travails of a fearful misadventure

On the morning of 3rd March '09, the 'chaddis' of the CKB2009 group were enjoying the beautiful morning weather with tea at the cottage in Munnar, Kerala.  The chaddis were on a trip to 'God's Own Country - Kerala' to celebrate the successful completion of their MBA programme.  I was busy as usual photographing 'Still Life' as my friends would call it, in different angles and by playing around with the settings in the camera.  Little did I know about the misadventure that I was going make in the later part of the day.

My enthusiastic fellow chaddis had made a plan to visit a water theme park on our way back to Cochin from Munnar.  I was fervently trying my best to avoid the plan by writing it off as a 'not the right option' to explore Kerala.  I was trying to convince them that having come to Kerala we should rather explore more of its natural beauty.  As expected, I fell in the minority and I had to give in to the pressure of visiting the water theme park - Veega Land.  Well, this is not the first time I was visiting a water theme park.  I'd done it before when I had gone on a Industrial Tour with my B.E college mates.  

I have my reasons for not liking a place which other people would love to visit or make it their home as the tagline of Mumbai's Water Kingdom/Essel World goes - "ghar nahi jaaoonga mein!".  The problem is that I feel I'm out of control when I'm taking a free-fall or going down a rapid slide.  I guess the problem started with my first air-travel.  It was a very small aircraft (a 2+2 seater) and I was on my way to Bangalore from Visakhapatnam to report for my Summer Internship.  The way the pilot was manoeuvering the plane left me jittering.  Since this experience, I've always felt a little concerned when it came to sitting in high speed vehicles or rides.  No no, don't get me wrong.  I don't mind riding vehicle at high speeds 'coz I know I'm the one in-charge and I can take control whenever required.  So thats the issue with me.

Come Veega Land and all my friends are excited about the various rides checking out the map to find out the locations of the rides and I'm sweating thinking about what would happen to me! :(  My friends were doing ride after ride and asking me in between to join-in but I would refuse!  Finally, I made-up some courage to go up the stairs and lie down on top of the slide.  Uplaksh deserves some credit for forcing me onto that slide.  Yes, I finally made it.  I grew in confidence.  Then I slowly started to resist the fear inside me and began to enjoy the rides one after the other.  I however chose to stay away from some death-defying rides like the 'Vertical Fall' etc. which scared me just by looking from outside the ride.  I must tell you, all my friends are really courageouos people! The girls especially.  Hats-off!  

I was really raring to hit the wave pool as that only involved lazing around in still water.  I forced a few of my mates to join in with me.  We hit the wave pool and I became  very active all of a sudden.  Here I was confident nothing big and dangerous could happen to me.  So I enjoyed myself in the wave pool till it was time to go!

I'm now CFA Level I qualified

Hi guys,

I'm very happy to inform you all that I am now International CFA Level I qualified!  Yes, its the same exam for which I had gone all the way to Nepal.  Finally, I feel the hard work has all paid off.  

Now, I'm in a sort of a dilemma as to whether I should register for Level II or take a break and enjoy.  I'll keep you guys informed of the development though.

Thanks all for your best wishes!

Its time to hedge the risk...

Its the end of the third semester exams out here at SCMHRD for the people of the 07-09 batch.  All those who are destined to be MBAs by 2009 must be cursing themselves for so many different reasons.  Some for being born at the wrong time of the business cycle (Poor souls, they never even knew of a bicycle by then.  How the hell would they have known of a B-Cycle?!!)  and some others for quitting work and joining a B-School at the wrong time.  All this because of the innate ability of the Harvard grads out there in the Wall Street who made sure such a thing never ever existed.  All those who were earlier proud of associating themselves with the WALL are now running away from it.  The world's largest economy is down and it has not just gone down alone but carried all the others along  with it.  

Coming to the scene out here at SCMHRD, its a little cheerful still for the final placement season hasn't yet begun.  Everybody is sitting out there thinking that the Placements Team will find an 'Ideal Match' for them.  Its only when the mela begins that the true standing is likely to be exposed.  All those who earlier were thinking of Options, will now be faced with a situation in which they'll be forced to take whatever comes their way first.  Definitely, this is not the time to wait and speculate.  Just like they say in Finance, whenever you have an exposure, go hedge it.  Dont just wait and speculate expecting the market to move in your favour!  Right now, I've set myself Stop/Loss & Stop/Greed levels and am still to enter into a hedging contract to anul my risk completely.  This I'm doing because of the bad experience that I had during my summers selection process.  At that time I was completely down and had given up so early into the fight that I simply took what others had left out.  The first semester results had not come out by then and the entire selection was happening on the basis of the same CV which was used by the college for giving admission into the college.  My CV had nothing good in it except for the decent academics, which most other CVs on campus had too.  I had made-up my mind that I was not one of those gifted souls who was made to be an Investment Banker or an Equity Research Analyst.  All this for sheer lack of confidence.  

This time though, I wish the scene to be different.  Though the market situation is a little glum, I have grown in confidence.  All this could be attributed to my better performance in college, plus the extra effort that I'm putting-in to prepare for the International CFA exam.  To add to the pain, I'm having to go to Kathmandu to give the exam.  Let me tell you, all this has left very deep and huge holes in my pockets.  

Hence, the moral of the story is that I expect to make atleast some positive NPV out of the whole exercise, irrespective of the cost of capital that I'm incurring.  I wont say I have used leverage to make more gains on my investment but the bottomline is to atleast preserve the Initial Investment from getting eroded because of the market downturn.  I'm no expert in managing hedge funds or mutual funds or any portfolios worth millions but I think I've learnt my bit of International Finance and hence am hedging my risks with whatever contracts that are available in the OTC markets!

Cheers!