e-Nagar

April 10, 2007

hot tips

Filed under: Investing — Ankur Aggarwal @ 5:12 pm

Finally I located an authoritative magazine that expresses my concerns on the validity of research broadcast in Channels dedicated to stock market.

I confess I do not understand why people buy stocks touted by pundits on stock shows. The only people who are believed to actually consistently beat the market are a handful of managers like Warren Buffett, who quietly amass companies and mint money off of them. They do this by,
first being freakily brilliant, and
second, spending virtually every waking hour thinking about companies, and
third, never giving their finds away to strangers for free.
If you are not one of these extreme outliers (and if you’re reading this blog, odds are you aren’t), you would almost certainly be better served by flipping off the stock show and sticking your money in index funds. Certainly, it’s safe to assume that free stock tips are probably worth what you pay for them.

Social Security Number

Filed under: Thoughts — Ankur Aggarwal @ 4:09 pm

social security number

I always thought PAN card is going to get morphed into a Social Security Number. However Government of India continues to amaze me. The EPF (Employee Provident Fund) is going to allot National Social Security Number to each and every employee.

Its too early for me to comment on it, but I am 90% sure its going to have no major impact on the individuals. Why:
1) There was no entry for PAN no in the registration form.
2) No entry for Passport Number/Ration Card Number/Voter ID.
Hence all the existing records of the individual cannot be unified. This number would be like Mutual Fund identification Number… another hassle/paperwork.

3) What percentage of people actually do have an EPF account? A large part of our workforce is in informal sector, self-employed (professional/business) or migratory/temporary in nature. There is a large number of people (say housewives) who were never employed, a large population is youth.. too young to be employed.
4) Social security is irrelevant unless it reaches the ones who need it the most. Where is the provision for physically/ mentally challenged, the unemployed graduates, the suicide prone farmers?

I do not know the idea behind this move, but calling it a national security number at this stage would be to make the mockery of what people expect.

hard times

Filed under: Humor — Ankur Aggarwal @ 12:05 pm

It was the toughest time of my life:
first, I got angina pectoris and then arteriosclerosis. Just as I was recovering from those, I got tuberculosis, pneumonia and phthisis. Then, appendicitis followed by tonsillectomy made me nearly lose my memory. I had diabetes, gastritis and rheumatism. I barely made it through.
That was the hardest spelling test ever!

puzzle

Filed under: Puzzle — Ankur Aggarwal @ 8:48 am

I read this in a a childhood folk tale:
A prince announces that he will marry a lady who can meet the following 4 conditions:
1) travel in a vehicle, yet walk down to his court.
2) Have an escort, yet be alone.
3) wear a dress, yet be nude
4) and present him a gift, yet be empty handed.

Can you guess what the winner of the contest did?

clue

Theme: Silver is the New Black. Blog at WordPress.com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 33 other followers