For moments for self...

Read somewhere today, '...reduce clutter in life and life will turn better...'.

Removing physical clutter i.e. cleaning up room and bringing stuff in place helps, always. Did that yesterday and it was: wow!

Removing mental clutter just needs few moments with self. Few moments, where I just leisurely sit and enjoy my moment of inactivity. Today, on a bright Sunday morning I loved the sun and the time I spent with my self, the moments trimming the nails just flew by and I realised how calm I was with the clutter settling down.

The whole day passed with peace - had gone out for shopping but was quick to be back on the goal...studies. So, those few moments not only helped the present, they helped the near-term present as well.

I really loved the chair and the peace and the sun and the cutting down of clutter. Few aha! moments for me. Life is good.

CFA Level 2 - pains and learnings

It happened again. I cleared CFA Level 2. Moment of joy!!! Here are bits of the mind holing process and few of leanings.

Well, level 2 was more difficult than I had initially thought it to be. There were reasons to that - higher course volume, more abstruse topics (I never understood how emerging markets' valuations are done) and likes .There were moments when I though why at the first place did I register for this. But, then beauty of all of it was I learned a lot during the process.

Compared to level 1 there were topics which went on and on and on. These never ending topics seemed to be the biggest challenge. At the first sight you may say that number of pages for level 2 notes has increased by 70% therefore, the I need 70% more time. But, that unfortunately is not true - because there are so many topics which just don't sink in well and you keep on reading over and over again to figure out what the author is saying; only resulting in a decreased confidence and little increased knowledge.

Few things which I learned out of the whole prep story were - better time management helps; focus on what is just expected to be known and don't waste time on things which not important outside of the study hours. There are two faces to time management. One is higher level another one is micro level. At a higher level I was bang on target; gave a fortnight for each book and moved on. But what happened within those 15 day brackets was interesting - I used to roam around for the first week and then as the end of fornight approached I used to start working harder. So, this led to a lot of inconsistency in preparation and therefore, a feeling within that I m just not there. Secondly, reading CFAI books is great but then somewhere it doesn't help you for the recall part in the exam. Hence, all time that went into the CFAI books was not useful. Thirdly, I was wasting a lot of time during weekends which proved to confidence shattering. After wasting a full weekend I just used to go home and think was wasting the whole weekend essential.

So, here I am - with few learnings and a positive result. Life waits for an MBA now.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success

I tracked Media stocks in Indian for markets for whole of 2007. There were great companies like PVR, Adlabs, BAG films etc. Mostly people believe that the best stocks to buy are the ones with great stories and reasonable valuations . But over a period of time I have learned that to make relatively quick success you actually have to RIDE THE SUCCESS WAVE. Just waiting for the wave to come and take you along may take ages. Simple strategy is - Buy what is being bought. Adlabs moved three times in H2 07. When I was writing my novice-investors.blogspot.com/ blog I stated that PVR is better placed. But I was wrong. PVR could just double up and Adlabs tripled.

I analyzed three of my seniors after their post grads. One with the best school name in spite of an okayish study stream landed in a job which pays him equivalent to what the other two are earning.

I also noticed my peers who just after grad - if they landed in great jobs they moved on to even greater jobs and the ones which were not so lucky mortals actually landed up in equally bad or slightly better jobs/profiles/companies.

Look at Narendra Modi in Gujarat or Left in West Bengal. They are SIMPLY WINNING it all.

This may just be another way of stating 80-20 principle. But, it works amazingly.
Just an analogy - Success GETS COMPOUNDED LIKE INTEREST IN A BANK ACCOUNT.