It is self explanatory. The prices have almost reversed. Of course, gold and silver have rallied exponentially in the last few years, so the comparison is dramatic. Still, you would have been able to buy your Blackberry and get your original investment back in these two years had you invested in equivalent amount of gold back then.

Phrase - on the ground

Politically correct definition – Employees who empower the operational team of the organization.

Real Definition - The low-life of the company. People who are paid less, worked more and laid off when not required.

Example
Them: You actually want people “on the ground” to be preparing PnL statements?
Me: Ummm, no, they can still work on their desks.

Usage - Use this phrase when you want to refer to the lower rungs of your organization without making them feel offended or left out.

With this, I also add a new tag on my blog, consultese – which is short for consultant speak. Sounds like a disease? It most probably is.

I see these kind every day. And every time I see them, that is exactly what I want to do – punch their noses in to their faces.

Now I completely understand if you have gone abroad for a significant amount of time, your accent is definitely going to change. Your speech would gradually adopt the characteristics of the place where you’ve been. After all, you wouldn’t want to look odd in that place. So you start talk like them.

But what irritates me is the obviously fake accented people try very hard to “impress” other easily-impressed colleagues? I, for one, am not easily impressed. I can see through your fake accent even before you pick your nose in your cubicle when you think no one’s watching.

And to counter these kind of people, I have a very effective and enjoyable technique. I put on my best Indian-English accent and watch them squirm in discomfort.

Me: “The meeting has been resheduled at 3″ Them: Oh, its being reskeduled again? I will have to check my skedule to see if I’m available.”
Me: “Yeah, your shedule must be pretty tight.”
Them: Oh yes, since I was promoted, I have a water-tight skedule.”

Its fun when they keep on repeating the word “skedule” for no particular reason than to make me pronounce it as such. And its even more fun when I stick to saying it as “shedule” irritating them even more.

Hell, if you think that you are perfect in English, you should also know that India follows British English (from our former mai-baap) and not American English. And therefore the correct pronunciation is in fact “shedule” and not “skedule”. I was previously quite strict about this difference, but now I’ve stopped being a prick about it.

Today The World is Flat. And no really cares about who says what. In this globalized world, you are free to follow whatever pronunciation you like.

I don’t care two hoots whether the meeting was skeduled or sheduled. You are free to choose either. But if you ever try to correct me about my pronunciation of the word, you’ll get one response which is pronounced only one way – up yours.

Along with 99.99% of Indian investors, I too have invested in this stock. In God and Mukesh Ambani we trust. Is it a concern for worry yet? Let’s wait and see.

A couple of years ago it was the Power sector which was in the limelight. Then came the telecom sector. After the spectacular rise and fall of Telecom stocks, there is a new sector which is now making rapid progress in the last couple of months. This is the Banking sector. Both public and private sector banks have seen their share prices rise like wildfire recently. This was further strengthened with SBI’s good results in the first quarter of 2010.

If we see the chart of Nifty and the Bank Nifty index for the last month, the difference is clearly seen. Given below are the 3-month and 1-month comparison of the Nifty vs Bank Nifty. Although the Bank Nifty has started its rise only in the last month, I’ve put the 3-month chart to show how much attractive it was a couple of months ago. That would have been the ideal time to enter the Bank Nifty (of course, this is all in hindsight)

As with telecom, I’m kind of late to catch on to the trend. It may be too late to enter good stocks in this sector – Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank, UCO Bank and Yes Bank look good to me, but they are already trading above my buy price. So let’s wait until things cool down or we get a stronger recovery signal in the economy when it will be time to slowly get in to the market in bits and pieces.

PS. With this post, I’ve also created a new category called Financial Farziwada. Let me first explain the meaning of this word for all those not faimiliar with Hindi. The meaning of “farzi” is non-genuine in Urdu. So farziwada, means activities which are not genuine. The idea for the name of this category comes from a classmate of mine in IIT Madras, who was known for his investing skills. Even though he was from the industry, he knew that most of the so-called analysts and brokers are out to make their own money rather than genuinely advising retail investor. Moreover, finance is only playing with numbers, which in local parlance, translates to farziwada. This also means that you should not blindly believe what any financial analyst tells you even if “it is for your own good.”

Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.

Proof: I am a manager. I just made an unequivocal statement. So there is an apparent paradox. So putting aside the possibility of why the world didn’t disappear in a big flash of light due to this contradiction (which I would not have liked), there are two possibilities. Either the above hypothesis is not true, or I am not a manager.

Revised Hypothesis: An unequivocal statement by a manager may or may not be an oxymoron.

Optimism levels in a project

This graph shows how different teams in a company feel that a particular project will be delivered successfully i.e. within schedule, scope and cost.

Disclaimer: This project is entirely fictional and any resemblance to any project – live or abandoned is entirely coincidental

The society has given the residents an option of limited timings of water supply or private water tankers. The latter options costs money. And the residents of the society have voted for that option.

So an important question to be asked is how should the payment be distributed? Should it be a flat amount for all flats or should it vary according to the number of residents in each flat? The justification of the latter option is a no-brainer. Larger families are likely to use more water than a family of two individuals.

Now comes the interesting game theory aspect into this problem. People with larger families would oppose the proportionate fee structure while smaller families would oppose a flat fee structure. In each case one of the parties would feel that they have been given a raw deal.

Now assume that the flat fee structure is adopted. This means that the smaller families will be disgruntled since they are paying a per capita higher rate than the larger families. Thus they will indulge in wasteful water usage to compensate for the higher fee. The larger families will use at least an amount minimum to their needs. However its more likely that they would be a little careless in using water as they are being subsidised by the smaller families. Overall this leads to wasteful water usage for the entire society.

Now let’s assume that the variable fee structure is imposed based on the number of residents in each flat. Here the reverse would happen. The larger families would be disgruntled and would spend water in a wasteful manner while the smaller families would use at least the minimum share of the water. Overall this option too leads to a wasteful usage of water.

Both these options seem to result in wastage of water. So what then is the optimal distribution of payment? Is there a better way of distributing water? The best option which comes to my mind is to implement a water meter system which tracks the actual usage of water (which may be of course more cumbersome and expensive to implement)

Let’s see what the society management comes up with. Till then out with the buckets and drums to store all the water.

Posted from my mobile: Please excuse grammar and typos.
UPDATE: Well, my society decided not to get into the nitty-gritties of Game Theory and adopted the first option instead! Limited water supply from now on. So much for trying to explain Game Theory to them.