see how it turns out.

Well, that turned out to be a serious post. I promise to be funny next time! Geeez! I did not even talk about the auto-industry bail out proposals. And nothing about school either. We are having a well-needed Thanksgiving break this week. Off to my sister’s to see Mom and nephew! Should be fun.

Have a great thanksgiving break!

Historic Day?

2008-11-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

well, how is tomm going to shape up?
Are all the opinion polls going to prove correct?
Will this country elect as its leader someone they've never elected before?
Will the world enter into a new phase in terms of energy and the environment?
Can kids dream of being whoever they want to be regardless of social status, culture, and race?
Is this country going to set an example to the rest of the world?
Can this country finally elect someone for their substance?
Is the youth of this country back into mainstream politics?
Will tomm be a small but significant step in soothing racial tensions worldwide?

Let's see.

I know a lot of my friends are nervous about tomm (and I am not being melodramatic about this), so good luck to you all.

hmmmm....is there a pattern?

2008-11-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

- I have to start by congratulating all those self-loathing Philadelphia sports fans who finally had a chance to celebrate (after 25 years) a sports champion from their city (Rocky is fictional you see).

The Phillies won the World Series with relative ease it seems like and kudos to them. Funny game baseball, a team with marginal pitching, playing in a box of a stadium, with a manager who can't speak more than five words coherently, and with an incompetent (previously atleast) GM ended up winning the World Series. I am by no means diminishing what the Phillies achieved. I love Howard, Utley, and Rollins and am glad they won. Hopefully this will calm the entire Philly area sports base for a few years.

-Speaking of the Phillies winning. Is there a pattern here? I left Philly this summer, and the Phillies won the World Series. I left Boston in 2003 and the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004. I am apparently not a good luck charm to these two cities!

-It's been a while since I posted here. As usual a lot is going on. We finished mid-terms and got our grades back. I got what I deserved (have not got finance yet) in all the mid-terms. I am not proud of my econ grade and hope to do well in the final.

-We finally had a week last week with no regular classes. It was relaxing, although we had to take what are called SIP classes (Sloan Innovation Period). I sat in a Macro-Econ SIP class taught by this exuberant MIT Econ prof. It was great! This guy has apparently studied 72 of the last economic crisis in the world (really) and he spent half the class telling us about what makes a crisis and how to avoid it. I am not sure if I believe in everything he said but he had good insights. I am definitely going to sign up for his Macro-Econ class next semester.

-I finally had time to reflect on what I want to pursue for my internship next summer. And I've made a decision and am happy about it. It does not involve Investment Banking or Sales and Trading. That's all I can say for now. (people read these blogs you know)

-I have a feeling that by the end of this month I am going to overwhelmed with non-class activities. I am in the organization teams for five of the biggest conferences organized by MIT in the next few months. It is going to be a challenge to juggle all those duties.

-I got referred by a classmate of mine to a VC firm from the west coast for a paid project in January. It was a good conversation with this VC firm and I am being kept in the loop. Interestingly I have spent the last few weeks reading up more about VCs. It is definitely a challenging and unique profession. The history of VC (less than 35 years old) is legendary with a long list of hits and misses. I talked to a high-profile person at MIT who knows VCs well and his opinion on the evolution of VCs in unique and one that I've not heard before.

-We had to submit our resumes this past Friday to the career development office. They are now on the resume book that goes out to firms (for a steep price apparently) to a huge list of firms. Recruiting season is officially in second gear now. People have started preparing for interviews in consulting, banking, and sales and trading by having mock interviews. A lot of second year's were seen reviewing resumes of the first year's this past week.

-The career development office posted a list of available internships for next summer just this week. From a first glance it seemed like most firms from last year are offering summer internships in all sectors. Let's see how that unfolds.

-There was a Halloween party this Friday and one of my classmates dressed up as me to the party. He thought it was funny. I was lame and did not dress up at all. But I had fun.

-George Soros gave a guest lecture at MIT this past week. I skipped class to attend it and it was well worth a class ditch. I came away very impressed with his chat. The guy was very philosophical in analyzing the economy, finance, and predictions. He sounded very Marxian which is good in my book. It was interesting when a young MIT undergrad called him a name (for shorting the pound in the 90s and ruining the British economy for a few years) and he calmly reacted by saying "I followed the rules and actually did them a favor".

-The markets. Ah yes, them. I am going to start writing more about the markets from my next post. I am going to make time to analyze the markets again and follow them more closely than I've been in the past 3 months.

later

Bottoms. I like bottoms!

2008-10-18T08:06:00.001-07:00

Can someone predict where the bottom in this market is? Some doomsayers are predicting the Dow to sink to 6000-7000 by the end of this year. Not sure if that's going to happen. But then again, this has been a crazy-ass period kids! Anything is possible.

With that a few updates:

-We finished mid-term week this Thursday. Some of us celebrated by starting drinking at Noon on Thursday and going to a class drunk at 4pm. The drinking continued until 2 am. There was some dancing involved too. Good times! Good times!

-I also went to NYC this past Monday to visit a few Investment Banks (or whatever is remaining of the Ibanks). About 90 of my classmates were bussed to NYC and we spent all day on Monday being hosted by GS, UBS, Citi, MS, and DB. I found it very useful. Much to my surprise the banks that I visited had active Energy divisions in IBD.

Interestingly, the Dow had it's largest single day gain since 1933 on Monday when we were on Wall Street. Morgan Stanley was hosting a evening reception for us and we were not sure if they would even exist by Monday evening! Luckily for them, Mitsubishi UFJ's stake pumped their stock up by 90% on that day. We met a few anxious and partly relieved MS bankers that evening.

-Sloan hosts Venture Capital breakfast sessions with Boston area VC firms on Fridays. I got to attend one of them 2 weeks ago and it was worth getting up at 6AM for. The co-founder of this VC firm gave some pointed advice which I thought was highly valuable. According to him, whether you are starting something new or out looking for VC positions, dont worry about sector or geography etc. The single most important thing is what type of people you surround yourself with. Once you do that everything else will follow. Great advice IMHO.

-I was selected to be in the organization team for the 11th Annual MIT Venture Capital Conference. I am responsible (with another classmate) of picking a panel for the Clean Energy part of the conference. We've come up a list already and I've talked to a couple of high profile VCs in the area. Our aim is to get atleast superstar to be on the panel. Let's see how it goes.

-Today (in a couple of hours) is the Elevator Pitch Contest at MIT. The EPC is essentially a contest where you are given 60 seconds to pitch a new business idea. A classmate and I are pitching an idea in Renewable Energy. Should be exciting! If any of you want to watch it live here is the link: MIT Elevator Pitch Competition. Our pitch is the generation of bio-fuel at home using waste. Let's see how our idea is torn apart today!

-I've added traditional Investment Banking to my list of career options. This is the week I will be deciding which area I will focus on for recruiting. VC/IM/IBD.

-How about them RedSox huh? The game 5 win in Boston on Thu nite was a classic no? I will admit it, once they traded Manny away I could not bring myself to support the Sox in the same way. But Thu nite was exciting.

later

Can I do this full-time?

2008-10-05T21:02:00.000-07:00

-This past week has been the busiest so far at school. Apparently it is one of the roughest weeks in the first semester at Sloan and I am happy to note that I came away unscathed. I even managed to go out Wednesday nite (3 shots of Jaeger and 3 beers), Thu nite, and Friday nite until 2 am. Work hard, party hard people!

-It is a shame that my life has become so MIT Sloan centric. The Sloan building sits like 50 metres from the Charles River and I have NOT even gone once to sit on the banks and enjoy the weather and the water. I need to do more of that. The weather has been super great so far here in Boston/Cambridge.

-There was a nice article today on ESPN.com by the Sports Guy on Manny Ramirez. He captured how I felt as a Manny 'fan' very well. Do read it when you get a chance.

-So my team (of three) participated in the MIT Sloan "Stock Pitch" competition today. None of us has had any background in Asset Management prior to Sloan so it was a great experience preparing for it. I spent 4h on Friday, 12h on Saturday, and 4h on Sunday (today ..errr yesterday) preparing for it with my team. The best part: it did not feel like we 'worked'. I skipped two parties to keep prepping and really enjoyed it. Our pitch I thought was ok. We pitched Dick Sporting Goods (DKS) and went "short" on it. We did not win it (two first year teams were declared winners) but came away with a feeling of accomplishment. We learnt how retail firms work, how different macro-economic factors affect their revenue, and how other factors like Inventory per square foot affect growth. Good times, good times!

So the question is, if I choose a Investment Management career, can I do this full-time? Will I enjoy it? Let's see.

-This past week also had two Banks (names withheld) visit the Sloan campus. I had to dress up in a suit and go attend the presentations. It was an interesting experience. I specifically spoke to people in Investment Management at both Banks and avoided people in Trading and Banking. But of course, one of my classmates gets hold of me and takes me to listen to one of the banker guys. And it was great. This guy was in charge of Energy M&A for the US and Europe. I loved the job description and the exciting things he was doing in doing due dilligence for Renewable Energy firms. Only problem with Banking is the lifestyle and I am definitely not into 100 h work weeks. It's a pity.

-I also had the distinct pleasure of watching myself on tape while delivering a presentation. B school communication courses do that to improve your presentation skills. It was another interesting experience. I used "um" quite a bit and seemed to be smacking my lips a lot (had not had enough water I think). And there are other things to improve as well.

-This coming week we have two Investment Management firms visiting Sloan, then there are the VC talks midweek, energy related talks, and MIT Energy night.

later

-

where to begin?

2008-09-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

well, some personal ego-stroking first:

- Someone posted on our class message board today that there was a picture of some of our classmates in today's Boston Globe and also that I was in the picture (see link below).

So it's not exactly how you want to be pictured in a newspaper. I caught some flak for not having my name card displayed ("you too cool for name cards?"). But we digress. The article has some quotes from some of my classmates about how what's happenin' on Wall Street is going to affect recruiting etc. And we all do look bored/concerned in that picture. In our defense it was 6-8 pm non-class seminar on "Buy-Side state of affairs". And it was a long day.

But it is not a flattering picture, that's for sure.

kondum picture in the Boston Globe

- Today was another long day at school. As part of our first semester, we have a course called "Communication for Managers". Apparently the perception is that Sloan grads dont come out of school as polished so this course. Today we had a 2h session in which my group had to give two separate impromptu speeches in front of the group. The topics are revealed 30 sec before you talk. So it is real impromptu. I liked it. I have no problem getting in front of people to speak but what I am trying to improve is thinking when I speak so that I can modify my presentation as we go along.

- I am participating in a "Stock Pitch" competition this weekend at school. My team, three strong, has to go in front of an audience and pitch our analysis of a stock that they chose for us (Dick Sporting Goods). The top 2 teams will get to represent Sloan at other contests. I am new at this but if I want a career in Investment Management this is how the interview process is going to be, so I better get used to and get good at this. We started prepping for this. Let's see how it turns out.

-My friend Sara visited Boston this weekend and we hung out on Saturday eve. It was great to spend time with her.

-Some of my teammates are calling this week "Hell Week". We have 5 HWs due, 3 presentations, and two company visits. The recruitment madness begins officially this week with Goldman Sachs visiting first on Wednesday. I am not looking forward to wearing a suit. But I have to. dang!

-I am happy to report that amidst all this madness I am keeping to my gym schedule and playing squash twice a week. And the squash is intense and am loving it. Disappointingly my eating habits have gone down the drain. We have free lunch every day and there is pizza or burritos. Not healthy. Add beer to the mix in the evenings! I started drinking at noon on Saturday and Sunday. And had 2 beers today. ahhhh, you gotto love school!

-Dont know if any of you know or heard about Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). LTCM was the superstar hedge fund run by former Salomon Brothers and MIT/Harvard Nobel Prize winning economists in the mid 90S. They returned 400% cummulative in 4 years and then went on to bring Wall Street to it's knees in 1998. Before this month, that was the biggest catastrophe in the past 20 years. Anyway, last wednesday one of the big players from LTCM (Eric Rosenfeld) was at Sloan addressing us. It was cool to listen to this guy speak. He and LTCM are the subject of a cool book called "When Genius Fails" which every Finance person has read. I had read before coming to Sloan and it was great to hear this guy speak in person.

He had great insights into trading and what needs to be done in today's markets.

Allrite kids, I have a 8:30 am Accounting class tomm.

later

Jeeezaaaz, so much happenin'!

2008-09-22T18:26:00.001-07:00

Where to start? I would not be exaggerating if I said we just went through a pretty freakin' HISTORIC week in the world of finance. Some are calling it a pivotal point in the history of finance. Remains to be seen. Here is what has been happenin':

-There are no more pure US Investment Banks. Just read that statement again. Wow!

-Oil went up $25 today alone (before settling down). Gold is back in the 900s and the US$ took a whooping. All in all a crazy day in the markets.

-It was a holiday today at MIT. Why you ask? "Anti-Suicide day". Yup that's right. Earlier this decade some undergrad kids could not take the stress of the first year and hence solved the problem by jumping off the roofs. So the school decided to issue pass/fail in the first year for undergrads. And have more than one 3 day weekend every month. So the holiday. I'll take it.

-Last week was fun. Andrew Lo (fin prof at Sloan) had a trading competition for interested Sloan students on Friday. You can form teams from your class and trade with each other using a Sloan designed interface. They were trying to create a market using all of us to demonstrate how things work. My team was pretty good. We turned $10000 into $31,500 and ended up 7th. The team that came first had $35,000. We should won it but I made a mistake at the very beginning that cost us more than 10K. I placed a "Market Buy" instead of "Limit Buy" that ended up screwing us. Oh well, atleast it was a good experience. There are some sharp kids in my class.

-Our Econ prof is not exactly helping me considering that my Econ is weak. I think my Macro-Econ is pretty solid but Micro is weak. And we have Micro-Econ this semester. Our guy is pretty smart (I hear he is under 30 and a prof of econ at MIT which is not too shabby). Luckily some of my team members are good with Econ.

-I keep meeting interesting people in class everyday. There is this kid from Brazil whose dad owns an energy company and just won a contract to supply wind energy in Brazil for the first time. This kid and his brother (a Sloan Alum) are going to run the wind farm! How cool is that? I am trying to organize a trek to Brazil to visit the farm. Nothing like visiting a new technology firm and see it from the time it is starting.

-I have to make a serious decision on whether to worry about grades or not give a hoot. Like for example this week, we have this great conference called "Emerging Technologies Conference" at MIT which is going to bring some pretty freakin' cool innovators in different sectors to campus. Of course the talks I want to go to clash with my class schedule. I am like, screw it, why should I care about grades. I am here to learn not fill my GPA. Let's see what I end up doing.

Here is the link to EmTech, lots of great talks
http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech/08/schedule.aspx

-My decision on career choice post-Sloan is still pending. I am still talking to different people in the areas that I am targetting and have decided to give myself 2 more weeks to decide.

-On the ironic side, we have the artists formerly known as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merril Lynch coming to campus in 10 days for recruiting informationals. I am signed up for them but what do you think the odds are that they will be canceled.

-On another cool side, I am part of the organization committee for the MIT Energy Night to be held on October 10 at the MIT Museum. I have been put in charge of picking cool renewable energy outdoor displays. I have been given freedom to pick whatever I think is appropriate. So far there has been interest from GM to display their Chevy Volt and from Honda for their FCX. Both dont use any gas. I am trying to get a solar panel display as well. Should be fun.

-oh yeah, we are partying quite a bit as well. I am spending money like it's nobody's business! I need to get hold of my expenses.

Decision Time

2008-09-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

It's kinda ironic that a momentous day in the US Financial Markets coincides with a tough career decision for me post-Sloan. It is easy to say that what happened this weekend led me to this so called fork in the road but it is not true at all.

We had a whole day last Friday of career workshops (mentioned briefly in my earlier post) and I went and sat in on two sessions: Investment Management and Investment Banking. And I have to say Investment Management looked and sounded very good. Investment Banking did too. One thing I did not attend was the Venture Capital/Private Equity session. Subsequently I talked to two of my classmates (pretty knowledgeable ones) and I got great feedback as to why I have a great shot at getting into a Venture Capital firm.

So Friday brought a lot of confusion and self-introspection. I brooded over this all weekend and talked to folks in various areas. It all boils down to what I want from a job right after my MBA. That simple. And the answer is quite simple actually. Transferable skills set that can someday help me run a business.

And that is how I've arrived at this fork in the road: what to concentrate on for internship recruiting starting next month. (a) Trading desk position, (b) Venture Capital, or (c) Investment Management. I can't try to recruit for all three since it is highly time intensive and not productive. I need to basically drop one of the three and what is it going to be.

I am going to start sitting down with people who have careers in all three and try to get relevant information out of them this week. And then decide. Will be an interesting week.

Death of the Investment bank?

2008-09-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

Like VS Naipaul claimed 10 years ago that the Novel as we know is dead, the same can probably be said for Investment Banks on Wall Street starting today.

I obviously have not followed the financial markets for long but even with my limited knowledge what is transpiring today (Lehman talks of Bankruptcy and Merril Lynch bought over by BofA and AIG in deep trouble) seems to be historic. And if you listen to some pundits on CNBC they are calling that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley better go find buyers next week else they are in trouble as well.

What this means for us B school students interested in careers in Banking is not clear at this point but the prospects can't be that great. The market is going to be flooded with people who lost their jobs from this carnage and banks will perceivably cut down or be more prudent in hiring from here on for the short-term.

I am interested in hearing from one of our Finance Professors (who is a superstar in that area) about the impact of this on the markets and the state of the economy in the next few months. I think I will sit in an extra class tomm just to hear him speak about this.

I knew something was not right when I got a call from a trader at a big European Investment Bank last night. This friend had earlier asked me to come over and spend a day on the trading floor anytime I wanted. But he called last night to let me know that apparently no one other than employees are now allowed on the trading floor considering the state of the markets now. He told me to wait until October or November. This was before I had heard of the Lehman and Merril mess. Who knows how things are going to be after this.

I expected the dollar to have a mini-crash this evening but it is holding up reasonably ok. Maybe Monday will bring more bad news.

Interesting times!

It's all true

2008-09-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

I heard a lot of stories from kids who got into business school about how it is all about time management. And me being the ever cynical guy did not buy any of it. Well, I humbly have to eat it now. There is no other way to put it. I've not had time to breathe in the past 5 weeks or so. I am hoping I get better with managing my time soon 'cause in addition to the avalanche of activities we have now companies start visiting Sloan campus on October 1 (Goldman as they should is the first firm on campus).

So briefly an update on what has been happenin' since I left Philly on Aug 3:

-The Move: We got stuck on the road for 4h in CT. Got in at 1 am and stayed up until 5am unloading stuff from our UHaul. And our apt was not exactly clean when we walked in. Took us 2 IKEA visits, 10 visits to Target, and 4 visits to Staples to settle in with furniture.

-House-warming party: We had a BBQ party at our apartment in the middle of August. And 150 kids from our class showed up. We somehow fit everyone in the tiny drive way and our apt. Cleaning up afterwards took a while.

-Roommates: Both my roommates are cool. We have had no issues yet. And I dont foresee us not getting along into the future. Both of them are OCD like I am and reasonably clean. And very laid-back.

-Classmates: Interesting bunch. I love it that they are very laid-back and grounded. Most of them atleast. We have one former Hedge Fund owner, one student who is a descendent of one of the premier automotive families of the world, and a host of interesting characters. We also have those kids who like to hear themselves talk in class. Seems like we can't avoid them anywhere.

-Orientation week: This was the highlight of the first four weeks of school. I usually can't stand team-building exercises but what they made us do during this one day of orientation was great. They took us to this outdoor center and made us go through a bunch of exercises. We had to build a real raft and paddle to the middle of a lake from scratch, climb up a 50 ft rope, and a host of great events. They were introspective and fun.

-Classes: I have 6 courses. I am enjoying finance but our ocean (the whole class is divided into groups of 70. each group is called an ocean) does not have the best finance prof at Sloan. Our accounting prof is great. I find two courses boring: Organizational process and Communication. Although parts of communication class are fun. This past week I had to go in front of the class and sell them an idea-I had 10 min to prepare. And then they asses you in front of the whole class. I am reasonably ok with impromptu speeches but would like to get better and smoother.

-Extra-curricular activies: There is no shortage of these. I am starting a Squash Club at Sloan and have a small group that plays regularly already. I am active in the Energy Club and the Sales and Trading club. oh yeah, I have been drinking almost every single day since mid-August. (Except today).

-HWs: I hate homeworks and we have a lot of them already. I was indoors all day last Saturday reading and preparing for class.

-Recruiting: I made a trip to NYC to meet a friend who is a trader at a big Ibank. He invited to come and spend a day on the trading floor with him. I was dense and did not do it after talking to some of my classmates who warned me about going to recruit this early. I should not have listened to them. oh well.

-Confused: Yeah I thought I was set on what career I wanted to pursue before coming to Sloan but we just had a career day and it left me all confused. Now I want to pursue Investment Management, Investment Banking, and Venture Capital. Not good. I need to narrow my choice soon.

-Scooter: I love it that I am using my scooter everyday here. And guess what there are hundreds of scooter users in Boston.

allrite, I need to get to bed. Have to get up early on Sunday and plan for next week. How exciting!

An Ode to Philly and my Philly Crew

2008-08-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

So this is my last weekend in Philly. And today was my last day at work (it got a little emotional today). I thought I would write an Ode to Philly. I am going to write what I will miss and what I will not miss in Philly. I will also write what comes to mind first (with no editing) so that it is not PC or anything. Here goes:

I will miss

-Hanging out at the Urban Saloon at 3 in the afternoon during March Madness

-Kevin frothing at the mouth when discussing politics

-Devil's Alley

-Having "distribution of wealth" arguments with Robert on the train.

-Playing squash on Wednesdays with Sara and on Tuesdays with Sean

-The walk from the Ritz's to home after a movie

-Bullying my friends into taking Jaeger shots for no reason

-Eating duck rolls and beer marinated Mussels at Monk's

-As much as I hate to admit it, DiBruno brothers (yes, even though they are expensive)

-Hanging out at Rangoon with Kasturi and TJ

-Murphy and his ever positive demeanor

-Marisa's southern coolness, Kelly's humor, and Dana's not replying to my emails.

-The Cantina in South Philly

-The rude hair 'stylists' at the ChopShop (ok they were rude but it was a $10 haircut!)

-The Sterling and their semi-rude staff (the building I live in)

-The Eye Candy at the PSC (my gym) in the evenings (c'mon it was not too bad)

-Running by the Schuykill (sp?) in the summer

-The BYOB culture

-Paul at Working Class Cycles (even though I know he fleeces me for repairing my scooter every single time. It's a hard-knock life being a scooter/bike repair guy these days.)

-Brunches at Le Creperie. Especially those times when Mrs. Doo had one too many glasses of wine and started revealing details about her sex life.

-Being close enough to visit my sister, nephew, and BIL every other week.

-Marcus's flakiness

-SzTH (my fav restaurant in Chinatown)

-The alpha doggy Wharton kids

-Hanging out at Kevin and Caroline's deck even though it's freezing

-Discussing politics for real with Kevin and for fun with Robert

-The unsocializing part of Kevin's group of friends (no names please!)

Allrite that's all I can think of today. Let me end this positively which means nothing about things I will not miss in Philly (I am being PC after all aren't I?).

Me no Have Internet!

2008-07-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

So I changed my gym/running routine to the mornings about a month ago. Now I update my Podcasts every morning so that I can listen to them in the gym/while running. (Bloomberg/BBC/PIMCO are my favorites so far). The other day there was this woman on a BBC Podcast who was talking about her experiment with avoiding email and the internet for one whole day at her workplace (she is a journalist for FT and BBC). Needless to say she could not get much done, in fact she used the phrase “…I felt like a waste of space without these technologies”. I, my usual critical self, smirked about this and dismissed it as typical journalist BS. Little did I know that the very next day I would end up being in a similar position at work.

So I show up at work the following morning and read an email (email worked) claiming that due to some equipment damage from an overnight storm we will not have access to the internet until late in the afternoon.

This is how I spent my day internet-less at work:

9:25 AM: (hey, I am quitting soon. I can come to work whenever I like!) Logged onto Novell email service. Mildly annoyed to find out that web access will not be available until the afternoon. Hmm….I tell myself this can’t be that bad right?

9:26 AM: Give up and call Help Desk to find out what the HECK is going on?! Randy, the IT manager, calmly answers the phone and tells me that they expect to be up and running by 1 pm. Waiting for a new part apparently.

9:27 AM: “I can do this, I can do this. Focus man, what the hell is wrong with you!”

9:27 AM (30 sec later): Clicked on Internet Explorer (yes, I am web browser illiterate) to check if the IT guys are lying about the access. They were NOT.

9:28 AM: Someone comes into my office to talk about work related stuff. Seizing this chance for ‘distraction’ I engage in extended conversation (mostly of the unnecessary kind) about a project. This takes me away from my office (yippie!) and into the plant and labs. See how time flies when you love what you are doing! I am back at my desk after 30 min.

10 AM: The initial paranoia having passed, I now do not even have the urge to look at my iPhone. Like a smoker who has maneuvered the first couple of days after quitting successfully I feel energized now to go internet-free for the rest of the day.

10:05 AM: Discover that I have yet to clear quite a few things in my office in preparation for my departure. Nothing like a little house-keeping to pass time at work. I discover that I used to use this rag of a bag as my shoulder bag for work. It was hidden in one of the file cabinets. Well, I could use that to carry some things back to my apt on my scooter. Loaded up my paychecks from the past 3 years in that bag. Found quite a few receipts from my work trips to London in my desk. And tickets to museums and places I visited in Ireland and Hungary. Gotto keep those. Threw the rest of the stuff away.

11:15 AM: Ooooh that was exhausting! Time for lunch. In my defense, I do eat an early lunch. Decided to take my scooter to Trader Joes and get their “Chicken w/black bean” Wrap. Has anyone tried it? It’s good and only $4. Those marketing freaks! Just as you are about to navigate the aisles they strategically position products to entice you! I spot this “Grain 8 Crisps” which promise a whole 20g of grain in a 100g pack (pack size is 2 times your small chips pack). I know how this is going to end up. I buy these sort of things promising myself that I would spread that pack out for 3 days. Of course in 2-3 hrs the entire pack disappears. Despite all this I buy the pack to ‘supplement’ by Wrap. Why? Well, on the aisle it says “Supplement this with a pack of chips for a hearty meal”. Hey, you gotto obey the Aisle Gods!

11:40 AM: Arrive back at the office. Start eating my wrap. Usually this is the time when I browse (ok, most of the time but this time is almost always reserved for web browsing). Putting up a brave front I decide to not even look at my iPhone. I read work material instead while eating. Spot a couple of mistakes in a presentation due to be sent out to Japan and correct it. Did you have any doubts? The “Crisps” pack is half empty within 15 min. What is with snacks that have Salt? Addictive!

12:10 PM: “Should I call IT to check?” The urge returns! It quickly passes as well.

12:11 PM: I discover that I have 368 emails that I have not opened. Uh uh 368! To be fair though, a majority of those are chain emails at work where people are replying to each other to point out worthless minutiae. I postpone looking at them until the next day. If any of them is that important they will call me no?

12:15 PM: Someone from work steps into my office about a project. This was legit. I needed to take care of this. I spent the next hour and 45 minutes solving this in the plant.
(I do work you know!)

2 PM: Upon returning to my office, I spot loads and loads of paper on my two desks. I had been collecting them for the past 2 years. They were neatly arranged mind you. Was lazy to shred them. Never a better time for shredding!

2:05 PM: Has anyone used the shredder extensively before? Well, let me tell you, the crisp sound of metal cutting against the soft paper, as pleasant as it can get on the ears. Seriously. I spent the next 45 min at the shredder. I had to stop ‘cause the bag filled up and I had no idea how to remove and put a new bag. I decided to shred the rest the next day.

3 PM: Only an hour and 15 min to go.

3:05 PM: My boss steps into my office. We discuss some work details. And then he talks to me about this guy who they were interviewing (on that very day) for a position in my group (kinda my replacement). I asked him about the candidate’s presentation and personal interview. My boss had yet to interview him but he thought the presentation was allrite. He also mentioned that the candidate’s English was not that great. Suddenly my previous boss, who just finished interviewing the candidate, steps into my office and tells my boss to ask the candidate his GPA (not mentioned on his resume apparently). In my opinion that is not a good sign. If you are impressed with the person who you are interviewing you don’t care about his/her GPA. Especially my former boss, he is cool. He must not have like this candidate dude. My boss asks me my preference for going away drinks. I tell him that I didn’t have any.

3:45 PM: Hunger pang! I hit up the vending machine for some Oreos. Not satisfied I re-open my “Crispies” bag and almost finish it. So much for spreading it for 3 days.

4 PM: At this point I am proud with myself that I’ve not had the urge to web browse on my iPhone. Not so bad then huh! Attended to some random work stuff and got ready to leave.

4:15 PM: Emboldened by this day I tell myself that I will not browse the web even at home tonite. This can’t be that bad right?

Of course as it had to be, there was a huge storm that evening and my train was stuck at the station for 2h. I had to cave in and listen to my friend Robert in the train to check the weather (we were thinking about driving our scooters into the city). So I caved in! But not a bad day at all w/o the internet.

Some Clothing Etiquette Please!

2008-07-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago I was at the Philly airport on my way to spend a holiday weekend with buddies in Texas when I noticed something. If you board your flight from Terminal A in PHL you cross paths with passengers arriving and departing from/to International destinations. As I got out of the security check maze in Terminal A I noticed a British family, Mom, Dad, and three teenage daughters, walk by. And all of them, yeah ALL of them, had powder blue sweatshirts and sweatpants on. To add to the fashion parade they had thrown on some bling bling as well. Ok, I am not exactly a fashion connoisseur or the fashion police but that right there is so not cool. I don’t care what your reasons are, traveling cross continental swathed in two pieces of clothing they use to make your bathroom towels is the ultimate i-don’t-give-two-hoots for society statement. You maybe be a Rebel but please find other ways to express that feeling will ya?
Anyway, that got me thinking, what clothing is an absolute no-no in public? (people can wear whatever they want or nothing at all in private but in public, please have some consideration for fellow human beings.).

Here is a list that comes to mind:
-First of course is sweatpants/sweatshirts. Guys and girls, PLEASE, I beg of you, at least thrown on a T-shirt and jeans, how much effort does that take huh. I don’t care how comfortable they are, sweatpants/shirts in public places is the biggest no-no.

-T shirts women wear that say “Da Bomb”, “Too Hot to Handle”, “Cutie” or any other variation that tries to convey the same meaning. Really? So you expect us to go, “let’s see here, I am not really sure if this girl is hot/cute or not, so let me see what her t-shirt says, OK, it says she is. That seals it, she is totally hot, what was I thinking, I should have looked at her T shirt first, duh”.

-Dudes wearing clothing one size (sometimes two sizes) too small. Yeah we all know you spend copious amounts of time in the gym pumping iron (and consuming what have you) and want to show off the fruits of your labor but PLEASE. There are other avenues to show off your prowess, body-building competitions or playing baseball come to mind.

-Fur coats. Especially the ladies. Enough said.

-Speedos. This one time my friend and I were standing in the buffet line at a picnic near a lake and this dude walks upto the line and starts helping himself to food. In a Speedo! He then proceeded to scratch himself. Should I go on? Guys, please spare us the sight of your package while we are trying to eat some food. Stay in the pool/water if you have to wear Speedos.

-Leopard/Tiger skin clothing or accessories. I’ve never understood why women like to wear these. Are they trying to convey a secret message by wearing these? Cave people used to wear them eons ago ‘cause that’s the best they could do then. Civilization has moved along ladies. Can’t y’all too?

-Uber short ‘shorts’. Not sure if any of you have an idea as to what I am talking about here. You know I noticed this one girl the other day wearing these shorts that are basically ‘knickers’ as the British would call it. Jeezaz! Could you leave something for our imagination please!

-This is a borderline no-no for me personally. Girls jeans with no pockets in the rear. So not cool.

-This one’s technically not clothing but I have a problem nevertheless. The David Beckham Mohawk type hairstyle. Dudes, REALLY? that hairstyle is so 10 years ago. Put that half liter of gel to better use will ya?

Healthcare Costs, yeah that topic again!

2008-07-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Do any of you know how the costs are distributed when you make a visit to your favorite (I mean PCP) physician? Would you hazard a guess as to what the absolute minimum cost is when you make a physician visit (besides the co-pay that is)? Has someone ever tried to find out what these costs are prior to or after you make a visit?

The answer to my last question for most people would be a “NO” I am assuming. Why? Let me tell you why. As long as the visit is for something not too serious (surgery or any invasive procedure) most often the doctor or the person at the front desk of the hospital would have told you: “don’t worry about it your insurance will pay for it”. And you move on since it does not concern you. I’ve done that a couple of times myself so I know the situation. Well, maybe we should all have cared to find out how exactly we are getting charged. Why do I think so? Let me tell you why I think so (by the way, I love replying to a “Why do I think so?” using the Let me tell you . Soooo old school movies! But I digress). Two examples:

Example 1:
Y’all remember my posting (more like a rant) on my visit to my PCP to get the required vaccines from a few weeks ago? Well well, apparently that saga needed a different ending. So, I got a snail mail from the MIT medical office earlier this week informing me that I still needed to get another vaccine or furnish results to a test in order for them to approve my policy. Both my doctor and I had forgotten to read that on the MIT medical list of required vaccines that I needed TWO of MMR were required not one . She in her haste (and me in my enraged state) had missed it.

So I ended up calling my hospital to get those test results. Of course, I go through the usual call transfer cycle from one department to another with no solution in sight. And I was about to break my phone at work. I finally got hold of a lady in the lab and told her that I needed the results. She of course checked and told me that she can’t release them to me unless the doctor approves it (for crying out loud these are not pregnancy tests!). And so I find out that my doctor has left the Hospital. Left? No reason was given. I had to apparently leave a voice mail with the nurses and they would respond when they could. Should I tell you how I was feeling at that moment?

I calmed down and called the billing department of the hospital to find out how much they had charged for my last two visits and to see if I had any room within my insurance limit to get another shot. The lady in billing told me that they had charged a total of $450 for my two visits. I am like, “what?” I had 2 vaccines and a test done for chris’ sakes! I then asked her to detail the costs for my two trips to the doctor. Get this, apparently there is a fixed cost associated with a visit regardless of what you are in for. This at my hospital was $25 for admin fee + $80 for hospital fee + my co-pay. So I am effectively paying $105-130 just for stepping in the door. What for exactly? Well of course they give you a laundry list of reasons: insurance to cover this, costs to cover for keeping your records, and what have you. I know that there has to be a fixed cost that needs to cover basic operations but this seemed ridiculous. My test cost $80 and vaccines cost me another $80.

So if you are keeping track, the actual cost for my visits (cost of vaccines and tests) turns out to be 30% of what the hospital ended up charging the insurance company. 70% overhead is an absolute rip-off if you think about it. Where do I start in assessing the outrageousness (is that a word?) of this cost basis. Can somebody please tell me how this is justifiable?

Example 2:
I scheduled my last dental visit 2 weeks ago at my regular dentist. Earlier this year they told me that I needed a deep clean which they said would be done in two visits. I had them done in March but they had not billed me yet. Anyway, I had specifically told the doctor that I would go ahead with them only if it was absolutely necessary since my insurance had a yearly cap for dental visits and costs. The doctor assured me that it would be within the limits and asked me not to worry about it.

When I asked for a cost detail the doctor gave me the list. It clearly was above the limit. When I asked the doctor told me: “This is normal”. The dentists apparently send an exaggerated bill to the insurance company. The insurance company looks at it then pays whatever it deems appropriate (which varies from 50 to 80% of the amount charged). The remaining money is expected to be paid by the customer. So when the bill came I called and talked to the doctor that I will not make ANY payment since I had specifically indicated my concern prior to the procedure. The doctor, to my surprise, waived the amount that the bill said I owed. Note that this had happened twice before. So I asked the doctor if they can so easily let that amount go unpaid why charge higher to begin with. Imagine the shock when I heard his response. Apparently this is a game that they play with the insurance companies: they charge more than they should, knowing fully well that the insurance company will only pay a % of the amount asked. In the end that % payment covers the amount they actually want. I hung up perplexed and a tad bit disgusted. But then a thought occurred to me, what about the unsuspecting patients who pay whatever amount is listed on the bill eventually sent to them by the dentist’s office. Vow. I hope everyone checks their medical bills before they pay.

Lessons from this: always enquire about your medical costs and the US Healthcare system needs to be fixed.

PS: oh, how did my vaccine sage end? Well, I ended up getting another vaccine but got charged less since I found out that you can request a nurse’s visit which does not require you to pay for the admin costs. Again, this because I was anal and insisted on finding out more.

Replay - Part II

2008-06-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

ok, this is the last one of my flashbacks. This is the travel log for Day 2 of my UK-Ireland trip from Oct 2006.
Key words from the log: Dali, Big Ben, Westminster, London Eye, Princess Di, etc.
http://www.esnips.com/web/UKTrip2006-Day2a
New column on current events this weekend. Promise!

oh yeah, I am one of those

2008-06-20T10:26:00.001-07:00

you know how TV stations, newspapers, websites, and blogs once in a while recycle some of their old stuff, well as much as dont want to be one of those, I have no choice. Have not thought of anything new to write, so will recycle some of my old stuff for you readers.

I went on a UK-Ireland trip in Oct 2006 and kept a travel log. Some of you may have read it (i had sent it out via email) but I've not posted it on the blog ever. So here goes:
Day 1 in London
(click on the link below and scroll down to the "File" section and click on the pdf link. yeah it is tedious but blogger.com does not let you post files for some reason, morons!)
http://www.esnips.com/web/UKTrip2006-Day1/

Healthcare slap in the face!

2008-06-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

It's true that things do not hit you in the face until you face the issue firsthand. I've known for some time that the US Healthcare system is riddled with so much bureaucracy that not only is it driving up prices for the common person but also it makes socialist bureacracy seem tame.

So, I needed to 4 vaccinations before I head to school as the state of MA requires every student to be immunized against certain conditions. I already did this when I came to the US as a grad student in 1995 but I had either lost the paperwork or in one case you need to get immunized every 5 years or so.

So what did I do? I called my insurance people and asked them if this is covered and the lady on the phone said that yes I was covered as long as the entire cost of the process was under $300 per year. Fair enough I thought.

-I placed a call to my PCP and took an appointment for 8:15 am on a Monday. I did not want to miss too much time from work.
-I show up at 8 am, sign-in at the front desk (on a computer by myself no less, yeah this place is fancy), wait once for some one to call me. My name is called and I go to a desk where I am asked the usual info and asked to shell out my co-pay. The lady then asks me to go wait in another area
until someone else would call me.
-Of course by the time someone comes to call me it is 8:30. F**k!! Why the heck do they appointments then? This is like waiting for the cable guy, "Someone will show up between 8 and 11 am". I dont understand what is the purpose of taking an appointment at a precise time when it means jacksh*t.
-anyway, a nurse takes me into a room and takes my temperature, blood pressure, weight, and height and asks me to go wait in another room for the doctor (i've never understood this serial waiting process).
-Of course by the time the doctor shows up it's close to 9 am. I tell her that my insurance covers $300 for all the vaccines so let me know if all the vaccinations will be covered by this. She obviously does not know and asks me to ask technicians when they give me the shots.
-She also mentions that they could draw blood from me and test that in the lab and if the results are ok I dont have to take 2 of the 4 vaccinations. I said ok.
-So copious amounts of blood is drawn (seriously they took like a litre of blood from me, jeeez!), a shot is given (hurt like crap for 2 days by the way), and some sort of another shot is injected in my forearm.
-I am asked to come back on Wednesday to show the nurses the thing in my forearm and if that's negative I am good for one of the 4 vaccines. The lab results for the other two would be mailed to me as soon as they are out and if they are negative.
-I go back on Wednesday and get the one vaccine taken care of.
-Then I get a call from my doctor who says that the lab tests came back ambivalent for two of the tests and one came back positive. Ambivalent meant that she had to ask them to be re-tested at another lab (which meant more $$ and I was getting irritated) or I could just come back again and get the shots. I told her that I would rather come back and get the shots.
-So I make an appt for Monday which mind you is exactly 7 days later to my first visit.
-I go through the motions on Monday as I sign-in and go the first waiting area. Mind you by now I am POd that I've had to take time off from work. The girl at the second desk asks me for another co-pay. I go "What?!" I was just here last Monday and am here to take care of that per my doctor. She goes, "Sir, this is policy every time you come back you have to co-pay". I was having none of that, "That does not make any sense to me". And she goes, "Sir, your insurance will pay for the visit dont worry you just have to pay your co-pay". Now I am getting more POd. This is how they are artificially driving up prices and making healthcare unaffordable. It did not make any sense for me to pay for co-pay twice especially since I was coming back to finish a procedure. She finally said, "You can talk to the doctor about this". Damn yes I will!
-The poor nurse who then came to get me from the waiting area had no idea what mood I was in. As she took me into a room to get the usual measurements, I went ballistic on her. "I was here 7 days ago, do you think I have contracted some strange disease in that period or grown 2 inches". For crying out loud, people need to use common sense in situations. I dont give a rat's a*s if its policy. It's following rules to the book is what drives prices in healthcare up.
-By the time the doctor came to see me I was raging mad! I lit into her as soon as she came in. She had an intern with her (who was a 2nd year student). Both of them looked scared after I finished speaking. The doctor's voice quivered as she spoke back. I wanted her to cancel all the tests and just give me the shots. She had ordered the tests despite me telling her not to, standard policy apparently (that friggin' term again!).
-She seemed genuinely pained on hearing me shout about the situation. She apologized for everything and told me that she will run right away and try to cancel the tests (which she managed to later). I talked to her about the co-pay and she apologetically said that it was policy (that term again!). I lectured her on that a bit (I was getting used to this!). What this did in effect was that she became nervous and told me that I did not need one of the shots and she couls sign saying that I did not need that (I told her that I remember getting that shot 2 times before).
-In 15 min I calmed down and apologized to her (and the intern) for yelling at them. They both mumbled something about them understanding. I am sure they went back and cursed the heck out me later. Who knows they did some voodoo stuff on my X-ray!

Bottom line, some basic reasoning needs to be factored into the healthcare system in this country. Redundant procedures are one of the main reasons that lead to rises in healthcare costs and these need to be reigned in. I need to get more info about this. I read that one of my future classmates is all about changing the healthcare system. Let's see how that goes.

Happenings...

2008-05-31T15:26:00.000-07:00

so what's been happening lately people? Well with me, here it is:

-So my boss tells me this week that apperently my official title and grade for the last 2 years has actually been "Technical Program Manager". I am like "waaaat?". U see my business card says "Technical Applications Specialist". I guess in effect I dont give a rats a**e about this now. I was in fact running 2 programs so it was obvious to others but on the card. Besides Program Managers do not have anyone reporting to them directly. It's one of those magical Matrix organizations. I (and other program managers) had to get about 60 or so people internally to do stuff for us although we did not do their performance reviews. Was definitely interesting. Bottom line, the actual title will hopefully look good on my new resume that I will make up for B school recruiting.

-Saw two movies last weekend. "Indiana Jones: The Crystall Skull" and "Harold and Kumar II". The IJones movies was allrite. The ending was disappointing. Shia LeBoeuf (whose earlier work in "The Battle of Shaker Heights" and "A guide to Recognizing your Saints" was fantastic) as the kid of IJones was ok. Harold and Kumar on the other hand was funny. They pulled it off.

-I am throat deep in paperwork for school these days. I've had to apply for my Soc Sec card, send a letter to Selective Service for leaving me out of the armed forces (if you apply for a fed loan you need this), I have to get 4 vaccinations (my arm's gonna hurt like sh*t on Monday), Private Loans, fill out rental agreements, signup for exit interviews at work, post on Craigslist to sublet my place for August. Been a long week!

-I also did a prelim budget for school. And man, it's gonna be freakin' tight! Besides the fixed monthly expenses, I will have about $800 for Food and drinks and travel per month. I guess it's hitting me now that I'm going to be a student soon! My future roommates and I talked about this and one of them has come up with a 'strategy' for saving money in school. Here is his 'strategy':
-Buy loads of Red Wine bottles now and store up for the whole semester
-No taking a date to dinner outside on the first date. Cook at home
-On second or third dates, take the girl to someplace where we dont have to pay but still dont let her know we are cheap! Like a Zoo or a free museum exhibit (I've done the latter already!).

-Watched a little of the NBA playoffs this week. My rant from a few years ago is still valid about the Detroit Pistons. Whoever the next coach is (you better believe it that Flip's gonna get fired) should get into his team's mindset that the offense will flow through Rasheed. The Celtics look very shaky. My prediction for the final: Lakers in 5 (or 6 at most).

-Euro 2008 football (or soccer to you ignoramuses out there) starts next weekend (June 7). I am excited. Was in France the last time this happenned. Good times, good times! Unfortunately the games start at 12 noon or at 2:45 in the afternoon. I hope my workplace let's me slip out during lunch for some of the games (they did that for the World Cup in 2006). My prediction: France Vs Spain in the Final. France Wins!

That's all for now

State of the Portfolio, Remember the Portfoliio?

2008-05-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

Can't remember the last time I checked in on my portfolio (was it in December or January?). Anyway, time for a review of how my picks are doing:
-COP: +1.4% since July 2007
-E: +7.2% since July 2007
-CHK: +44.1% since July 2007 (sweeeeeet!)
-CCJ: -19% since July 2007 (not so sweet)
-PAL:-36.7% since July 2007 (ouch!)

Overall, -2% since July 2007. Meanwhile, S&P500 is -11% for the same period. Not too shabby.

Just when I was trying to gloat about my CHK (natural gas) pick, PAL kills me! And CCJ as well. You would think any precious metal related company would be doing really well. Have you seen the price of Platinum recently? That's the reason I dont understand the performance of PAL. I passingly read some report that said that there is a supply deficit of Pd next year. So keeping PAL may not be a bad deal.

CCJ on the other hand is a Uranium company. Not sure why they are not doing well too. There is room for alternative energy PLUS CCJ has given out dividends of 5 cents three times and 6 cents one time since July 2007-that's four dividends in less than a year. And still it's down?

On the other hand, look at CHK (natural gas). Nothing extra-ordinary has happened to them in the last year or so. Four times dividends of 7 cents each have been given out. The 2007 annual report was very good but 1Q of 2008 was terrible. But still there is upward movement this year. Why? Let me tell you why. Energy sector momentum. People, like sheep, are buying anything to do with Oil and Natural Gas. I can't find any other reason.

By the way has anyone checked the type of dividends that Oil companies are paying these days. $1.25 for E (3 times the past year) and 47 cents for COP (3 times the past year). I have no comment.

So, I will post my last update of this portfolio in July 2008. Then it's all real time baby!

By the way, I opened a FX (currency trading) account this past week. Real time! I've started with a $250 account. I hope to concentrate on trading the spread between USD and JPY and USD and EURO. I am excited about this! Let's see how it turns out.

Inside HillDawg's Mind - May 24 2008

2008-05-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

So, the following quotes (or some variation of them) have been attributed to have originated from Hillary Clinton in the past 2 weeks or so:

-“…I have shown to have the support of hardworking whites…”
-“…If you consider the democratic primary based on electoral votes then I have the clear majority…”
-“….If the Democratic primaries would have been based on winner take-all then I would have been the clear winner….”
-“…the popular vote should be considered since it is important to take people’s will into consideration…”
-“…considering what happened to RFK in 1968, I can’t understand why so many people want to me to step aside…”

I am not going into the analysis of these statements like so many of the so-called experts in the print media and the talking heads on TV have. To me all of these indicate one simple feeling: Desperation. She (and her coterie) is willing to say anything to stay in the race. This is not what I want to write about. What I want to examine is what exactly is going on in HillDawg’s mind right now. Here are a few possibilities and my takes:

-I want to stay in until August so that my rival’s campaign pays my $20 M debt. My take on this: not very likely. If she wants the debt to be cleared she can begin behind the scenes negotiation NOW and be taken care of. I am sure B Rack and his campaign would be ok with this considering they are doing so stellar with fund-raising. No need for her to prolong this until August just for money.

-I want to make B Rack a better candidate for the General Election by putting him through this process beforehand. My take: Bullsh*t! Not sure how you are helping a candidate by repeatedly mentioning that he can’t carry an important party base publicly and that too at every opp she gets. I think her decision to stay in until Indiana and N Carolina was a valid one. You could probably even justify staying in for WV and KY. I agree that by staying in she made B Rack a better candidate since he faced a couple of political crisis situations. But this reason is not valid anymore esp now.

-I want to leverage my good showing in the primary into seeking a senior and powerful Democratic party post (Senate Majority Leader/Powerbroker in future elections). My take: somewhat likely. Face it, she has won more primary votes than anyone in history except B Rack. More and more people seem to be coming out of the woodwork so to speak to support her-the media pays attention to the fact that B Rack is attracting young people but forgotten in this is the fact that HillDawg seems to be bringing in more women and others who would not vote otherwise. With her impressive showing in most states she can lay claim to the most powerful role in the party outside the Presidency (if B Rack does win it that is).

-I want to use this to get on B Rack’s tkt as a VEEP. My take: not likely. I just don’t see alpha dog personalities like HillDawg (or her husband) wanting to play second fiddle at any position. People like her always want to be in control. If you don’t think so, read a bit about her background. She has been laying the groundwork for a political career since she was 18 for crying out loud. Yeah she played second fiddle to Billy boy for 8 years (+8 more in AK) but she was setting things up. Plus the way she tried to influence public policy in the Clinton administration is already in the folklore. These type of people (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) can’t see themselves taking orders from others unless absolutely necessary. But then again, what do I know. Come August She might be holding B Rack’s hands in public showing her love.

-I want to stroke my ego. My take: likely. I don’t see any other logical explanation for her behavior (of course logic and politics are an oxymoron). One example of this. Apparently on the nite that she lost NC and barely won IN she was conducting an interview with the press corps on her flight when suddenly Blackberrys of her campaign staff starting blowing up. Apparently Tim Russert of NBC had just declared B Rack the winner of the primary or something final like that on NBC. So what does HillDawg do? She right away calls an impromptu meeting of her staff and without seeking any advice tells everyone: “We are going on until the last primary, no question”. Just like that she made the decision. Not sure if that was made out of spite for the rest of the world that has not agreed with her or an ego driven decision to show to the rest of the world that she will not listen to anyone. I don’t see any other evidence but the the latter reason.

How all this will affect the Democratic Party and the General Election remains to be seen.

No no people!

2008-05-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

-how about a 2nd Red Sox no-hitter in 2 years!
-how about a young pitcher farmraised doing it?
-how about an athlete who survived cancer doing it?
-how about a 21 year old kid who was roughly 2 years ago lying in bed not knowing if he would ever live doing this?
-how about a quiet no frills sportsman doing this?
-how about the first Red Sox lefty in 50 years doing this?
-how about that?

No going back now!

2008-05-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

yeah I know, it's been a while since I posted. I fell sick on the flight back from India and it has taken me a good part of 2 weeks to return to normal. Lesson: Dont go running when you have a high fever and can't breathe and when you are weak. Anyway, back to normal now (almost).

so, I told my boss today about my career plans. and it seemed to have gone rather well with him(so far atleast).

-He was genuinely interested in the application process, the cost of the education, and my career choice.
-He mentioned that I am welcome to work here if interested after school-in a different division and role obviously.
-He appreciated the 10 week notice (July 31st is my last work day).
-He seemed to be pleased that I was going to attend MIT. Mentioned it 2-3 times.
-He also said, "Congratulations! And now let me go panic about hiring a replacement!"
-He then went talked to his boss.
-Apparently his boss took it coolly (is that a word?).
-His boss apparently told him that he was expecting me to make a move to the corporate division of the company at some point. But they did not expect me to do this this soon. So not exactly surprised apparently.
-They are cool with me working here until July 31.
-I just saw an email from my boss to the HR dept informing them that I have decided to leave and that July 31 is my last day here.

so no going back now! Set in stone more or less.

4 days, 5 nites, and a New Tolerance Level - Part IV of IV

2008-05-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Anantapur-to-my grandparents’s place
-After going through the 7hr long journey from Bangalore I was looking forward to a normal incident-free car ride to my grandparent’s village from Anantapur. Well, when the poo hitteth the roof it hitteth more than once!
-We drove about 120 KM incident free with the a/c purring away when suddenly our car driver decided to get adventurous and navigate a heavily flooded part of the road by driving right through about 1 feet of water. Well, our rental car had a relative low road to car floor tolerance and voila the car stalled right in the middle of the water pool!
-Dang it! Two consecutive days of travel adventures were not what I had in mind in the middle of an Indian summer. Our car driver seemed shaken, more worried about what his owner would say about this rather than worry about our situation. I guess to each his own.
-When he turned the ignition there was nothing, so I knew it was a serious problem. He would not listen to me and was confident that if someone could pull the car out of the ditch and give it a push it would start. Off he went and recruited a passing mini-truck and convinced the driver to tow the car backwards out of the ditch.
-Mind you this is in the middle of a main thoroughfare road and we are by now a spectacle for all the locals to watch, comment, and laugh. The car got pulled out of the ditch rather adventurously after which I asked my mom, sister, and aunt to get out and wait in a nearby store. I then went along with the driver and we recruited a couple of bystanders to give the car and push backwards first and then forward to start the car.
-I was bitching internally as my new sandals were ankle deep in muddly water! Well, no choice. After a couple of attempts it was clear that the car needed serious repairs.
-I went back to where I had left my mom and others and in the interim a bystander had started chatting with my mom and by the time I walked back to them he told me that there were rental vehicles, heavy duty landrover types even, not far away. This is one thing about India that is special, people are always willing to help out random strangers. Maybe this is the case in other places as well but I find it refreshing that people actually approach YOU when YOU are in trouble even if YOU don’t make the first attempt.
-We successfully then negotiated a new rental vehicle contract and off we went. Of course we went in a non-air conditioned vehicle. This part of the journey would last 2+ hrs under a scorching Sun. My little nephew cheerful through most part of the trip finally gave up at the end. It was brave of him to withstand it so far anyway.
-By the time we reached our grandparents village and offloaded I was in no shape to even talk to anyone. The thing with heat combined with dust and humidity is it saps you! I did not even have the energy to shower or wash my face.
- I had slept 2h in the last 48h and traveled 15h in hot metal boxes with dust blowing from all directions in 110C temperatures.
-I have to say though, seeing my grandparents’s place, the place where we hung out all summers when we were children, was a bit of a relief. I took my nephew on a little walk to the lush green grass fields. He did not stop being transfixed at the sight of a cow and goats grazing in the fields. A bit of my energy returned.
-Of course there was no power when we got to the village. Regular scheduled daily outage apparently. Which made me wonder how the Indian government is going to deal with the never ending purchase of air-conditioned units everywhere. Where would they get the power from-historically India had always been short of the power it needed to run smoothly. Anyway, back to my situation, I just laid out in the open under the trees in the village and dozed off.
-I remember being awoken for dinner at some time, and I sleepily ate (cant remember what) and quickly went back to sleep.
-The next morning was better as we had all recovered. I chatted away with my grandmother and grandfather and uncle and aunt. It felt good to be seeing them. My grandparents (mom’s side) cant travel due to health issues so to see them happy when we went to see them was good. It is always cool to speak to my grandfather as he is one person who is absolutely in his own world. In a cute way. For example, when I was leaving to the US for grad school (I was 20-21 yrs old mind you) he had asked me how I would manage on my own. “Are you not going to be scared by yourself?”. It was so cute I had to laugh out. He was not doing well but recently had recovered. It was good to chat with them. My aunt prepared my fav meal and it was a great time.
-My dad’s family is also from the same village and in fact they used to live a stone’s throw away from my mom’s family. What used to be a relatively large area of four homes lined next to each other and that used to house 16 kids is now crumbly and un-occupied except for one person. Everyone had moved away or passed away and it was a disturbing sight to see. My sister, aunt, and I walked through what we can call ‘ruins’ and felt sad about it. Plush green agricultural land lied unused and destroyed as there is no one to take care of it now. We could only sigh and reminisce the good times from our childhood. My aunt who was born in one of those homes and had grown up there told me that at one time people wondered if these four homes were large enough to hold all the families that were supposed to spring forth. Well, I guess not.
-We left early that morning on another car to catch a flight back to Hyderabad. And luckily the car-ride was un-eventful. We returned to Hyderabad at 6pm the same day. I had managed to survive what turned out to be an interesting 4 days and 5 nites.

4 days, 5 nites, and a New Tolerance Level - Part III of IV

2008-05-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

Bangalore-to-Anantapur and Anantapur
-I should have listened to my cousin and waited for an air-conditioned bus to take me from Bangalore to Anantapur in the evening. But no, I had to get stupid and envision romanticism on a regular bus ride in the teeth of summer (my bud was right about my IQ I guess).
-So off I went on what is usually a 4h ride on the bus to Anantapur in a regular bus which had no a/c and almost metallic seats.
-Let’s just say it was an interesting experience being on a 7 h bus ride from 1 in the afternoon until 8 pm in 110F temperatures with no air-conditioning. By the time the bus came to Anantapur I was so sapped that I had no energy to even talk to anyone. Adding to this, there was a power cut as I got out of the bus making it difficult to see who had come to pick me up.
-I hustled to a motel, showered, and changed quickly as I was already late for my cousin’s wedding reception.
-The exasperation of the bus ride disappeared immediately as I met my little cousins and uncles and aunts at the reception. I enjoy hanging out with my little cousins who are in the 16-24 yr age group with razor sharp sense of humor. We hung out at the reception hall for a bit and headed to my cousin’s place for a nite of playing cards. This is always exciting! We had to stay awake until 4 am in the morning as the actual wedding ceremony would take place at that time due to it being an auspicious time. And lo went the card playing and giggling.
-We survived the nite and managed to head back to the wedding hall in time for the wedding. There were very few people left-only immediate family (which is a relative word in my family) and it went off well.
-We scrambled back and managed 2h of sleep. Soon after my mom, sister, little nephew, my aunt, and I were headed off to my grandparents’s village in rural AP in an air-conditioned car. All in all it was a good time at the wedding.
-Another disturbing trend I noticed in Anantapur, which is a reasonably large town, is the lack of public infrastructure. It seemed like there was no change at the central bus station or train station in the last 15 years or so. It was very discouraging. I kept hearing that the local politicians were preventing the improvement of roads, and other public infrastructure whenever one side proposed to go ahead with it. Why? Well, because the other side believed that if the roads and other items were improved the people would give all the credit to the political party which proposed it thus making it difficult for the opposition party to come back to power!

4 days, 5 nites, and a New Tolerance Level - Part II of IV

2008-05-04T17:38:00.000-07:00

Bangalore
-I flew into Bangalore from Bombay to spend 3-4 hours meeting my cousin and my uncle and aunt before I took a bus to a town in AP where another cousin of mine was getting married.
-The cousin who lives in Bangalore is one of the few kids from our family who decided to quit his day job and follow his entrepreneurial dreams a couple of years ago. He along with his undergrad buddies started a venture based on a rather simple idea. Obviously the conservative parents and family members did not appreciate this bold decision but it is paying off already. They now employ 80 strong and are looking for an exit strategy of an IPO within the next 6 months. They are about to break even and have another round of VC money setup. My cousin is the CTO. Impressive kid.
-TV stations and newspapers have already done bits about them. Naturally he has become a source of pride for his parents and our grandparents.
-He seems to be planning for his next phase already. Apparently he wants to go to B school once his firm is on its own and move onto the area of developing public infrastructure in India. Excellent idea like always from him! I gave him a few suggestions, not that he needs any, on things about B school etc.-I spent too few hours in Bangalore to notice on the goings on but one thing I remember is the Majestic Bus station- it seemed the same as it was since I was in undergrad (which was about 13 years ago!)

4 Days, 5 nites, and a New Tolerance Level – Part I of IV

2008-04-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

So off I went on a short road trip in India covering 2 cities, 1 town, and a village last Thursday nite. The two cities were Bombay and Bangalore and the town and village were in my home state of AP. In hindsight I should have planned the trip a bit better but hey it turned to be another experience to remember. Highlights:

Bombay
-Hung out with a buddy of mine from undergrad. He works for Goldman and is on the ‘buy’ side so he’s got a lifestyle to be envious of. Chauffer driven in a a/c car everywhere he goes, maid at home who cooks whatever you need, an apartment on the sea-front, and a relaxed work schedule.
-I took a taxi ride the first day to go buy books for B school. The taxi driver was chatty and seemed to know a lot about global warming. Mind you this was an old school taxi with no air-conditioning. I managed to survive the morning and even found a textbook. I decided to be adventurous and walk around. (bad idea at noon).
-The Victoria Terminus in Bombay is a beautiful bldg from the British era. I went inside to check the busiest local train station in India. Oddly it reminded me of Budapest.
-I also walked along a row of Colonial bldgs which are law offices now. Right opposite the law institutions would be seated girls on the street with typewriters. They were there to help the common people type up legal documents as needed.
-I also walked into the main GPO (General Post Office) which was probably majestic in its day but was mostly run down now. They were trying to restore it to its previous state.
-I finally reached a point where I was exhausted to the point of irritation. I called my buddy and started yelling. He realized the situation and directed me to a restaurant where I waited for him. After yelling back at me he wondered how I had managed to get into Sloan with such a low IQ (‘cause I wandered out in the Sun in the teeth of summer in Bombay that too at noon). We would travel in his chauffer driven a/c car for the rest of my trip in Bombay.
-We met another undergrad buddy of ours who flew in from Delhi to meet us. The three of us had a great evening together reminiscing old times and discussing life in general. As has been customary of me since I got into B school I peppered them with questions about my career choices. Both of them have attended premier B schools in India and not surprisingly they had great and thoughtful inputs.
-The last day in Bombay we hung out in a mall (shopping and playing pool). My buddy seemed to derive extra pleasure in beating me 2-1 in pool.
-I also went running by the sea on my last evening in Bombay. Although it was close to 7 pm I was soaked in sweat within 10-15 minutes although I had not run much. Nevertheless, it felt good.
-One memorable thing about Bombay is how extreme the contrast is in terms of wealth everywhere. This is unique to Bombay. The first day there as I was in the Taxi I noticed a hoarding by a prominent bank in India on the back of a bus which promised a great return on investment on new financial instruments. As I looked away from the board I was looking at a row of slums on both sides.

Where am I? Seriously

2008-04-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

Conversation I:
“We invest in small scale healthcare firms. The target is to invest $1 and convert it to $5 in 5 years”.
“Is it not too ambitious?” (that’s me)
“No not at all. Here this is possible”
“So who invests in you guys?”
“Philanthropic organizations from the US. There are a lot of them actually.”

Part of Conversation II:
“I am targeting to work at a PE shop in a couple of years, primarily in the renewable energy sector. I am going to work for the Boston Consulting Group in three months but meanwhile I am working at this VC firm now”

Well, this was last nite in Hyderabad while seated in Row 111 at the new cricket stadium where the first Indian Premiership League game was being played by the home team (they lost badly by the way). I was seated with a Harvard, three Stanford, one ISB grad(s) and an ex-Citicorp-Portugal COO. All of them were (or had worked) working for a VC firm based in Hyderabad. At one point it felt like I was on a forum or a bar in the US discussing future career options. The occasional chanting of the crowd, the partly built stadium, and the music were the only evidence that I was in India. It certainly made for an interesting evening. I got to know a lot about VC firms and micro-finance in healthcare and education as applicable to emerging economies.

The game itself was ok-I can’t relate to the excitement of the fans but it was entertaining. Rumor was that the 15 or so Caucasian cheerleaders, who got up periodically to dance on a small stage on the field, were current Washington Redskins cheerleaders. The crowd seemed to be into it. I paid $25 equivalent to sit where I sat and it was not a bad view. There is lots of optimism that this league will not only survive but generate loads of revenue. Remains to be seen.

Other tidbits from India (Hyderabad):
-The traffic seems to be ok so far. Of course I’ve avoided the rush hours. Much to my surprise I’ve been driving with relative ease here so far.
-I love the fact that I can get fresh fruit and fresh fruit juice at the drop of a coin and for a relatively cheap price.
-Bought two books so far and they seem to be good-one’s on derivatives trading and the other is my Amartya Sen at Harvard.
-I’ve been able to go running on 2 of the 3 days I’ve been here so far. Disappointing part is that I seem to tire after only 2 miles. I need to address this soon. I have a 5K coming up on May 10 in Philly.
-I like the serious/plain/matter-of-fact tone of the CNBC India anchors. None of that Kramer and Kudlow crap from CNBC in the US.
-Summer seems to be hot but I’ve managed to avoid spending time in the heat.
-The wifi card seems to work fine here. It’s a bit slow for uploading/downloading large files but otherwise web-browsing is relatively fast.

Same Shite Different Continent!

2008-04-22T01:49:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been following the food ‘crisis’ situation in different parts of the world for the past few weeks. You know trying to spot the fundamentals from an economic point of view. Anyway, with this still fresh on my mind I began my vacation in India. I landed in India (Bombay-sorry I refuse to call it the new name) on Sunday. And what do we have here?! I picked up a newspaper and a commodities trading magazine and voila:

-Inflation in India is at 7%
-Central and State Govts. are in trouble
-the Indian equivalent of CPI is 220 (yikes!) after being in 200s the past year as well
-rice prices have increased 60% in the last few years
-cooking oil prices have doubled in the last year
-Govt. has banned futures trading of rice, wheat, and corn
-Govt. is considering banning forwards trading of grains (despite no evidence that these have caused the food crisis)
-local politicians are blaming each other for keeping the poor out of this boom.

More evidence of inflation: I went to a local market in Hyderabad to buy fresh fruit. A single apple costs Rs. 15 (40 cents) a single orange Rs. 8 (20 cents), and a pomegranate Rs. 10 (25 cents). What’s the problem you ask? Well, these used to be 50% cheaper not more than 3 years ago.

Contrast this with what I saw on CNBC India (which I have to say is miles better than the shite CNBC we get in the US) and learnt from a conversation with a fellow Sloan admit who lives in Hyderabad:

-2 Indian businessmen entered the top 10 World’s Wealthiest list this past week
-There are now 3 software services Indian firms that boast of $2 Billion revenue
-Average compensation for IBankers with 4+ yrs exp in India: $250 K minus bonus
-90% of Harvard Business School Class of 1997 who went to undergrad in India are now back in the US and are now running 30+ Hedge Funds out of India
-The spanking new airport in Hyderabad (apparently the largest in Asia) cost a staggering $1.5 Billion
-The cost of a new elevated mono-rail being built in Hyderabad: $1 Billion
-Real state increases at the rate 200% every 2 years (ouch!).
-Hyderabad is apparently the Micro-Finance capital of the World (A bold statement yes, but this guy who works for one in Hyderabad made it)

The contrast is unmistakable. Safe to say the distribution of wealth goal has gone awry in a bad way. The boom seems to definitely have established a strong middle class in India that is not afraid to spend. But the poor (notably the farmers and those with little education or means to secure decent paying wages) have been left behind. Disturbing yes, and more disturbing in that the Govt in India is holding this together by controlling the prices of many essentials including Gas (petrol in this part of the world). I read someplace that the Govt is sacrificing ~3% GDP by subsidizing Oil. I have to say, from the outside to me, this does not bode well for the future. The government has to figure out a way to get the poor involved in this boom even if it means the rich have to sacrifice a bit of their bonanza. This we know is easier said than done. But I see no other way a chaotic situation in the next 5-8 years can be avoided if this continues.

More about my India trip in the next couple of days. I’ve been invited to a game in Hyderabad for this new Cricket league that started in India (Top 20). The game’s tonite, although I have not followed cricket in a while, I am interested in going to see for myself if this business idea will sustain for long.

later

Tidbits

2008-04-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

-My neighbor on hearing me say this evening that I will be attending Sloan said, "Good. Atleast you will meet some nice people. Not like these a**holes from Wharton!". I go "Why do you say that?". And she goes, "C'mon I live in this building. Enuf said!". Ouch! My bldg has a lot of Wharton kids.

-Went to see "21" yesterday. Cheesy. Kevin Spacey is done. Plot (as expected) is not too great. Kate Bosworth is ovaaahrated. Btm line: borderline entertaining.

-Should I feel more guilty? Last week I found out that I will be getting a 10% bonus in June. I gotto handle the part where I break the news to my boss very delicately. May 5 is the day.

-Finished my taxes. Filed them online.

-Been listening to a lot of DJ Shadow these days. And I gotto say I like it. Him and Thievery Corp, them dudes are allrite.

-March Madness is ending this weekend (Monday actually). I absolutely had a great time on Good Friday. Woke up. Worked out. Ate brunch at home. Went to Urban Saloon (highly recommend this bar in Philly) at 3. Started drinking w/a couple of buds. Watched a great slate of 1st rd games. Then went to Fox and Hound with another group and Devoured nachos, wings, and slammed a few brewskies down. mmmm...productive day!

-Am 5th is my March madness pool at work ($500 booty). Chances of winning=not great. Am 2nd in a small Sloan pool that some of the admits are running. For bragging rights only. However on the side I bet a few brewskies on individual games and happy to note my future classmates already owe me >5 beers!

-I need to post my "Women of the World" post soon.

-About 10 gazillion books that I've bought in the last year or so and have not read any. Maybe I get to finish a few on this long transatlantic flight.

-I think I have a new strategy for playing Russian Roulette at the Casinos. Need to test this out in Atlantic City one of these days. I feel with a $10 minimum table, if I get to play 30 continuous rounds I can make a profit. Let's see what I can do.

later kids

Onto BeanTown!

2008-04-01T12:36:00.001-07:00

One of my buddies thinks that I have a 'connection' with Boston. Not sure what that means but I am headed back to Boston again! With Wharton denying me admission last week, my decision or the lack of need for one, is made for me.

I will be attending MIT Sloan this Fall!

I dont think it's hit me yet that (a) I will be in school again, (b) I will be living in Boston, (c) I will be attending MIT Sloan, (d) I will be living on a student's budget, and (e) I will be leaving my current workplace and Philadelphia.

anyway, onto filling in paperwork (FAFSA forms, tax returns, loan applications), apartment hunting, and planning the move. I was thinking all along to get a studio apt in Boston but one of the Sloan kids that I met at admit weekend emailed me to see if wanted him as a roommate. hmmm? Still thinking about it. Plus he wants to stay in Beacon Hill while I prefer the bohemian Central Square area. well, I will know more about this in May.

So it has taken me about one FULL year from the time I decided to get an MBA to my decision on which school to attend. Relieved! Excited!

Slaying of the Big Bad Bear - Mini Analysis - Part III of III

2008-03-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

This is Part III of III of my mini-analysis and a continuation from Part II. Click here for Part II

For Bank A to make money in this cash from Bank C is vital. Why? Because without this, it can’t buy the second set of Treasury Bonds that it wants to short. Hence bye bye any chances of making money. More importantly it has to return the original $100 it borrowed from Bank B. The damage is two fold. So it has to use it’s own cash reserves to pay off Bank B.

Now, Imagine this scenario with Billions of dollars and multiple banks involved. Bear Stearns basically had to dip into it’s own reserves to pay off many many many Bank Bs and in the process lost all it’s cash reserves. This would have been ok if the securities it had in it’s position were valuable, ‘cause that way they can sell them off to raise cash. Unfortunately these securities (many of them mortgage backed ones) were useless as no on wanted to buy them. So they were basically screwed!

Post comments if you did not follow this. I would be glad to discuss.

Also, I will post later about the whole Bear Stearns saga once I understand it.

That’s how the cash crunch at Bear Stearns came about (atleast that’s the way I understand it!).

Slaying of the Big Bad Bear - Mini-Analysis - Part II of III

2008-03-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

This is Part II of my mini-analysis and a continuation from Part I. Click on this for Part I

Examining how 'repo' market transactions work:

Let’s say Bank A (investment bank) wants to make money by participating in a transaction including any security (bonds, equities, derivatives, etc). There is a series of transactions it would do to invest the security. Let’s say the amount it wants to invest is $100. And let’s say it wants to invest in Treasury bonds. The transaction sequence would be:

Transaction 1: Borrow $100 from Bank B. Tell Bank B it has $X in cash reserves as collateral.
Transaction 2: Buy Treasury Bonds for $100 from a Firm Y.
Transaction 3: Lend the $100 worth in bonds (not cash) to Bank C. Bank C sends $100 in cash as collateral.
Transaction 4: Use this $100 from Bank C as collateral to borrow $100 worth of Treasury Bonds (these bonds are different from those bought in Transaction 2).
Transaction 5: Sell bonds borrowed in Transaction 4 as a short (buy high, sell low).
Transaction 6: Sell bonds bought in Transaction 2 (they are with Bank C but can be sent back) long (buy low sell high).

Following so far? In effect the firm would make money if there is a difference in value of Bonds shorted and Bonds sold long. But the key point to remember is that Bank A has not used even a single $ of it’s own! Remember Transaction 1 began with Bank A borrowing $100 from Bank B. This $100 made it’s way around in the form of cash and bonds. But it was not Bank A’s to begin with.

Transaction 3 is what is known as the ‘repo’ market transaction. In effect Bank C is sending $100 to Bank A because it knows that the $100 worth of Treasury Bonds it is getting in return are valuable (since they are guaranteed by the US Treasury). Now Imagine if instead of these being Treasury Bonds, they are some of these Mortgage Backed Bonds (MBBs). By now it is common knowledge that these MBBs are not as valuable. Far being of any value everyone on the Street wants to avoid them like Plague!

So Bank C does not want any part of them and does not accept them as collateral. Uh oh! Bank A is now in trouble.

Continued in Part III.

Slaying of the Big Bad Bear - Mini-analysis Part I of III

2008-03-23T18:06:00.001-07:00

By now all y’all must have heard and read the autopsy of the demise of Bear Stearns. I will not go into the details that have been put out by various news outlets in the past week or so but what I will do is bulletize them:

-JP Morgan’s buying price = $2 per share=0.0547 shares of JPMC for a share of BS
-Closing price of BS on Friday, March 14=$30 per share. Hence discount=28/30=93.3% (ouch)
-Fed loaned $30 billion in ‘liquidity’ to BS through JP Morgan Chase
-Glass-Steagall legislation was invoked to help out BS indirectly
-Two Bear Stearns managed Hedge Funds filed for bankruptcy in July 2007. Net worth lost=$1.6 billion
-Cash reserves of Bear Stearns on March 13, 2008 = $17 billion
-Cash reserves of Bear Stearns on March 15, 2008 = $0
-Fact= On Thu, March 13 (nite) Alan Schwartz approached the SEC and NY Fed and mentioned that Bear Stearns would have to file for bankruptcy on Friday morning.

I still have not got my hands and mind around analyzing this monumental failure of Bear Stearns but what I have tried to understand over the past week is how exactly would cash reserves dwindle so dramatically in such a short time and spark this demise. Here is an attempt from me to explain this:

Let me start by pointed to a passage in the Financial Times weekend edition, March 22-23, 2008. Link
“The motivation behind the Fed’s plan was for Bear to lend the Treasury debt in the repurchase (repo) market for cash and shore up its capital, which was straining under a massive withdrawal of funds by investors. Some $17bn (€11bn, £8.5bn) had been pulled in two days. Bear could not raise funds from any of its non-Treasury assets as its rivals had lost faith in its creditworthiness.”

The key words in the above passage are “…to lend the Treasury debt in the repurchase (repo) market for cash and shore up its capital…”. What exactly is a “repo” market and how is this key to cash reserves. See Part II.

How it goes?

2008-03-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

Been a while. So what's shaking?

Stories I've been following recently:

-B Rack's dissociating himself from his pastor. Potentially campaign-ending if not handled right.

-Bear Stearns in trouble. FT has a fascinating behind-the-scenes account today.

-The Spitzer saga. No comment other than to point out that this country's media focus is too myopic.

-Dollar getting killed! I expect some sort of intervention in the next few weeks.

-Crude Oil, Natural gas prices, Gold, Corn, and metals shooting up. It is going to be an ugly year!

-Iran's 'democratic' elections. Pakistan's power struggles.

-Tucker cancelled on MSNBC! Oh nooooo!!

Things with moi:

-Asked for and granted a 2 week extension of deposit deadline from MIT Sloan. (April 1)

-Wharton decision on March 27.

-Opened a FX (forex) trading account. Following the USDJPY closely. Fascinating stuff.

-2 week vacation in India! April 18-May 3. Yeeeeeaaaaah!

-Discovered LinkedIn and Facebook! LinkedIn has been great to get back in touch with a lot of friends.

-I may have to get reading glasses! Booooo! Had my eyes checked and was given a prescription for reading glasses. Not too thrilled about this.

-Postponed the decision to let people at work know about my B school plans until May 2.

-Watched 'Vantage Point'. Sub-standard movie-making.

-Heard SIRIUS satellite radio this past weekend. Loved the Raw Dog stand-up comedy channel.
Rest seemed average.

-New York City rocks!

later

OH/TX/RI/VT and Yeah, This is Inflation Allrite!

2008-03-03T18:28:00.000-08:00

First, kondum's predictions for tomm. democratic primaries:

RI
-Hill Dawg

VT
-B Rack

OH
-Hill Dawg

TX
-Both*

* = Hill Dawg will win the popular vote but B Rack's gets more delegates. You watch!

---
YEAH, UH-HUH THIS IS INFLATION ALLRITE
so, y'all are probably hearing these strange terms: recession, stagflation (what? stags are going to fellate?), CPI etc. Normally we, ordinary folks (atleast I am ordinary), dont see much direct affect of this. But hold it peeps!

Episode 1: When I get lazy (I do get lazy often) I give up and order Chinese from City Garden, this Chinese Rest that is housed in my building. My fav is Sesame Crispy Shrimp w. Broccoli. I dont pay TOO much attention to the price but the other day I semi-freaked when the girl asked to pay $12.45 for it! I am like "what the hell?". The girl at the counter (she is a surly teenager btw) matter of factly goes: "yeah we change prices". To be honest I did not remember how much I paid before so I came back to my apt and compared prices from an old menu. The price has indeed gone up 5%. Again I can't remember when the last menu was printed but it can't be older than 6 months. So there you have it: evidence I of Inflation.

Episode 2: I was shopping for Ground Turkey at Rittenhouse Market today and for some reason looked at the price label and yelled out softly "Holy Shit!". The price said $6.15 for 1.4 lbs of 7% lean Ground Turkey. I can clearly remember the price to be in the $4.75 - $5 range not too long ago. That's got to be a close to a 20% price increase. (unless my memory is fading badly). Evidence II of Inflation.

Not good folks. I need to look into this more.

Wooing Weekend at MIT Sloan

2008-02-29T18:49:00.000-08:00

So I was in Boston this past weekend, flew in on Thu actually, to attend the MIT Sloan admit weekend for Rd 1 admits. We were invited to spend Fri and Sat at Sloan to find out how wonderful and cool Sloan is and all that. Events were organized during the day on Fri and Sat plus some ‘parties’ at nite. Fri nite I was so freakin’ tired I had no chance of attending any of those ‘parties’. I attended the one on Sat nite and it was good.

The day events consisted of testimonials from Sloan alumni on their pre-, during-, and post-Sloan experiences; classroom style discussion-lecture sessions; short lectures by three profs in marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship; career ‘fairs’ with student club members; mini-sessions on academic life, trips/treks, and financial aid etc.

Here are some of the highlights:

Things that caught me by surprise
--Most of the admits were normal and NOT nerdy! That was cool you know it being MIT and all. I got along famously with every single person that I met which was refreshing. Majority of the kids were not alpha-doggy types.

Best part of the weekend
--By far this had to be the short lecture by this diminutive German Prof of Finance. Her lecture on VC/PE lasted about 20 min and I haven’t been in a lecture like that before. She was feisty with lots of graphs and numbers which all seemed to make sense. How great did I think it was? Let me tell you how. Prior to that lecture I had absolutely no interest in a career in VC/PE and right after the lectures ended I walked straight into the career fair on VC/PE!

Lamest thing of the weekend
--This current student, with a prior drama degree no less, ended up making us dance at 10 AM on Sat morning in the auditorium. Apparently his prof at Sloan did it as it was part of ‘peeling your personality’ layer by layer to make you an effective leader. Forget peeling layers brother, I hated having to shake my body vigorously at 10 AM on a Sat morning after a nite on short rest.

Things that were done well
--With the attention span of a 2 year old I hate it when things run over the scheduled time. Much to my surprise every single event ended on or pretty freakin’ close on time. Time Nazis these Sloan kids! Me likey!

Things that could have been handled better
--Lunch on Friday was arranged so that new admits would be seated with current students with relevant backgrounds. While I did end up sitting next to a guy who was getting into a career that I am interested in, I would have liked to speak to a kid who was coming in with my educational background. The career fair sessions could have been organized better too-maybe broken up into smaller groups. The events on Sat about Financial Aid and Academic life could have been handled better too.

“You did what?” things that I did
--The Dean of Sloan walked to our group on Fri eve during social hour. I seized the opportunity to put him on the spot. I told him that I was considering going to Wharton or Sloan and so what would be his pitch to me on why I should go to Sloan (he spent 26 years at Wharton before moving to Sloan). Guys in my group looked at me as they saw a ghost or something! The Dean to his credit humored me and did his spin on how Sloan is all about people and all that. As I was about to leave he winked at me and said “Hope to see you in August”! Right after we walked to another group one of guys in my group said “Dude, not sure if that was balsy or plain stupidity!”

Things that made me warm and fuzzy inside
--Three admits randomly walked upto me and thanked me! I had no freakin’ clue why at first but then they went on to explain that they followed my posts on an online forum during the admissions process at Sloan and apparently my posts got them through nervous times. My online handle at this forum is ‘kondum’ as well so they figure that out by looking at my real name. Hey, I am all for helping people in nervous times!

So what-u-saying? You going to Sloan bro?
--Well to be a smartass Sloan is the only admit I have so far. Seriously though, look, to me the important things about deciding on a school are: will the school open new doors for you career-wise, are the profs accessible, is the class size small enough to get attention, and are your classmates inclined to have fun and not alpha dogs. Sloan is a go on all those fronts. Enough said.

Now, let’s see what Wharton has to say on March 27.

B Rack and Hill Dawg

2008-02-15T04:57:00.000-08:00

If there ever was a sign that I have become a junkie it was on Tuesday. Temporary political junkie that is. I came back from work on Tuesday and pondered "hmmm? How about skipping gym today and parking my ass in front of the TV and spending quality time with the folks on CNBC watching the Potomic primaries (their term)?" And with that I started watching 5 hrs of CNBC (switching to Larry King over on CNN for a while). I never miss gym, but felt like I had to do it. And for what, to listen to Tucker (Tucker? My life is boring!) and Olbermann and Chris Matthews!

As much as I want to get non-personal in this Democratic primary, I find myself getting personal. I am at heart a cynic when it comes to politicians so prefer to criticize everyone. But somewhere along the line I started rooting for B Rack. And somewhere along those lines I found myself hating everything about Hill Dawg, I mean the way she smiles, the way she waves to her supporters, her laugh, her deliberate gestures, everything seemed to drive me nuts! But then I realized what the hell am I doing? This was not supposed to be personal. For those reading this blog you can go back and check back my post in August where I criticized B Rack's economic solutions to the sub-prime crisis . But now I can't seem to not like anything he says or does.
It is undeniable that he speaks and presents himself unlike any politician from recent times. Plus maybe 'cause he started off as the underdog made me root for him all the more.

That said, let's examine the 'real' differencies between the two Democratic candidates. Mind you at this point real policies mean squat. In politics it is always about convincing people that you can do what you say you will. Period. People want to believe you so whoever does the best job at that usually wins. Dont let the media and other folks fool you about "where is the real meat in his/her campaign". Pluuuuuhhsease! It's never about the policy peeps!

In any case, let's examine what policies each are proposing. Here we go:

Healthcare:
The difference is that Hill Dawg claims about 12-15 million Americans will be left un-insured if B Rack's plan is implemented as oppossed to hers. What B Rack is proposing is that healthy young folks can choose if they want insurance or not, the rest are all covered. hmmm? Not sure which one would work. Hill Dawg has not said how she will find her universal coverage plan without running into huge budget deficits. But it is tought to argue against how popular Hill Dawg's plan will go with the blue collar folks. And that is important. Remember, the practicality of both plans is not real good unless clear budgets are presented. But hey this is politics who cares, promise new deal with it later.

Foreign Policy:
B Rack has a distinct advantage here since he did not support the war in Iraq while Hill Dawg voted for it. But then again, the practicality of both candidates post-war solutions are stupid. Both want to get out within 3-6 months out of Iraq. I am no foreign policy expert but imagine this: you go to a country, destroy their security apparatus and infrastructure first then help them train their police and army and secure them. The training is not complete and you want to suddenly leave? huh? There will be more chaos than before if the US leaves Iraq right away. This should be far more planned than they are making it out to be. So again here, the practicality of both solutions is not good.

Ecomony:
Both candidates have huge long plans with specific dollar numbers on how to save the country from economic peril. And both are dubious. B Rack for example promises to save home-owners from losing their homes, bring back jobs from China and India, limit the effect of corporate lobbyists, and invest in alternative energy. Really? One look at both candidates campaign finance donations would reveal that they are equally in bed with all the corporations. And wait till the Oil and Car company lobbies against imposing stricter mpg on cars and investment in non-carbon energy resources. Again, Practicality of this happenin': Not Very good.

Experience:
I find it mildly amusing how almost everyone in the media has taken it for granted that Hill Dawg is so much more experienced than B Rack! Really? How exactly? By running behind your husband and trying pass secret healthcare laws? and how did that turn out Hill Dawg? The reality is she is a near two term senator and he is in his first term. But he has been in the Illinois Senate before and so their political/lawmaker experience evens out. Get this: none of them have had executive experience of any kind, neither has run a government or corporation at any level. So Hill Dawg, stop bullshitting people. The way the American Presidency works is you surround yourself with experienced experts on all fronts and listen to them. The President's pivotal role is to bring politicians and people together so that they can buy his/her vision.

So, is there any doubt who can unite people? I will leave it that.

State of the kondum Portfolio

2008-02-11T18:02:00.000-08:00

well, well then looks like I have been ignoring my portfolio for a while now. To be real honest I have not looked into any of my 5 picks closely in the past 3 months. Sure I do glance at the daily prices on my iPhone but have not researched much into it. I am planning on sitting down this weekend and doing a minor analysis-a risk estimate based on what I was taught in a corporate finance course last semester. Let's see how disciplined I will be.

Ok here are the numbers then for my 5 picks from July 20, 2007 until February 11, 2008:

CCP: -36%
COP: -14.6%
E: -20%
PAL: -37%
CHK:+13.3% (hmm?)

Overall: -21%
S&P: -14%

Ouch! Imagine if that portfolio was someone's 401K? Safe to say I would have had to run for cover. In my defense, the S&P 500 Index has not been stellar by any means in the same period.

Now, let's briefly examine what this means? Is there any trend here (in my picks)?

Sectors:
E, COP, and CHK are in the energy sector. But CHK is going in the opposite direction of E and COP. Why you ask? Dont really no. But I will say this about E and COP: the news that E had to cede part of it's share to the Kazag Govt in the Kashagan field did not go well with its shareholders. Plus the net revenue forecast can't be too good. COP: They have been following an up-down-up dance for the last year or so and I guess this is the down period. CHK: no freakin' idea why this is up!!

CCP: This could be in the alternative energy/commodities sector and is woefully underperforming considering that they have been doling out consistent dividends and earnings. And Uranium continues to be in great demand.

PAL: With precious metal prices on the rise this one is surprisingly underperforming as well. Not sure why?

More to come over the weekend on this!

Predictions, Predictions, and Movie

2008-02-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

Super Bowl Sunday and Super Tuesday are upon us so it only makes sense to issue kondum predictions:

Supaah Bowl:
Giants 28 Pats 24

Super Tuesday:
Hillary wins more states than Barack. But delegates will be split 60:40 across the board towards Clinton. I am expecting California to go the Obama way. Bottom line: This race will extend into March and April.
McCain wraps up the Elephant nomination.

Movie: Watched "Michael Clayton" yesterday. Recommend it although I would have preferred a different ending. With the way it ended it seemed no different than a sleazy corporate movie. It's official George Clooney has taken over as the modern day Harrison Ford.

later kids

Movie Review "There will be Blood"

2008-01-30T17:51:00.000-08:00

Before I start posting heavily about B school stuff let me write a review about "There will be Blood" which I saw this past weekend.

Good things:
-Not sure if y'all like movies where acting is allowed to dominate narration and leave things for viewer interpretation. I have always been a big fan of such movies (Art too). And this is one such movie. Certain acts in the movie are islands which are not dwelt on too much but the effect is great. Powerful, to put in more grandiose words. For example, in the first 5-10 minutes of the movie there are no dialogues and there need not be-it was perfect. The story is nothing fabulous but you will still be fascinated. Screenplay is fabulous, actors are great in their roles, and locations are authentic or give an authentic feel. And dont be fooled by the title, in fact there is very little blood if any. This is not a voilent movie. Trust me.

Really Good things:
-Daniel Day Lewis. They might as well go ahead and give him the Oscar. He is into the role like you can't believe. The way he carries himself, the accent, the body language, the screen presence, everything is just right. I loved him in "In the name of Father" but this one's definetly a level above.

-Paul Dano (the kid from "Little Miss Sunshine") is perfect for his role too. Obviously he wouldn't hold a candle compared to DD Lewis but he held his own. This kid if he chooses his roles right will be a solid stay in Hollywood for quite some time.

-Almost all the actors in the movie performed well. I could not find one actor who was miscast.

Not so Good things:
-Could not find any.

Bottom line: Gripping tale about an Oilman who went ahead and did things his way regardless of the consequences.

Go watch it pronto!

MIT Sloan

2008-01-28T16:26:00.000-08:00

Found out at 5 PM this evening that MIT Sloan has admitted me! yeah! Feels good to know that I will go to school someplace this Fall.

Off to celebrate now!

Decision Weekend

2008-01-26T13:38:00.000-08:00

So, MIT Sloan releases their decisions for their Round 1 applications on Monday, Jan. 28. I am as I should be anxious about the decision. My prediction for Monday has been changing for the past week or so:

-Sometime this past Tuesday I had a strong feeling that I would be put on a waitlist (which is something that I would absolutely not want).

-Then suddenly this morning I woke up feeling that I am getting in.

Let's see how it turns out on Monday. Decisions will be posted by 5pm on Monday on their website. If admitted the person who interviewed me would place a phone call on Monday afternoon.

Will post on Monday.

whoaah! I didn't see this wave coming!

2008-01-15T05:21:00.000-08:00

All of a sudden there are gazillion interesting articles in the FT, WSJ, and NYT about the distribution of wealth, politics, foreign policy, the economy, and religion. All of these topics that interest me quite a bit.

I forwarded the links to a few articles on Monday to a few of you guys. Here are two more from today: (Some of you may need registration to view these articles in their entirity. Email me if you would rather not. I can paste them in the email reply).

- Malaysia's Prime Minister had a cool article in the FT about Islam and how progressive Islamic nations can be. A definite worth-it read:
Muslim nations can pursue knowledge

-A Yale professor has an interesting take on the growing power of what he calls "State Capitalism". Interestingly with the middle east and Asian sovereign funds investing heavily in US financial firms now a few US "think tanks" are worried about its geo-political significance:
The unsettling zeitgeist of state capitalism

-This one is good too. I have always wondered this "What drives political leaders when they run for elections? Are they genuinely into serving people or is it just a case of narcissism?". Well, here is someone who thinks it is the latter:
Hillary Clinton and the thrill of political power

I have lots of things to say about these which I will write about later. Enjoy reading.

Is this it?

2008-01-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

Here we are, in the second week of January 2008 and I am still not sure if I will be going to B school. I had hoped I would have atleast one admission by now but it has not worked out. I finished applying to Yale last week and am just about to finish submitting my NYU Stern application. So is this it? Am I done with my applications? Well, for now I think yeah. This should be. If I am not getting into any of the 5 schools that I have applied to, I see no point in applying to other Tier II schools. Will just wait to see what happens.

I gotto write about this though, I thought it was interesting that I received an email from one of my recommenders this evening. He just finished submitting his letter to NYU and then he wrote "I am sure there are lots of colleges in the US but I think I can't spare more time on this. I hope you understand". Whoa! Not sure where that came from! I mean really, I have been drafting most of my letters so that he does not have to spend more than an hour on the submission. I will put that down to Sunday evening, pre-Monday blues on his part. Anyway, this may be it so he can relax I guess.

So what else is going on:

-Watched the NFL playoffs this weekend. Happy that the Giants won. Also enjoyed watching Bret Favruh work his magic on Saturday. Should be a good Championship weekend next week.

-Have been trying to follow the Democratic primaries more closely-dont really know why? Some of my friends have told me how much they hate Hillary Clinton, I mean they really HATE her. Wow! Well, with South Carolin and Nevada coming up in the next few days, it will be an interesting week or so.

-I had my MIT Sloan interview this past week. I spent the past weekend in Cambridge/Boston and it felt great to be back in the Boston area. The interview itself went off well I thought. I was not satisfied with the way I answered 2 questions. The rest of the interview was good. My interviewer complimented about 3 times about my application and essays. Not a bad sign. But you never know with these schools. It all depends on the strength of the applicant pool. And if they have the guts to take a risk with a 30+ non-famous school graduate. Will find out on Monday, Jan 28.

-hey, how about the weather huh? Feels like Spring here in Philly!

-Oh yeah, that "There will be Blood" movie looks good. Gotto find some time to go watch it.

-And finally yes, I am still monitoring my stock picks. I will post about them in detail later.

later

hmmm...how much can the survey polls be trusted?

2008-01-11T05:57:00.000-08:00

well, this sounds familiar does it not? Pre-primary polls getting it wrong in an election! Where have we heard that before? Happened again this week when all the so called political "pundits" claimed a landslide victory for Obama. Of course that did not happen. So, now I hear all the excuses for the wrong predictions:
-after noting that Obama would begin comfortably the independants went to vote to McCain instead
-some dude on TV said that "white people" often lie in polls surveys about voting for black candidates 'cause they want to be seen as politically correct
-Hillary Clinton's teary-eyed response on TV swayed the women in the 45+ age group

well, obviously it will be difficult to pin-point what the actual reason was, but I read an OpEd article on NYTimes by the director of Pew Research Center (PRC) which was interesting. Mind you the PRC is considered to be a tad "left-leaning". Regardless, an interesting article. Here is the link:
NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/opinion/10kohut.html?em&ex=1200200400&en=052def808ec8ac80&ei=5087%0A

NH Primaries - Beginning of the End for the Senator from NY?

2008-01-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

My predictions for the NH primaries today:

Elephant Party
1. John McCain
2. Mitt Romney
3. Mike Huckabee

Donkey Party
1. Barack Obama
2. Hillary Clinton
3. John Edwards

Corn(state)holio!

2008-01-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

So, the election season begins this evening in Iowa. Like any source of entertainment it would not be fair if we do not do the pre-season predictions. Yeah, I know there are multiple sources who claim to predict how everyone is going to do and what have you but I have the most reliable source right here: my gut feeling! Here goes, my predictions for Iowa:

Iowa Caucuses 2008

The Donkey Party
1. Barack Obama
2. Hillary Clinton
3. John Edwards

The Elephant Party
1. Mike Huckabee
2. Mitt Romney
3. Fred Thompson

I will continue to do this until the nominations for each party are decided (effectively) in February.

Y'all have any predictions?

Bye 2007-Part 2

2007-12-31T15:17:00.000-08:00

so what else did I do this month? ah yes:

-Saw two new movies: "Juno" and "Charlie Wilson's War". I would recommend both. I dont have the time to review them in detail here but trust me they are definitely watchable. "Juno" is good since the writing is real tight! I mean REAL tight! The actors are good too but the writing makes it easy for them. It is definitely an indie type movie with sharp wit and lots of quotable dialogues. One thing I would have liked was if Jason Bateman (spelling?) had a more humorous role-they kinda shackled him in his serious role instead of using his comedic talents. Despite that it was good. "Charlie Wilson's War" was good too despite both Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts being very uncovincing in their respective roles. This is another movie where the story was solid so whoever they chose to perform would have been ok. Philip Seymor Hoffman had a good role and he did a good job. Go watch'em both kids!

-Spent almost a week in the lone star state visiting buddies. It was a jolly time. Could have used a few more days there but had to come back for filling my applications, dang it! One of my buddy's kid, let's call him Junior Pinball, was fun to be around with! I mean the kid has a 24/7 motor (he is 3) and literally bounces off walls, couches, and floors like a pinball and I am not kidding! A kid like that is what the doctor ordered for keeping fit!

-I was watching CNBC some 2 weeks ago and came across the Fair Tax plan that Mr. Huckabee is proposing. Seemed like a BS plan but I decided to educate myself on what exactly it means. And let me tell y'all, it's something you should read up. It's pretty radical and interesting. Here is a link to the website: www.fairtax.org. We can discuss more about this in a later post.

ok, can't think of anything else to post. So all ya kids take care and have a banging new year's Eve!

Stay sober

Bye 2007

2007-12-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

So, another calendar year will pass tonite. Not sure how y'all spent your 2007 but I had a FULL year. The 'finance' bug bit me during the 2006 Christmas holidays and in January 2007 I started researching MFE programs first and MBA programs soon after. 6 campus visits and info sessions, a 6 week GMAT prep, 1 intensive summer course, 2 finance and accounting courses, and 2 waitlists later, here I stand. Could have been worse though. I can't complain much really.

oh, also I have not blogged since early December and there have been a few updates since then:

-MBA programs
--Wharton put me on the waitlist. I was expecting this but was hoping for an admit. I am disappointed that the admissions committee could not take the risk and offer a non-traditional candidate like me admission. They were not brave enough, that's all I have to say. I am not bitter or anything just writing my honest opinion. They rather give an admit to a dude who spent 5 years in consulting and went to a Ivy school for undergrad. That's the formula I guess. Well what now you ask? I gotto wait till the Rd 2 decision is announced on March 27 to find out if I am admittted there or denied. The chances, depending on what you read, are pretty slim. So am not going to hope for much here. If I get in, I get in else move on.

--The MIT Sloan ad com decided to interview me. Which was a good thing to see. Sloan interviews a much smaller pool than Wharton and admits anywhere from 55-70% of the people who they interview. Plus the interview is conducted by an ad com member who has the power to make a decision. So, what does this mean? Well this means that I HAVE the power to influence the admission decision. If I do the interview real well, the chances for getting in are great. I have prepared well for it. Let's see how it goes. The interview is next week in Cambridge.

--Yale. I decided to apply to Yale. I attended an info session in Philadelphia this past week and it was ok. Although Yale is not considered to be in the top echelon of business schools, the undergrad brand name and a few professors elevate it to tier 1A. I have finished the application and now am waiting for my references to submit their letters online. The Rd 2 deadline is Jan 9.

--NYU Stern. After much consternation I decided to apply here. Tough to argue against being in NYC especially if you are seeking a career in finance. Rd 2 deadline is on Jan 15.

Enough serious stuff! So what else has been happening?! Well, let me post that in the next post.

See part 2 of this post.

ola!

2007-12-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

yeah, it's been a while and I have no excuses to offer this time around. Here is what's happening:

-Karl Rove's wrote a comment column in today's Financial Times offering advice to Barack Obama on how to beat Hillary Clinton. Link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dee0a6e8-a109-11dc-9f34-0000779fd2ac.html
Not to sure what to make of it exactly but I have to admit this guy is a professional politician to the core. He looks like he is supporting Obama's nomination but at the same time he's pointing out his drawbacks. Looks to me like he is killing two birds with one stone so to say. Or I could be completely wrong and he is campaigning for a job on the Obama staff!

-The markets continue their volatility. I have not spent too much time analyzing them but am still following them on the periphery so to speak. More detailed analysis to come soon.

-On the applications:
-- Wharton: Interviewed in the 2nd week of November. I thought the interview went off well. Actually I could not remember much about the interview. It got over so fast. All I remember is that I rambled a lot. Let's see what is in store for me. The decision will be announced on December 20.
--MIT Sloan: I read somewhere that interview invites started going out today. I have not received one on the first day. They claim that interview invites will go out until Jan 28! The way I am looking at this is that if I get an interview invite from Sloan I have a good chance at Wharton. Why the convoluted logic? Well, Wharton extends interviews to a lot of kids and only offers admission to 35% of those invited to interview whereas Sloan accepts about 60% of those interviewed. Let's see.
-- NYU Stern: I went back to visit NYU for the 2nd time last week. I had to do it as NYU's essays clearly asks in one of their essays what you have done to get to know the NYU Stern community. I talked to the Vice President of the Social Enterprise Club there and it was a nice and honest conversation. One thing that stuck in my mind on both my visits to NYU: the kids at Stern looked very young. Apparently the average age there is close to ~25. I will apply to Stern if I do not get into Wharton or get an interview from Sloan.
--Yale: I am looking into applying to Yale for the 2nd Round. Need to do more research.

that's all for now.

Racism in the 21st Century - Will DNA analysis promote it?

2007-11-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

Racism, I realize that it is a sensitive and PIC topic that most people want to stay away from the moment they hear it but I dont think there is anything wrong is examining it from a social behavior point of view. In fact I think it is fascinating. Just remember to not get too wound up about it people, treat it as any other topic that you would talk about at happy hour and try to be non-defensive and rational.

Ok, why am I getting so deep and Philosophical about this on a Sunday nite? Well, I just read an article in the Sunday edition of NYT titled "In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice". Here is the link if you got time to read it, not a bad read honestly:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/us/11dna.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Anyway what is the big hoopla about:

-so, apparently just like you could go into a junk food store and order a burger with fries and a drink you could submit your DNA to a lab and ask them to quantify what percent of your genes are from which race! (well, it's not quite that easy but you get the drift). PS: I am personally fascinated to look at my gene analysis actually. I am pretty certain that my Irish and Jewish ancestry will be proven beyond a doubt!

-Remember we got told at the turn of this century that any two humans are 99% similar genetically (I actually remember Slick Billy (Clinton) announce it in one of his State of the Union addresses in the late 90s). So it is the 1% or so that determine whether you have a high IQ, sweat less, have pale skin, drink more Jaeger shots than others (ok, the last one I made up!). Again remember this according to Scientific experts in the field.

-so what? you ask. Well, looks like a recent study which tried to correlate a certain gene to high IQ in Asians, Europeans, and Africans was published in a scientific journal. And as you can guess non-scientific wannabes have been trying to generalize and pick tidbits of info and interpret it to fit their point of view. Apparently this one dude (blogger from Manhattan) wrote that the high IQ gene is present in higher amounts and more often in Asians and Europeans than in Africans.

-Of course this dude clearly ignored the fundamentals here: Nevermind that there are a gazillion other factors that influence basic thinking processes in humans. And that the Scientists themselves do not come to these conclusions because as is the case for most scientific studies it is almost impossible to arrive at a clear cut conclusion.

-And it is not helping that the gene guru James Watson, the Nobel Prize scientist who discovered the DNA structure, went public and proclaimed that people of African descent are "innately less intelligent than others".

-So as you can see there is social irresponsibility displayed by the so-called great scientists as well. It bothers me that someone as well regarded as Dr. Watson would make such a broad sweeping social statement (again I am assuming here that he did make this statement-I have not checked the article where he proclaimed that) without considering the how it will be interpreted. (The NYT article states that he later resigned from his job for these comments)

-Look, I understand that people from different races have characterestics that are specific to them but that does not mean that they can be extrapolated to define an entire race of people.
In this article specifically there are simple questions to consider: how reliable is an IQ test to relate to the intelligence of a person, what other factors like social environment, evolution, and personal characteristics affect the IQ. Not to mention the statistical certainity of the reported studies.

-It is very tempting for everyone, especially the over-exuberant types, to interpret any study to fit their pre-established theories. And it really grinds my gears (channeling Peter Griffin here!) that people use Darwin's evolution theory to explain general social behavior when he and various scientists specifically warn that his conclusions on evolution were arrived at from controlled experiments and should not be used to explain general social tendencies.

-One of the questions that was raised in the NYT article was "how can use it to explain the fact not oven one winner of the 100m race has been a white person since you can remember?".

-hey, like I said before there are certain characterestics that are specific to a certain race. Why that is could have to do with a gazillion factors? People of a certain run faster than others because they could train better or like Darwin said if you do a controlled experiment it could prove that with evolution necessity made them pre-disposed to run faster (I dont know this but could be).

-So people stay away from blanket statements based on partial or nit picked scientific information.

-Having said all this, I would really like to get a DNA analysis of my genes. Wouldn't you?

ok, gotto go a new episode of The Family Guy just started-looks like Stewie is going to kidnap his family!

later

Oil/Giuliani/Obama/Buckeyes/Portfolio/Movie Review

2007-11-04T18:03:00.000-08:00

Whew! Let's see how much I can cover in this post.

Oil
-Let me tell you, if on a scale of 1 to 10 my reluctance to buy a car was a 7 before October 1, 2007 it is now officially a 10! Why you ask? Well, I read this book titled "Out of Gas-The End of the Age of Oil" by David Goodstein.
-I highly recommend that all of you reading this read it. Goodstein is a Proffesor in the Physics Dept at Cal Tech and has used simple fundamental science and math to illustrate the seriousness associated with the disappearance of Oil in the World.
-I am usually sceptical about people coming up with extreme forecasting to rile up the crowd but this one uses simple science that we can understand. And it is scary.
-Let me summarize briefly what his projections are: Demand for Oil will outgrow Supply in the next 5-8 years; Not only will prices go up but slowly the fundamental forces keeping the economies robust will be affected since Oil is a source of not only fuel but of 80% of all organic materials we use; Humankind has used up almost 2/3rd of the Oil reserves in the earth's interior within 80 years which needed a million years to be made; Alternative sources like natural gas and coal can be used but they may only last another 80 years. He claims that there is an urgent need for the leaders of the world to use a visionary approach in seeking alternate sources of energy (Solar/Nuclear/Wind etc).

Giuliani
-Caught Rudy's interview on CNBC this past week and was shocked to see how personal the US Presidential Campaign has become already.
-The whole interview lasted for about 10 minutes and I think Rudy attacked Hillary's stands, her record, her personal demeanor, etc for about half of that time.
-Not sure if political campaigning needs to get so aggressive and personal. Maybe this is a sign of the times since so little separates the candidates policies that distinctions have to be made any and every way possible.
-I am not sure how campaigning is in Europe but one thing that is kept off limits there is personal attacks. If you want to attack policies of the candidates it's fine but why the ugly personal attacks.
-Well anyway, Rudy's selling point (atleast in the interview) was that he is THE ONLY candidate that has experience with dealing any crisis-and this is not only limited to handling 9/11 according to him: he was responsible for making NYC crime-free; he was responsible to changing the tax structure in NYC; and helped the poor with healthcare.
-One poll that I saw had him a point or two ahead of Hillary in the national race.
-Let's see how this campaign pans out.

Obama on MTV
-Was flipping through the channels and stopped when I saw Barack being interviewed in a stage audience setting on MTV.
-First thing that seemed strange was how serious and political the questions from the young audience were. The dudes looked not a day over 20 and they were asking pretty serious questions on foreign policy and healthcare. Not sure what to make of it, either they were staged or it was genuine.
-Anyway, as usual Barack was a smooth operator. Nothing fazed him, he did not even hesitate while responding, the guy is one slick Willy!
-Looks like the pressure is getting to him and he is getting personal in his attacks as well (not during the interview).

Buckeyes
-College football is getting interesting now! Me being a HUGE Ohio State Buckeyes fan am happy to see that they are ranked #1 this late in the season. Plus the times that I am not a big fan of are languishing at the bottom! Ahhhh! That always feels good.
-The #1 ranking this year was definitely not expected especially considered they lost a lot of kids to the NFL last year. But the whacky season this year has almost by default put them on top. The so-called "better" teams have one by one lost atleast one if not more games: USC, Florida, LSU, and Oklahoma were all supposed to be National Title contenders but ending losing a game each already. Meanwhile the Buckeyes quietly have taken care of business and are sitting pretty, thank you very much!
-There are still 2 big games to play for the Buckeyes, one of them the biggest and grandest of College Sports Rivalries: OSU-Michigan. I dont see them losing either of them. So come the New Year expect them to be playing for the title game!
-Who are they going to play, let's see. I would put my money on LSU but they have it tough with a conference championship game to win in addition.

Portfolio
-No, I have not forgotten about my portfolio! And it has recovered very well from the bashing in August!
-As expected my bets on the Oil stocks recovered well. COP and E are both close to even while CHK is making money! My bet on the alternate fuel stocks, CCJ, is also recovering nicely. PAL on the other hand is not doing so well.
-I did a little of research on all of them this weekend and was pleasantly surprised to read about the COP CEO's comments on alternate energy research. I will post more about this later.
-Overall still about 5% in the Red for the year. But this is better than the 20% hole I was in in September.

Movie Review
-Went to see "We Own the Night" this weekend. One word: Confused!
-The movie makers had no idea what they wanted the movie to be and in the end this confused the audience. Not really sure what the story line or message from this movie was. The trailers make it out to be a "Good Brother Vs Bad Brother" type movie with one being a cop and the other a mafioso. The actual movie was anything but!
-Once the movie ended, I waited for the credits to roll and once I saw that both Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg were producers of the movie it made a whole lot of sense. Looks like they wanted to make a movie together and chose whatever script came their way! Seriously, I had no idea what the movie was supposed to be!
-Having said all that, Phoenix is good in his role. Marky Mark had a bad role so there is not much he could do. Robert Duvall was adequate. And Eva Mendes (I still remember her as that Naked Chic from "Training Day") was there to show some skin and act cool in one shot.

Allrite then, that is all for this week.

...and I'm back!

2007-11-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

Feels like it's been ages since I posted here. And I have a million things to write about. Let's see how much I can write with my nephew hanging onto my neck!

Vacation:
-It was freakin' great, what can I say.

-I highly recommend that people visit Budapest if they get a chance. Just the visits to the thermal bathhouses are worth it.

-Buildings, food, museums, food, paprika, pastries, did I mention the Hungarian food? All worth it.

-The people were interesting. Strangely, I dont think I ran into many working type people the five days I was there. Seems like everybody was in high school or older people just wandering around.

-There was an Indian feel to some places in Budapest. For example, attached to every subway station would be a bunch of shops that were selling everything from garments to alchohol. And the way the wares were displayed was very different.

-With Hungary having come out of Communism only in 1990 there are many remnants of it everywhere. Buildings, dressing, etc.

-I could not go to Belgrade unfortunately because of some paperwork issues and that was the down part of the trip. My friend had made plans for my trip and I felt bad for her. Oh well, next time.

Red Sox Win the World Series:
-I thought I had lost some of the passion for watching sports this past year-you know being busy and all with all the applications, financial markets etc. but one incident put a rest to that thought: I found myself pumping my fists at 5 AM alone in a Budapest hotel when Okajima induced Casey Blake into a double play in the 7th inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. I was pumped up! (not sure what that says about me, but I was excited!).

-Needless to say, once the Saaawx beat the Tribe in Game 7 of the ALCS (I paid $40 to watch it in Budapest from 2-6AM by the way and it was all worth it), I knew they were going to kill the Rockies!

-Say what want to about the Red Saaawx and their front office but the bottom line is this team was built to win in the playoffs. I dont care if people say that is a cliche but it is the truth. I have been saying all season long (check my posts) that pitching will take this team far and it did. Of course the team got some breaks but that's sports you need breaks to win it all. Everyone on the team produced and as a fan it is great to watch that.

-Also along the way we got to hear a lot of quotable quotes from the Saawx players:
- "When you are getting hits even when you are not feeling good, that's when you know you are a bad man" - Manny
- "When you are wearing this uniform (Red Saawx) you know you are a bad MF" - David Ortiz
- "You dont want to eat your cake before your birthday" - Manny

- Of course any of my baseball stories is not complete without mentioning the Spankees. A-Rod opted out of his contract and Joe Torre left. I know a lot has been made about A-Rod leaving and his agent and all but the truth is the Yankees have to replace a power right handed bat (not so easy) and the fans are partly to blame. You dont boo the best player in the game, atleast not every freakin' time. A lot is made about Derek Jeter and his "intangibles" but whatever happended to them in the past 6 years? Well I am not complaining any loss for the Yankees is a gain for a Red Saawx fan. And no I would not mind having A-Rod on the Sox (as much as I can't stand the guy). Imagine a lineup of Ortiz-Manny-ARod. Of course there is no way in hell I would pay $250 million for him. If he is willing to sign a 5 year $125 million contract, I say sign him. Not more than that.

B School Applications:
-Wharton:
I got an Interview invite from Wharton about 2 weeks ago. It was a bit of a relief as I was beginning to get worried there. Of course there is still a long way to go as Wharton interviews about 35-40% of their applicants and only admits about 30% of the people who are interviewed. Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. I scheduled my interview for the 2nd week of November. First things first, I need to buy a suit!

-MIT/Sloan:
I submitted the application last weekend. Have to wait for 4 weeks before I hear from them. I thought my application was above average. Sloan has a very different application packet that involved less scope for BS in my opinion. I contacted a faculty member about the program I am interested in and she was very supportive and encouraging. Let's see how it turns out.

-NYU:
I decided to apply to NYU only in the 2nd Rd as there is not time for me to put together an acceptible application for the 1st Rd. The 2nd Rd deadline is in Jan. One way or another I will know if I HAVE to apply here.

Ok, gotto go now. More to post later.

Nobel Prize/Euro Trip/Baseball LCS Series

2007-10-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
-Every year I browse through the press coverage of Nobel Prizes partly 'cause I am curious as to see I can recognize them from somewhere or simply to check if I know the area in which they conducted research. As this year's Prize in Chemistry was announced earlier this week I was part excited part glad.
-Gerhard Ertl from the Max Plank Institute in Berlin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year. So why am I glad and happy? 'cause I happened to have done my PhD dissertation work in the same area in which Ertl worked all his life.
-Researchers in this area have long wondered if there ever will be a Nobel Prize awarded to a catalysis expert and finally the Nobel committee recognized the importance of this research area.
-I heard from a lot of people in the research area about how happy they all were. Feels like the whole community has been rewarded!

Euro Trip
-So, I am off on a little Euro trip tomm. I am not yet sure if I will travel to 3 countries or 2 but rest assured I will enjoy the trip.
-After a week in the UK for work I am planning on visiting Budapest and Belgrade. Needless to say I am excited! Heard a lot about the wonderful bath houses in Budapest! And the food and the wine. And I will have a local guide! Can't complain!
-I will try to post on the blog when I am there. Maybe some pictures since I have an iPhone with me now.

Baseball League Championship Series
-The only bummer with my Euro trip is that I will not able to watch any of the league championship series and maybe even the World Series!! Booo!
-Although I subscribed to MLB tv so I may get to watch some of the games online on my laptop. Hopefully I get hold of reliable broadband access in Europe.
-My predictions:
ALCS:
Red Saaaawx over Indians in 6 (staying put with my earlier prediction)
MVP: Manny
yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the Saaawx have to face CC and Carmona but Beckett and Schilling are not too shabby either. I can feel it-Dice-K is going to come up big-about freakin' time. And Manny owns CC.

NLCS:
Rockies in 6 (this team is hot although I have no idea who plays on that team!)

Wharton MBA Application - "Click"!

2007-10-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

I submitted by Wharton Rd 1 application a few days ago. Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of the application.
-This application is easily better than the one that I submitted to Columbia in most aspects.
-Essays: smoother transition and diverse. I was not completely satisfied with Essay #2 but it still was tight. Could have used more substance and drama but I am ok with it.
-I used the optional essay to explain a brief consultant job that I had. Thinking about this more makes we wonder if the ad comm will treat my job transitions (and salaries) as a negative. I will find out I guess.
-The key to this application was my choice of major at Wharton. This choice should fit in with my career path much more smoothly than the one I asked for at Columbia.
-I did not get a chance to list all my publications as there was no room for them. Hopefully this does not come back to bite me.
-Again, it is a reasonable application. Let's see what the admissions committee thinks!

PS: I was feeling happy about my application when I started reading the profiles and backgrounds of other applicants! Man! I have to say there are a lot of high-quality people applying to Wharton. Makes you wonder if the selection process picks the best candidates always. I guess the ad comm does not have to worry too much about it since it is simple probability math. Say, if 100 kids with A+ backgrounds and 100 kids with A backgrounds apply. If the ad comm picks leaves out 5 kids from A+ group and instead takes 5 kids from the A group it is not like they are making a mistake. There is probably not too much of a difference between them anyway. And add that to the fact that they take 800 kids every year. They can afford to have a few % from that being just OK!

Bottom line: I realize that I should not be surprised if I DO NOT receive an interview from Wharton.

Columbia MBA/iPhone/MLB Playoffs/Markets/Corporate Finance

2007-10-06T07:17:00.000-07:00

Columbia MBA Status
-As expected I received the denial note from Columbia this week!
-I was not as disappointed as I thought I would be considering that Columbia was my first preference. Maybe I had agonized about not receiving an interview 2 weeks ago so much that I was mentally ready for it.
-I would have liked to go to B school in NYC but it is what it is. The key now is to realize and correct issues with my Columbia app for Wharton/MIT/NYU. And I do think there are a bunch of things to correct.
-My assumption is that my essays at Columbia did not make me stand out from the applicant pool. They were dry and lacked a personable story-telling feel to them.
-Plus since it was my first application I did not do enough due process before submitting the application. Not a good idea to submit the first application to your first choice!
-I am hoping that it is due to these correctable issues that I did not get in. Let's see how it turns out.

iPhone
-Well, I convinced myself over the past 3 weeks that I NEEDED a new phone. So why not an iPhone, this little voice inside me told me? So why not? I bought one last weekend. And needless to say it is way too cool.

MLB Playoffs
-I am not sure what makes me more happy in baseball. Am I happier when the Spankees lose than when the Red Saaawx win? Is that abnormal?
-That you feel happy at the misfortunes of someone you do not like rather than feel happy for someone you like-is that one of commandments or something?
-Anyway who cares! I do feel all tingly inside when the Spankess lose, especially in extra innings to go down 0-2 like they did last nite!
-The fact that ma boy Manny hit a walk-off 3-run homer later last nite made it all the more satisfying last nite!
-I am busting out my original Manny MLB jersey this weekend!

Markets
-With all my time being occupied with essays and other application related issues I have not followed the markets closely these past weeks. But I did pick up on a few things.
-It looks like the European based IBanks finally started showing their dirty linen so to speak. UBS and Deutsche Bank over the past 2 weeks came out and revealed their exposures to the sub-prime and credit fallout. The strategy there was to get this out of the system as early and quickly as possible so that the markets can gain some confidence that they are being transparent. Not sure if that will ever be accomplished but the revelations (and related firings) did soothe and in some cases boosted the markets.
-US based financial institutions took the hint and started washing their laundry in the public as well. Merrill, Citi, and MS all showed their write-downs from the crisis. The markets took that as a positive sign and quickly rallied! Ah the vagaries of the financial markets!
-One thing that is going un-noticed amongst all this is that the % that the DJIA has risen since the August "crash" is more than the % it went down in August. It is interesting that there is not much hoopla when there is a spike upwards compared to a downward spike. I have to look into all the volatile periods in the last 20 years and analyze it.
-Crude continues to hover around the $80 area consistently. Here is one thing that caught me by surprise. All indications were that the crude inventory in the US was going to be lower than expected by the latest report showed that in fact it was better than expected! Go figure. Tells you how much power these firms that report these things and the media have. I need to look into this.

Corporate Finance
-Here is something interesting that my professor in the Corporate Finance course talked about this week in class. Market efficiency.
-Market efficiency is simply the efficiency with which financial information, once it is out in the open, is transferred to the prices of equities/bonds etc.
-It is an interesting theory whose implication is that no single individual or investing group can consistently beat the market.
-I had a discussion with the professor on this and his take is that any market inefficiencies tend to correct themselves within minutes or hours.
-So if we assume this, for the hedge funds and others who hire these quant type people to make money of market inefficiencies they have to act quickly to spot these inefficiencies within seconds else they will not have head start on anyone else.
-Of course the currency markets and other areas where arbitrage chances arise are another story.

MLB Playoffs - kondum picks!

2007-10-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

I was just browsing ESPN.com and realized that I have not posted my playoff picks yet. The Phils-Rockies series kicks off the playoffs in a couple of hours. So let me get to it:

NL:
Division Series I - Phillies over Rockies in 4.
Division Series II - Cubs over Dbacks in 4.

NLCS:
Cubs over Phillies in 6

AL:
Division Series I - Red Saaawx over Angels in 4.
Division Series II - Indians over Spankees in 5.

ALCS:
Red Saaawx over Indians in 6

World Series:
Saaawx over Cubbies in 6.

Movie Review - The Kingdom

2007-09-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

So, watched "The Kingdom" this afternoon. I needed a break from my Wharton essays and application madness that has gripped me this past week or so. Nothing like a generic Hollywood mindless action movie for a break from the intensive essay writing action yeah?

Ok, now about the movie.

Plot: A team of 4 FBI specialists force their way through diplomatic opposition into Saudi Arabia to investigate the bombing of the American compound that kills more than 100 American citizens. The movie shows what they go through and how they go approach the situation.

Good things:
-Dont be mistaken that this is a cliched movie from the American point of movie. The plot may appear like that when you read it but there are definite subtleties (spelling?) in the movie. Granted there are some cliches but overall the movie was good. I am going to go ahead and actually say it was very good. A Saudi angle is presented as well (a la Syriana) and it probably saves the movie from being average.
-Jammie Fox is very good. Chris Cooper is also very good. I think Chris Cooper is severely under-rated by the way. Jennifer Garner is used very well in her role. As is Jeremy Piven. Although it would be tough to see Piven as a State Department Official. He brings the Artie attitude from Entourage to this role which I am not sure is believable but definitely entertaining.
-The fight scene with Jennifer Garner is cool. Overall the action scenes were great I thought.
-The scenes that showed the Saudi Arabian landscape were good. I am assuming they shot that in Saudi Arabia and if that was the case, man that country is wealthy. And imagine all that from the oil that you are consuming!
-Very gripping. It kept my attention for the entire duration and that is tough to do.
-No love angle. Thankfully. There is no need for a love angle in a serious movie like this. (Sara is probably disappointed!)
-The ending again is well done. There are no more riding into the sunset endings in movies anymore huh? Moral ambiguity is the norm and that's what the end tries to potray.

Not so good things:
-I am tired of American movies showing Saudi Princes to be powerless and wimps in front of ordinary FBI/CIA agents. I am not buying that please! This is done in this movie as well. Not a big fan of it.
-The way a reasonably top FBI agent convinces the Saudi Govt to land a team on their land by threatening to publicize some vital secrets in the press was typical Hollywood and not believable.

I recommend it.

What up?

2007-09-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to post earlier but have been occupied with multiple things since last Thursday. Here is what's up:

B-school Applications
-Columbia
Still no interview call. Honestly I am sceptical about my chances at this point. Have been checking the BW forums and not only are people receiving interview calls but some have already been admitted. One person who applied after me received a Denial notice today. I am expecting mine to arrive shortly. It is tough to swallow but have to move on. I was a bit stressed this past weekend about this. But I have be realistic as well. There are other top tier schools that I stand a good chance at. Gotto analyze my application and fix potential issues for my Wharton and Sloan applications.

-Wharton
With an eye on my Columbia rejection I re-wrote all my Wharton essays. I am also being much more thorough when filling out my application here. Dont want to leave anything for interpretation. Choosing a former work supervisor as my 2nd reference should also help. If everything goes well I will submit this early next week.

-MIT/Sloan
Started on this too. Have a good idea on my essay outlines. Have to start working on the cover letter though. I plan on trying to submit this before I leave for vacation (more on this later) in mid-October.

Red Saaawx
Since my rant, the sox have gone 4-1 and now have a 3 game lead against the spankees with 4 games to go. Safe to say the division has been won. We will be playing the Angels in the first round. Should be good. I have not looked at their rotation closely but safe to say that I am predicting the Sox to win in 4 games. Manny's back as well! yipppieee!

Vacation
Finally! Regardless of my application status I have decided to take a short vacation. I will be in Eastern Europe for about 10 days in mid-October. Hopefully can get to post from there!

Markets
I have not followed closely the past 2 weeks due to my obsession with my applications. Things look ok on the surface. I have to say this though I did not buy the bs quaterly earnings reports that Goldman Sacchs and Bear Stearns came up with last week. Please! Dont believe any of the bs that they actually made money in that quarter or that the losses were not bad. Creative accounting is all that it takes. Oil hit $85 briefly and came back to $82 today. I still expect this to rise in the next 3 months.

Gotto go run. More later

6 month Finance and Economic Forecasts-kondum style!

2007-09-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

Marina asked me about my predictions for the next 6 months or so in the Financial markets and the Economy in general. ok. Here are my predictions for the next 6 months:

-Inflation sneaks up higher. It has to. Take China. The inflation there (6.5%) is the highest in 11 years and all due to food becoming costly. It will trickle down to the rest of the world. It already has. Wheat has gone up significantly already. Lowering interest rates will also aid higher inflation.

-The next report from the Labour dept is definitely going to show job losses. Lower GDP. Possibly a -ve GDP. So I think we will technically be in recession.

-Crude Oil is going to hit $90. More demand in the winter, delay by OPEC to increase production, lower current inventories, and the possibility of a confrontation with Iran. All of these will contribute to this increase. I would also watch out for the trouble brewing in Pakistan. There is potential for that to spread to neighboring Islamic nations and trigger bigger trouble.

-Housing market is going to further slow down. Defaults continue to rise and so do discounts being offered by sellers-indications of a severe deflation in value. If inflation goes further up, there is potential for that to impact mortgage payments of prime mortgage owners as well. All in all this could be the recipe for a significant correction in the housing market. A majority of the ARMs come off in November 2008 so mark that month down for some intense activity.

-Retail sales are going to suffer as well. Dont believe the bs that CNBC is feeding you. I watched a piece on CNBC this week where analysts (in collusion with the industry) were predicting strong holiday retails sales this year. Really? And how Einstein are people supposed to pay for their iPhones and gadgets? More credit? Really?

-I hope Bernanke does not cut rates again in October. Not going to be good for inflation kids! If I were him, I would let the carnage in the markets continue. The bubble that arose due to indiscretionary borrowing has to completely burst, I mean there should not be any indications of frothing when all is said and done. 'cause you know this kids: if froth builds, bubbles are next! Let the housing market correct itself. Let the institutional lending and liquidity matters correct themselves. Let the uber-bulls and financial predators realize that the byproduct of taking high-wire risks is not always a one-way path. It could lead to failures as well.

Enough ok? Suck it up and perform!

2007-09-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

ok, I thought about being patient and all that but screw that! I am not upset but really pissed off.....at this Red Sox team! Freakin' unbelievable these bunch of guys! Play exceptionally well for 95% of the year and NOW is when they pick to stink it up. ENOUGH of this guys, time to suck it up and just freakin' win!

The division lead at the end of today stands at 1 1/2 games! Can you believe that? U get swept by the freakin' Blue Jays?!

No freakin' excuses such as:
-Gagne sucks
-Manny's hurt
-Have to rest the pitching staff for the playoffs
-JD Drew is underperforming
-Offense has disappeared
-Papi's hurt
-We will make the playoffs anyway
-No big mid-season trades
-Papelbon is wearing down

No more excuses! This is REAL simple from here on. Just freakin' win every game.
3 vs Tampa Bay
2 vs Oakland
3 vs Minnesota

You CAN win every single game! So do it.

PS:
ha! I had to get that rant out of my system.

Ayn Rand makes a Comeback! (Greenspan's a fan!)

2007-09-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

So whatdyaknow. Market turmoil has also led one of the leading newspapers in the US to assign a reporter who would seek opinions from prominent financial stalwarts on what they thought about the Mother of Objectivism. Confused? Dont be.

Mother of Objectivism = Ayn Rand
Leading newspaper = NY Times

NYT had an article this week about how Ayn Rand's famous "Atlas Shrugged" is making a huge comeback on the best book seller list, a good 50 years or so after it was written. For those who have not read "Atlas Shrugged", it essentially bases a story about a railroad but the main theme being conveyed to the readers is the virtues of Capitalism (and objectivism) in the modern world.

Apparently Alan Greenspan is a huge follower of Any Rand. In fact he personally knew her when he was young. He met her when he was 25 and living in NYC. Loved the book and even proofread the first few versions.

The article also mentions that other stalwarts in the financial sector were big fans of the book. Most of them read it when the socio-political atmosphere in the US was not too supportive of Capitalism.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" when I was 21 and did not think too much about it. Although, I have to say Ayn Rand's other two publications "The FountainHead" and "We the Living" did affect a lot of my fundamental thought processes.

I thought that was an interesting thing to write about.

Columbia MBA - Getting antsy!

2007-09-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

I could not wait, so sent an email to the lady in the admissions office at the Columbia Business School today asking her if they have started issuing interview invitations yet. Here is what she said in her email:

"Interviews happen on a rolling basis and could happen at any time up to your decision deadline

Thanks"

Not sure how that makes me feel. I guess I'll have to wait it out. oh well!

Movie Review - "Eastern Promises"

2007-09-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Went to see "Eastern Promises" last nite at the Ritz 5. It was packed for a 8:40pm show. I mean there was not even an inch of elbow room and elbow room is important people! Not sure why so many people showed up. Usually the crowd is pretty thin for indie flicks. Well, I guess people had heard that this was made by the same guys who made "A History of Violence" and "Dirty Pretty Things".

Ok, the review now:

Good things:
-Vigo Mortensen was very good in his role as a driver for the Russian mob in London. He had the accent down and his acting style suited the role.
-Armin Stahl (the mob leader) I thought stole the show. He looks pretty harmless in appearance and speech in the movie and I guess that brings out the contrast in his reputation as a ruthless savage in the movie.
-The movie showed the Russian mob world at its ruthless worst. You gotto turn your eyes away if you can't watch throats being slit and fingers being cut and eyes being gouged. It was not easy to watch but the brutality was presented as if it would be in real life. There were quite a few people squirming and oh-ahhing in the movie multiple times.
-References to London and how it affects people in negative ways was well potrayed.
-Ending.

Not so good things:
-The plot was not too strong.
-Naomi Watts and Vincent Cassell were both under-utilized in their roles.
-Too much focus on Vigo's role. The whole seemed to be about him.
-The voilence and sex scenes were a bit too graphic for my taste.

Overall:
Watchable. I thought "Dirty Pretty Things" was much better than this.

Nervous!

2007-09-13T19:18:00.001-07:00

3 weeks since I submitted the application to Columbia. 2 more weeks and I will start to get nervous.

I need to concentrate on getting the Wharton application out of the way in the next 10 days. Time to hunker down and get serious with the essays.

Visit to NYU/Stern

2007-09-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

So, early this week I made the trek to the NYU campus in NYC. I attended an info session at Stern. What did I think you ask? Well:

-The info session was a bit different from the ones I have attended so far. We started with brief introductions and proceeding for a brisk walk onto the 3 main floors in the Kauffman Center. Towards the end of the walking/talking tour the lady sat us down in a room and showed a few slides about the school and application requirements.

-Three current students tagged along with us and they were pretty helpful in answering questions on the side. 2 of them seemed nervous though!

-The class size is about half that of Wharton and Columbia (about 400 kids every year).

-I was specifically told that Stern welcomes applicants with PhDs. That was good to hear.

-Fall session seemed to have started, it was quite loud as walked around on the three floors.

-One interesting thing was that there was a Bloomberg terminal on one of the floors where students can hook up and get streaming quotes directly. That seemed neat.

-Clubs and student activities seemed similar to other schools.

-The lady specifically addressed all application issues clearly. One thing that I took away from that was to not leave anything in doubt for the ad com. If you need to explain something, do it.

-I spent about 2h on campus and the feeling I got was that the average age was lower than other schools. Or I could have been seeing students from other programs?

Overall, it was good. I will apply here. The deadline is in November so I still have time.

"Who needs the Ivies?"

2007-09-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting article from BusinessWeek from a few weeks back. The author debates that going to a Ivy league school may in fact NOT be good for a career in entrepreneurship (atleast in technology). He goes make good points but there are valid counter points that are presented by others in the article as well. Overall it is a balanced article I thought.

Here is the link:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2007/tc20070830_254262.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index

Random thoughts-Obama/No-hitter/South Philly

2007-09-06T17:48:00.000-07:00

Barack on The Daily Show
-Caught Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart this evening (it was a re-run apparently). Man, there is absolutely no doubt about it, this guy has a rock star like aura around him. And he is really smooth when he speaks. Populism aside he does sound so NOT like a politician. Now, I am not sure what his stand on various policies is but he does sound convincing in whatever he says. One interesting point he made is that in the current atmosphere a majority of the people already know that when politicians speak they dont really mean what they say. Politicians know it and people who listen them know it. His point was that he would try to bring a non-political atmosphere to the people. Wonder how plans to do it but I liked the way he said it. To be fair though I thought Jon Stewart did not ask him too many tough questions. I did not expect him to but it would have been nice to have put Barack on the spot a couple of times. Although I remember when Jon McCain was on the show a few months ago, he did not ask too many tough questions either. Overall, I thought Barack looked good. Now if only he can somehow cut into Hillary's lead.

A no-hitter! yeah a no-hitter by a Red Saaawk rookie!
-How can I not bring up the no-hitter that Red Saaawwwx rookie Clay Buccholz threw against the Baltimore Orioles last week. Not only was it eventful, you know being a no-hitter and all, it made all Red Saaawx fans forget about the 3 game sweep against the Spankees a few games prior to that. I have to say, there are a few moments in sports that are a definite "can't miss". Watching a perfect game or a no-hitter live has to rank very high up on that "can't miss" list. Although I did not watch this live, I accidently stumbled upon the 9th inning being shown live on ESPN. I love it when the commentators shut up right after the final out has happened. You could see that this kid was just blown away by the moment. He could not say anything intelligcent on live TV! He maybe 23 but when this woman was interviewing him after the no-hitter he sounded and acted like a 10 year old kid! Was good to see. It was also cool to see Theo Epstein jumping up and down like a kid in his private box after the last out. Gotto give it to Theo he stuck to his policy of not trading young studs from the farm system (well, he did let Anabel Sanchez and Hanley Ramirez go but you can't always be right in baseball much like the stock market). I hope Clay pumps weights in the off-season, puts on some mass, and starts pumping those nasty off-speed pitches along with his mid-90s fastballs. And people should quit comparing him to Pedro. For one thing Clay does not have a high 90s fastball or the intimidating presence that Pedro had. I hope he turns out to be atleast 70% of what Pedro was.

South Philly! very under-rated!
-well, now I feel like a Center City snob dont I? In the 2+ years since I have been in Philly I hardly ever ventured out to South Philly to get a brew or visit a nice restaurant. I did not understand what the fuss was all about. I mean, between Center City, University City, Fairmount, and Old City we've got the city's best establishments covered right? Wrong! Upon Robert's recommendation we went to this place called "Cantina" on Passyyunk Avenue (close to Geno's) for a quick drink and some snacks last Friday. Robert has been raving about this place for a while, so we went there. I have to say, that whole area was refreshingly different from Center City. Passyyunk Ave had that retro- 60s and 70s feel to it. It could almost pass for a street in old Europe. And this place "Cantina" was painted all yellow outside and could easily have passed for an eatery in Mexico. And the snacks were great too. We had the Empanadas which were fantastic. And my fav part, they had a beer called "Rogue Chipotle Ale" which had a touch of peppers in it. It was really good. I am going back there with some friends for a weekend brunch thing soon. Thanks to Robert and Marina for bringing me to the wonderful South Philly area.

Day 7 @ The US Open 2007

2007-09-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

When my friend Sara had talked about going to the US Open in mid July, I told her that the best day to go would be the Sunday of the labor day weekend. That way we could see a lot more players still left in the draw (3rd and 4th) and hopefully catch a great match or two. So off I went and bought 2 tkts to Louis Armstrong Stadium that included a grounds pass as well. The only stadium we could NOT get into with those tkts would be Arthur Ashe-big deal I told myself and Sara was cool with it too.

So whatdyaknow Saturday rolls around and I happen to glance at Sunday morning's schedule. Serana, Nadal, and Venus are scheduled to play at Arthur Ashe on Sunday morning! Aaaaaarrrggh! Of course to rub it in, a bunch of no names were playing at Louis Armstrong. So I quickly checked for tkts on StubHub and lo and behold tkts were available for Arthur Ashe for Sunday. Of course we would have to pay 5 times the actual price to sit in the highest 5 rows or pay 10 times the actual price to sit courtside. I called Sara to discuss this and she of course was willing to give an arm and a leg to watch Nadal play live! So we decided to pay for the 5x tkt. Within 5 minutes after that phone call I get a txt message from Sara asking me if she was crazy (or was it her anti-biotics speaking) to suggest that we should get the uber-overpriced courtside seats? So a discussion ensued and we decided to stay reasonable with 5x tkts.

Of course this meant we had to get rid of the two tks we had which I thought would be easy at the stadium. So off we went for the session starting at 11 AM. Woke up at 6 AM!

Highlights from Day 7:

Food items consumed(together):
-1 Chicken/Spinach/Cheese and 1 ham/cheese crepe. (yes! they had crepes at the US Open)
-1 cheesy Panini Ham sandwich (half of which Sara wolfed down like it was her last day on earth!).
-2 Cashew LARA bars (our only healthy dietary constituent for the day)
-1 bag of Cape Cod chips.
-3 pints of Heineken lager.
-1 large hot coffee (cold water added to cool it down-Canadian trick apparently!)
-1 bottle of "Yellow" Gatorade
-3 bottles of water
-atleast 1 ounce of SPF 55 sunscreen lotion. There is no way Sara did not eat atleast a little of the lotion. She used atleast 1/2 litre of it in 2 hrs and it was everywhere her top, her shorts, her shades.

Players Seen:
-Serena Williams and Bartoli. Serena seemed a bit sluggish in the first 4 games but she recovered quickly to handle the pudgy French girl. Did you guys notice that Bartoli does not even bounce the ball before serving, this is even more strange live. I mean no bounces or tosses! Sara seemed pretty irritated by that.
-Nadal and Tsonga. This was a great match in the first set. Nadal is impressive live. The Tsonga kid was playing pretty well but Nadal was at a different level. In the last set, Tsonga seemed to be pleading the heavens for some help. He did not get any.
-Venus and Ivanovic. I stay put with my pre-tournament prediction after seeing Venus destroy Ivanovic. She is playing at a different level and it will be tough to beat her.
-Radwonka. She is the Polish kid who upset Sharapova on Saturday. We saw her on the practice courts getting ready for Monday. Man, these kids practice hard. Some dude was her practice partner and they were going at it.
-Random Spanish player dude with no shirt on. Of course Sara spent a good 30 minutes staring at this guy and taking pictures on the practice courts. Her excuse, "I needed some shade".
-Blake. We saw him from far away practicing in the courts not available for spectators to see.
-Random mens doubles match. Can't remember their names.

Comfort Level:
-We were getting roasted in the Sun in the first 2 hours. Yeah, the weather was good but it was HOT sitting directly in the Sun.
-After the start of the Nadal match we walked over to the side of the stadium which was in the shade and sat there for the rest of the day. It was MUCH MUCH more comfortable there.
-Next year, definitely courtside seats!

Memorabilia purchased:
-One brown US Open 2007 Womens Hat (for Sara)-this was more for her protection from the Sun.
-One black US Open 2007 Mens Hat (for Sara's dad)

Cool free gadgets at the US Open:
-Portable radio for all AMEX cardholders (both of us had corporate cards of course!)
-This was cool as we could listen to John McEnroe and the rest of the CBS crew while watching the game live. I did not use it much but Sara occasionally gave me interesting tidbits that she heard on the tiny radio.

Trips to the Restroom:
-Four (or was it five?)

The Crowd and The Atmosphere:
-Interestingly there were more people milling around in the general area than at the matches. Seriously, almost the whole of the top rows which were directly in the Sun at Arthur Ashe were almost empty. Sara kept mumbling as to how they can claim it was soldout and there were so many seats still available. "Probably at Sunday mass" she told herself!
-When we went to our assigned seats at 11 AM, there were probably about 15 people within 30 rows of us. All the areas in the shade seemed full though.
-There was this French guy by himself seated directly behind Sara. With 2 French athletes in action that morning (Bartoli and Tsonga) I knew he would break out into French name-calling eventually. I took the over on 5 games during the Serena-Bartoli match while Sara took the under. Unfortunately we were not treated to any colorful French epithets. This guy turned out to be well-behaved. If only if they sold cheap wine at the US Open!
-I heard a lot of "Let's go Raffa" chants when Nadal was playing. Good to see him getting more popular in the US.
-The crowd did get a bit loud during the Nadal match. Actually both players got standing ovations as Nadal began to serve for the match. It was good to see.
-Other than that it was not raucous at any point. The one-sided nature of all three matches had something to do with it probably.
-Unfortunately, there was no sightings of people who were drunk or people flashing or streaking either. We could have used some of that entertainment!

Talents Discovered:
-Turns out Sara is a natural at sales! As soon as we got off the 7 train, she immediately attracted one seedy looking scalper dude and one suspecting German tourist looking for tkts. Not sure how they figured out how she had extra tkts? Of course, she disappeared into the dark when the cash was being exchanged! Something about just being a dealmaker but not wanting to be seen with cash being exchanged-shall we say that Canada should get ready for a new woman politician?

Overall:
-It was entertaining and I had a good time. Next year, I would get night tkts or day tkts courtside in the shade.

Energy and Metals Portfolio - UPDATE

2007-09-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

% change in portfolio from July 17-September 2, 2007:
COP: down 9.18%
E: down 11.37%
CHK: down 11.18%
CCJ: down 20.28% (ouch!)
PAL: down 29.19% (double ouch!)

Value of $10,000 portfolio: $8,372 - down 16.64%
S&P in the same period: down 5.16%

Needless to say, my picks are performing miserably. My speculation that picking alternate energy equities (CCJ and PAL) would be a good hedge against oil equities is not working out at all. Why? Well:

-Turns out the Uranium price and by association firms dealing with Uranium were already overpriced when I got in. So with that and the ugliness of the credit crunch spreading to all sectors, I got caught on the wrong side of the curve with CCJ.
-As for PAL I am not sure why that is not doing so well. One thing that could explain it is that they started earning revenue only in this year, so any outside market volatility may cause nervous investors to quickly back away.

Now for my traditional energy (read oil) picks.
COP: I think this is still is a good one to hold onto. Despite losing ~10% in the past month the fundamentals are still pointing to it being undervalued today compared to others in the sector. Yes, they still have to deal with the Chavez regime in 'Zuela and there appear to be some more legal issues cropping up. But their operations are very balanced in exploration, refining, and natural gas. I still like these dudes. Holding on.

CHK: I have to say I have not read one good piece of writing on CHK this past 2 weeks. Analysts at reputed publications and firms provide their recommendations but their basis is not entirely clear. I will still hold onto this as I still think any company that is #3 in natural gas holdings in the US with large reserves will ultimately do well when the energy prices soar. And soar they will with the upcoming hurricane schedule promising to deliver this year.

E: Well, this was my non-US pick and it is looking shaky so far. Not because of performance in the equity market but they are taking a beating at Kashagan. Borat's home country is not being friendly to these Italians. I read a very comprehensive article in WSJ last week about Kashagan and its history. Looks like the Kazak govt will make Eni sweat this one out. I know that the control will be given back to Eni at some point but Eni would end up paying some part of their share to the Kazakh govt.
Interesting facts I picked up from that WSJ article:
-Kashagan has the highest amount of H2S being emitted every by an oil field
-working conditions are the worst anyone has seen in a while since it is offshore and biting cold
- bottlenecks are building materials what will not only withstand cold temperatures but also the high pressures since the field is ~4.2 KM deep into the water
-heavy shortage of geologists and mechanical engineers

well, despite the abysmal performance of my picks so far, I will hold onto them for now. Maybe next month will be a different story.

Barack Obama and his plan for the common man

2007-08-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

Looks like a market correction is also a good time for politicians to get some publicity going. FT carried a comment article by Barack Obama on Wednesday, August 29 where the presidential hopeful provided solutions to protecting home owners affected by the sub-prime mess.

Let's see here, this is what Mr. Obama he had to say:

-Predatory tactics used by mortgage companies to target unsuspecting wannabe home owners
-Wannabe home owners were lied to about the affordability of the mortgages they were getting into
-When owners started defaulting people who suffered most were the homeowners themselves as their homes were foreclosed
-Mortgage companies and people on Wall street did not suffer too much
-Solution to this is that the government should get off their hiney and force mortgage companies and banks involved to pay fines
-These fines would be pooled and a fund is to be created
-Home owners who lost their homes would be paid from this fund so that they can get their homes back
-And everybody's happy! Yippie!

Again, all the above bullet points were Mr. Obama's ideas-not mine.

So, what do I think? Well, I will admit I am not following the presidential election campaigns closely and I will also admit to being ignorant about Mr. Obama's strategy and plans for the future. Having said that,
-This article is obviously an attempt to garner votes among a certain demographic, and being a politician that is expected.
-That Barack Obama is a teeny weeny bit to the left is also pretty obvious from this article
-Not sure how much understanding of the economy and the financial markets does Mr Obama have but someone obviously fed him this solution and carefully worded it to be different from others (oh, yeah each member of the presidential hopeful brigade has suggested their own solutions to this mortgage mess-you can read them everywhere).
-Why am I approaching this from a political perspective? Well, because that is all it is. Obviously I do not know what Mr. Obama's (why am I calling him Mr. Obama? Dont know) real intentions are but this solution seems somewhat amateurish and implausible.
-Go back and check historically if there is any precedent for this, that is has the government ever paid any money back to the common man (apart from all those BS taxbreaks)? I dont think so.
-Moreover, the very Wall Street types that Mr. Obama is berating in the article are contributing heavily to his campaign. No politician wants to piss off the rich people. Not really sure what Mr. Obama is trying to achieve by doing this.
-And more importantly, what the hell does he mean when he says "unsuspecting home buyers fell to the schemes of mortgage companies"? Hello? These people are not children yeah? I am tired of people blaming someone else for their decisions.
-It is not that difficult people. If you are earning $100 a month and have to pay $80 for monthly expenditure, having to pay $60 mortgage on top of that is out of the question yeah?
-Banks and mortgage companies are always out to make money, we all know that. So dont blame them. Take responsibility for your own actions. Do some math or talk to friends who can do it. It is not that difficult.
-Well, the problems lie elsewhere here, in my opinion. Education and Regulation.
-People need to go out and do some research on their own before taking credit for anything. And dont give me that BS that people dont have time, yes they do. Talk to a friend or some non-profit or browse the web, there are multiple sources these days. Until you are very comfortable
with how far your money will take you, do not take out any loans.
-The government needs to step in and pass some sort of regulation for banks and lending institutions that stipulates what the criteria is for giving mortgage loans. And make it mandatory for homeowners to buy foreclosure insurance.

Woody Allen, The Writer

2007-08-26T18:19:00.001-07:00

well who knew. Apparently Woody Allen is a writer as well. Should not be such a surprise after seeing his movies I guess. Upon McKOOL's suggestion, I went to B&N this evening and browsed through Woody Allen's "The Insanity Defense". I read one chapter titled "Mr. Big". No not that Big from Sex and the City but the Almighty One. A buxom Blondie approaches a private eye asking him to find God. The private eye goes about his search talking to a Rabbi, an atheist, and The Pope among others. Classic Woody Allen humor. Check it out.

Needless to say, I bought the book. I hope to read it soon. Let's see here, I have accumulated the following books over the past few months and have not finished one in entirety.
-Liar's Poker
-Feeding the Monster
-A Power governments cannot suppress (Kevin will like this!)
-1491
-Fourteen Million Frenchmen can't be wrong
-Breakfast of Champions
-The Third Chimpanzee

whew! That is a long list. I think I need to quit watching TV (or writing this blog to get back to reading!)

Wharton 2008 Admission - Essays etc

2007-08-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

Time to get going with the Wharton application. I started filling out the online form last week. Have to start writing up the Essays (see below for the topics). At the info session, the lady at Wharton clearly mentioned that the essays need to be written with Wharton in mind. She said that she could easily spot if you cut and paste essays from other schools. Anyway, these essays are different. The outsider essay (#3) has so many options to pick from. I have not decided which one to pick.

I did make a decision to change my 2nd recommender for Wharton. I took a look at the questions and it makes to sense to use someone from a business setting. I just hope Yvette comes back from her August vacation soon so that I can let her know that she is my 2nd reference!

I am targetting September 21 by which I would like to submit this application.

Essay 1: Describe your career progress to date and your future short-term and long-term career goals. How do you expect a Wharton MBA to help you achieve these goals, and why is now the best time for you to join our program? (1,000 words)

Essay 2: Describe a failure or setback that you have experienced. What role did you play and what did you learn about yourself? (500 words)

Essay 3: Tell us about a situation in which you were an outsider. What did you learn from the experience? (500 words)

Essay 4: Please Complete One Of The Following Two Questions:
4.1. Where in your background would we find evidence of your leadership capacity and/or potential? (500 words)
4.2. Is there anything about your background or experience that you feel you have not had the opportunity to share with the Admissions Committee in your application? If yes, please explain. (500 words).

Saaawx Vs Spankees and The US Open

2007-08-26T07:33:00.000-07:00

well, here we are on August 26 and the Sox have now a comfortable 7.5 game lead on the spankees-thanks to the White Sox pitching staff this past weekend!

We have a what I would call the AL East deciding series this week in The Toilet, here are the matchups:

Tuesday, Dice K Vs Pettitte
Wednesday, Beckett Vs Fat Ass old man from Texas
Thursday, Schilling Vs Wang

If the spankees want any chance at winning the division they need a sweep this week. Uh oh, not happening morons! I say the saaawx take 2 of 3 and end the division race effectively.

The US Open:

Women: Dont like Justine Hennine one bit. She is very unsportive and does not seem to enjoy playing the game. I will root for the Williams sisters. Sharapova-well, not convinced she has enough game yet. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on Venus Williams.

Men: Tough to pick against Federer considering the form he is in. Of course I will root for Nadal but the kid looks beaten up and his knee seems to be bothering him. Roddick? please! Blake's looking good so far but not sure he has that top notch game in him. Hope so. Hewitt seems to be the fashionable dark horse pick this year amongst the so-called experts. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on that Djokovic kid from Serbia.

well, I will be there on Sunday taking in the US Open action live! Should be a good time.

Analysis of a Market Correction - Part II

2007-08-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

(Part I of this has been posted earlier. Check the earlier post)

so where were we? Liquidity, yeah. If you have been paying attention so far, you would have picked up that the cause for this chaos is not entirely due to the mortgage payment default but also because Bank B (and others like them) has stopped giving loans. The point I am trying to make here is that the market correction was not entirely the fault of sub-prime meltdown. Sure, the sub-prime mess triggered it but a simple look at the mergers and acquistions action that has taken over Wall Street (and Europe) over the past 5 years and you know there is a lot of cheap credit being offered.

Everywhere around investors have become accustomed to getting into riskier and riskier ventures over the past few years. Structured products of all kinds-SIV, SIV-lites, CDO, CLO, Swaps etc. Structured products are developed from computer models that try to extract minute differences in the markets. At the same time most of the time these models are capable of handling volatility in the markets. That is they are usually hedged. For example if a product combines 50% sub-prime loans with the rest 50% distributed between less risky investments (regular mortgages/treasury bonds etc). But these models go crazy when the trends go always in one direction. So, if the sub-prime related parts went down the model could handle it and still return ok money as long as the rest went in the other direction or stayed stable. Due to the panic selling, almost everything in the market was going down, so the models got completely destroyed.

The other aspect of risky investments is the private equity buyouts of large corporations. You have to realize that these private equity buyouts are financed by putting down 5-10% of own money with the rest being borrowed from banks. The banks will loan a reputed private equity money as long as they are convinced that these guys can get good a return for it. Well, that remains to be seen in the next couple of years. One thing is for sure, dont expect to see the flurry of buyouts in the next year or so.

The following factors also played a role in the market correction:
-Housing markets slowing down-->less people buying-->less loans
-Housing markets slowing down-->slow construction-->basic metals demand down
-Oil price going up-->low consumer confidence-->less spending

So what now? What can we expect? Here is what I think:

-Apparently an expected $700 billion worth of ARM will come off in March 2008.
-Look out if people start defaulting on their mortgages after that. That could get messy.
-It will definitely be tough to get cheap loans for another year or so.
-The performance of all the companies bought over by private equity firms will be watched carefully.
-People will continue to invest in structured/quant products. Everyone needs to understand that these things work for a majority of the time and fetch you good returns in the long-term.
-Today sub-prime packages tommorow something else. yup, there is no stopping financial innovation. Hopefully all parties involved are educated more on the risks involved.

Analysis of a Market Correction - Part I

2007-08-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

ok, here is what we know:
change from July 17-August 17, 2007

US Markets
DJIA: down 6%
S&P 500: down 6.5%
Energy sector: down 12%
Basic Materials sector: down 16%
Services sector: down 3%
Financial sector: down 9%
Technology sector: down 15%

UK
FTSE100: down 9%

Europe
DAX: down 7%
CAC40: down 11%

Asia:
Hang Seng: down 13%
Nikkei 225: down 15%

Well, that is a correction allrite. No arguments there. I will not give you more numbers about the layoffs announced this past week at mortgage arms of financial firms. You can read them everywhere. So amidst all this we kept hearing the following words over and over again:

-Liquidity
-Sub-prime
-Structured/Packaged products
-Fed discount rate

What do these things mean and how have they affected the recent market crash? Well, I have been reading up this past 2 weeks and based on that have tried to come up with a simplistic explanation for this mess. Let me give it a shot here.

I wish I could draw charts to explain this but darn it I do not have access to a Word-to-pdf converter software. So this has to do for now.

You and Bank A
-You (w/bad credit) buy a home you can't afford
-Bank A gladly gives you a loan, even maybe a low interest ARM to begin with
-Both you and Bank A are giddy
-You make your first few mortgage payments on time

Bank A --> IBanks -->Hedge Funds/Private Equity
-Bank A combines your loan with thousands of similar ones
-Bank A sells these loans as packages to IBanks (you dont need to know what package means)
-IBanks re-packages loans, say as a bond, and sells to investors (Hedge Funds, State Retirement funds, countries, whoever wants to take it on)
-You make mortgage payment--->Hedge funds etc get a coupon payment for the bond.
-Everybody giddy

Hedge Funds/Private Equity-->Bank B
-Hedge funds etc borrow money from Bank B to invest in these packages
-Since borrowing rates are so low, Hedge Funds/Private Equity also borrow money to buy companies. Think the sale of Chrysler.
-Bank B happy to let them borrow money as they know track record is good
-Remember, the most important that is still keeping everyone giddy is your mortgage payment

Following this so far? Ok, let's keep at it

Packages
-Remember those packages that were sold to the Hedge Funds and other investors
-Now, these packages have been arrived at via complex financial models using math
-Regardless, unlike your stock or a bond these packages are not traded on the market
-So? Well, if anything is not traded on the market, no one knows what the actual worth of it is.
-Unless someone tries to sell it.
-When you are making your mortgage payment and everything is rosy, these packages can be sold in the market and people will buy since they are getting a good return for this investment. So all is good as along as that mortgage check is being mailed.

Now, let's try to combine all this.

You-->Bank A-->IBanks-->Hedge Funds-->Bank B
-Well, you woke up and realized you dont have enough to pay the monthly mortgage payment
-uh oh! The shit hath hiteth the rofeth!
-Bank A now can't pay a return on investment to the IBanks and the IBanks to the Hedge Funds
-Hedge funds realize they can't show any return on investment to their rich clients
-Panic sets in! Angry clients want their money out of these investments.
-Hedge funds can't let them do it since the value of those packages will plummet.
-yeah, remember them packages? Once you can't sell them you do not know how much they are worth.
-Now, Bank B also realizes that these Hedge Funds/Private equity types are not in good shape, hence stops issuing any further loans.
-No loans for not only this but also for other private equity buyouts. uh oh!

well, that is how a liquidity crunch comes about (a simplified explanation). No more money can be borrowed to be invested. This is where the ECB in Europe and the Fed in the US stepped in to pump some liquidity into the market.

Movie Review - "Once"

2007-08-25T06:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, before I review this, I have to say that I am borderline obsessed with the music from this movie. It is real good. I would highly recommend owning the soundtrack of this movie. Especially if you are into singer-songwriter genre music.

Now, the movie review.

Cool things:
-Not your typical movie. No genre to classify it into. Indie+Modern Musical+Love Story

-It is a musical in a way but not really. I know that sounds strange but it is. The director's idea was to use music (full length songs) to reveal the story rather than dialogues. So when the first song rolls around in the movie you will probably be wondering "Are they going to play the whole darn song?". Yes, they will. But that is what is cool about it. A lot of situations are explained via songs and it is extremely well done. Remember, the movie is a regular movie with dialogues and all, just that there are quite a number of songs as well.

-The story is nothing new. A street musician on Grafton Street (Dublin) plays guitar and sings about his woman who broke his heart. An immigrant, who is a musician herself but a piano player, starts bothering the guy about his music. The whole movie is based on a week they spend together playing music, talking about their lives, and recording an album.

-But the cool part is the couple never even kiss once in the movie but it is obvious they are in love. They are not referred to by their names (simply called 'Guy' and 'Girl'). And the ending is very appropriate.

-Glen Hansard (member of the Irish band "The Frames") plays the male lead while Marketa Irglova plays the Czech immigrant female lead. Both are accomplished musicians in real life and it is obvious in the movie. The movie was apparently made on a $160,000 budget with the director giving his salary to both the actors. To save money the movie was shot in natural light and at the homes of the actors where there was real life party goers present.

-Somewhat refreshing to see a movie with no political, cultural, sexist agenda. It is simply a love story with music sprinkled in. No pretensions.

Needless to say, I do not have any not-so-cool things to say about tthis movie. I would highly recommend that you check it out.

Other Stuff

2007-08-18T15:55:00.001-07:00

I know I have not posted consistently in a while and I have valid reasons. With my application to Columbia out of the way, I plan to be a bit more consistent from here on as far as posting is concerned. The thing is I have so much material to write about but have not had time. I mean just look at what has been going on:

-Markets going crazy. I think the best time to learn about the market is when there is a correction. And here it is. I have been trying to read as much as I can so that I gain a fundamental understanding of the dynamics, causes, etc. I will put all that into a post soon.

-The Red Sox lead thinning to 4 games! I have to admit I am a bit concerned. I have been sneaking a peek at SoSH to get a pulse of the smarter Red Sox fans and even there I noticed widespread concern. Bottom line though, we have good pitching. The O has to pick up the slack a bit and get consistent. Should be an interesting September.

-Movies. I have not written a movie review in a while (I do this routinely with a bunch of my friends). I did see a couple of really good movies: The Bourne Ultimatum and Once. And I have lots of things to say about them. I will do that soon

-Wharton info session. Attended this last week and it was good.

-Women of the World post. Yes, it is still in the works. I have yet to write about women from the Americas (US, Canada, South America) and some parts of Europe. Should be done soon.

-Comment articles in FT, NYT, and other newssources. I read that one Harvard Law professor thinks the solution to improve poverty is to teach kids to play poker (check out this weekend's FT for this column). There was another article about Gandhi which talks about 3 different books which will be on sale this week. Each book paints Gandhi in a different and controversial light.

-Books. I browsed through a couple of books (non-fiction of course!) at B&N yesterday: Barbarians at the Gates and Ugly Americans. Both are based on true events in the financial sector and I have to say the first few pages look good. I still have to finish Liar's Poker before I get to these two.

so, lots of things to write about people. Hope to get to all of them soon.

Columbia ED 2008 Application - Submitted

2007-08-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

well, it took me longer than expected but I finally submitted my application to the Columbia MBA program for ED 2008 on Friday, August 17 (yesterday). After submitting the online application I also mailed out two documents as supplementary materials. I hope they match that to my online file.

So, having read and re-read my essays and semi-objectively assessed the state of my application, what do I think:

-Numbers: All areas where they look for numbers i.e. GPA and GMAT are reasonably good. I was a bit concerned about my graduate school GPA (3.43) and wrote a paragraph about it in my optional essay. Some say that GPA is good enough but I felt I had to explain it and so I did. Anyway, so looking OK in the numbers department

-Educational background: Not too many applicants have PhDs in engineering apparently, so I felt that I had to explain that part of my background a bit more (did that in the optional essay as well). The way I look at it, this is where the admissions committee needs to be convinced that I am serious about a career in finance after having invested a good 10 years in engineering education already. I think I did the best I could to explain that in my essays. Let's see if they are convinced.

-Professional achievements: My work has taken me through 4 jobs in 7 years which is a bit unusual I think. Additionally, I went from working in the industry to a research position and then came back to the industry. This switch meant I had to take a paycut. On the flip side I have worked in two continents and been exposed to diverse personnel and situations which I know is a strength. In my new job I have done very well and that should be another good indicator. Overall, in this section it depends on how the admissions committee perceives my future potential from past work experience.

-Essays: #1-I thought this turned out to be great. #2-This could be a bit better but that's my writing style and that's the best I could do. #3-Everyone who reviewed my essays thought this was my best essay.#4-This one turned to be good considering that I had to convey that much in 250 words. Optional Essay: I thought this turned out to be ok. I explained why my PhD background is a good fit with Columbia and what I bring to the table. So, overall my essays are good.

-References: #1 was a supervisor at my current workplace and I know he gave me the best possible reference. #2 was my PhD supervisor. I am a bit concerned about this, not for content but my choice of reference. I know he ranked me in the top 1% but I am worried that this is not a work reference. Business schools usually like professional references. I thought my advisor could paint a more complete picture of me by pointing out other aspects of my profile. I communicated this with the admissions department and one of the ladies said this is ok. Let's see. I also submitted one supplementary letter of reference from a community service perspective. I hope that helps.

-Activities: I filled in whatever I could think of. This looked pretty good I think. Although, I was not in any fraternity. I know that carries a lot of weight. I however won a couple of awards for academic performance and public speaking.

Overall, it is a reasonably good application. It all depends on how the admissions committee interprets it. We'll find out soon enough!

anyway, this took me a while to finish and since Columbia is my first choice I am happy that I did the best I could. Thanks to a lot of people for helping me out with various aspects of my application. I truly appreciate it.

Gotto go through this again with Wharton, Sloan, and NYU in that order.

Back!

2007-08-05T18:51:00.001-07:00

well, that was a long hiatus! Been busy juggling too many things. Still am. This will be short. Hopefully I will have time to do this in more detail sometime this week or during next weekend.

Highlights:

Finance and MBA application stuff:
-Expectedly the Energy/Commodities portfolio is not doing well. ~12% in the red. Will post in detail later about this.
-Columbia essays are almost done or so I thought. Got back some good critical comments and will work on those this week.
-Will submit my application to Columbia latest by this weekend.
-Will schedule a trip to NYU Stern in the next 2 weeks. Got the new Stern material in the mail today.
-Have to attend a Wharton info session in the next 2 weeks as well.

Other stuff:
-Falling water is worth a visit. A 2-3 day trip is warranted. Beautiful outdoors.
-Go watch "The Bourne Ultimatum". Kick ass! By the way, Julian Stiles is smoking hot!
-Look for a "Women of the World" post next week.
-iPhone=cool as hell! I may not buy one anytime soon but after observing it up close there is no question it is superior technology. Other cellphone manufacturers better come up with something comparable else they will closing shop soon!
-Barry Bonds hit #755. I have no strong opinion on this.
-A-Rod finally hit #500. It was definitely entertaining checking out the backpages of the NYC tabloids skewering him for choking! It took him a good 2 weeks to go from 499 to 500. Again, I have no respect for the guy so dont matter what he goes. He is probably going to smash all HR records but hey big whoop! I dont like him sorry.
-Sox lead is still 7. They are in the middle of a tough left coast trip. I will be happy if the lead stays at 7 at the end of this trip.
-FT had a good column about Sachin Tendulkar and his place in the pantheon o fall time cricket greats. It was a good read. I have not followed cricket in more than a cricket so have no opinion on the column itself.
-FT also had a nice column about Dali's old home in Spain. He was an interesting cookie-check out his interior decoration!

allrite, time to go sleepy. hope I have enough time to post frequently this week. have a good week people!

Movies

2007-07-19T20:03:00.001-07:00

Have not been to any movie in the last couple of weeks. Nothing out there seems worth watching. I am waiting for "Bourne Ultimatum" as well as "Rush Hour 3". On the indy side, have not seem a good one out the past couple of weeks. I did hear that "Once" is good.

I know this is late but apparently "Inland Empire" will be out on DVD soon. A couple of friends were talking about having a David Lynch screening nite once that DVD is out in the market-that should be fun!