Being Master of the Market? Nope

Wondering with the stint I had have with the market or I say bazaar, share bazaar J. Market itself is the universe where you learn a lot with in yourself. Believe me markets makes you learn so much that you wont ever find out anywhere.

Whatever you are trader, investor, hedger or speculator every one wants their bets (oopss did I used right word) should go right. Everyone wants to be master of market. But you can not be a good trader, investor, hedger or speculator till you really want that you should mastered/ will master the market.

A simple question pop up in my mind “can you ever become GOD?” Nope. You can only become one with him and that happens only when one surrenders the ego. Yes “ego”.  Why we all are so fond of god? Because we know that we can not be god ever. Same way have you ever wondered why do markets have this crazy attraction? I myself getting crazy towards it. Why do people become so addicted to them? The first reason may be the elusive and illusive nature of the market. Whatever we can’t master becomes attractive to us; be it God, market or a beautiful lady!

We want to KNOW the market, something that we can’t do. All the efforts to master the market are driven by our egotism. But one must remember: Market is a place where you become the master through a complete surrender. There is no place for ego here. You accept all the commandments of the market. If you had thought that it would go up and it goes down; accept the fact wholeheartedly without feeling any injury to your ego. Don’t say: how can the market contradict ME! If you don’t accept the markets as they are, you will be left an emotional wreck.

Make one thing sure that you are not controlling the market, Market is controlling you. Up, down, bull, bear whatever be the market your emotions gets controlled by the market. One universal rule I want to mention here is that “Money can not be created in market, it just transferred from one person to other” so for every happiness you have in market, there has to be sadness to rebalance.

Trading in the markets is a journey in self-discovery. You venture out to discover the secret of the market and end up discovering yourself. You discover your impatience, your inner fears, your greed etc. In sum, you are forced to reassess yourself. After all these aspects of your personality are discovered, it is up to you whether you have the guts to come to terms with all the universal human emotions. I don’t say that you will eradicate these from your system. Here also only an acceptance of these will lead to a position when you do not resign to these temptations. The key is to gain objectivity. Courage is not the absence of fear but its conquest. When you are able to withstand your own frailties and become successful as a trader, you will realize that all through your own self was the biggest obstacle and the markets never stopped you from being successful. You yourself were the impediment. Even after this success, you realize that you have still have not mastered the market but conquered your own self. You can even find God through surrender of the self. 

Remember: Market like God is not mastered/its realized.

Know then thyself.

It is all in your mind

The business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out.

Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He sat on the park bench, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him.

"I can see that something is troubling you," he said.

After listening to the executive's woes, the old man said, "I believe I can help you."

He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying, "Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time."

Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world!

"I can erase my money worries in an instant!" he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his safe.

Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed check. At the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man.

"I'm so glad I caught him!" she cried. "I hope he hasn't been bothering you. He's always escaping from the rest home and telling people he's John D. Rockefeller."

And she led the old man away by the arm.

The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he'd been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or imagined, that had turned his life around. It was his new found self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.

Use your imagination and create the world you want to be in...it is the easiest choice you can make to turn your life around and make a huge shift in your life style.

- Input from Unknown source.

Why retail Investor lose his money in share market ?

(1) He is among the last few people to enter into the Bull Run. 

(2) He keeps on changing a single stock 

(3) Never put the Stop Loss in the System. 

(4) Always the first one to exit from stock which are in Bull Run, with minimum profit.  

(5) Don't have a Habit of trading by Robotics mechanism 

(6) By doing the emotional Trading, Holding the positions in Loss and cutting down the positions early in profit

(7) Lack of home work before entering in a stock. 

(8) Lack of resources about the movements and news which affects the Stock market. 

(9) Too much greed from a single Stock.

(10) Day dreaming in stock market also makes him suffer huge losses.

(11) never traded with the trend of the market.

(12) Fear in going shorts in stock.

(13) Was not able to stay away from the market when it is sideways.

(14) Didn't invested money in sectors which are outperforming the Index

(15) Listening to rumors and investing money there.

Warren Buffett's advice for 2009

We begin this New Year with dampened enthusiasm and dented optimism. Our happiness is diluted and our peace is threatened by the financial illness that has infected our families, organizations and nations. Everyone is desperate to find a remedy that will cure their financial illness and help them recover their financial health. They expect the financial experts to provide them with remedies, forgetting the fact that it is these experts who created this financial mess.

Every new year, I adopt a couple of old maxims as my beacons to guide my future. This self-prescribed therapy has ensured that with each passing year, I grow wiser and not older. This year, I invite you to tap into the financial wisdom of our elders along with me, and become financially wiser.

* Hard work: All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

* Laziness: A sleeping lobster is carried away by the water current.

* Earnings: Never depend on a single source of income. [At least make your Investments get you second earning]

* Spending: If you buy things you don't need, you'll soon sell things you need.

* Savings: Don't save what is left after spending; Spend what is left after saving.

* Borrowings: The borrower becomes the lender's slave.

* Accounting: It's no use carrying an umbrella, if your shoes are leaking.

* Auditing: Beware of little expenses; A small leak can sink a large ship.

* Risk-taking: Never test the depth of the river with both feet. [Have an alternate plan ready]

*Investment: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

I'm certain that those who have already been practicing these principles remain financially healthy. I'm equally confident that those who resolve to start practicing these principles will quickly regain their financial health.

Let us become wiser and lead a happy, healthy, prosperous and peaceful life.

More on Satyam Saga

We are where we are. After dot com bubble in 2000, Indian IT industry has given many surprises to us. It is the industry which has given us Brand India. It is Industry which has made India Shining an outsourcing hub of the world. From piping big consulting giants to bag multi-million dollar contracts, to setting up offices all across the world, to creating a whole new value for Brand India, and most importantly, to instilling a sense of pride & achievement within a young nation. These were the companies that you looked up to for transparency, corporate governance, proper reporting, and in general, doing the right thing. But from time to time, hubris & greed keep rearing their ugly head among the best. And so it did in the case of Satyam Computers.

Raju confessed to having committed fraud over the last several years, and admitted that he had cooked up the books of the company. Consider this admission of guilt - Non-existent cash of over Rs 5,000 cr. Non-existent interest accrued, overstated debtor positions and an understated liability of Rs 1,230 cr. Net-net, an overstated and cooked up book to the tune of over Rs 7,100 cr. That's on a revenue base of Rs 8,000 cr. Or can we still believe that? Raju admits that for the September quarter alone the actual revenues stood Rs 2,112 crore, instead of the reported Rs 2,700 cr, and, hold your breath, operating margin stood at Rs 61 cr, and not Rs 649 cr as reported!!! So that's a 3% operating margin, instead of a slightly below par 24% as reported.

I find it hard to believe that this fraud was committed to inflate earnings. If that were the case, the Rajus would have sold at least some of their stock. Did they believe that this was going to continue forever? As othershave pointed out, a 3% operating margin is very hard to believe. The downward pressure on rates in IT Services simply isn't enough to cause that, assuming that salaries were on par with other IT Services companies. So the question is, where did all that money go?

When the world is reeling under a credit crisis, stock markets are spiraling to hitherto unknown depths, the mayhem is spreading to other sectors after affecting manufacturing and housing, unemployment in the West keeps augmenting, general investor sentiment is to hoard cash under the mattresses, the world needs some strands of hay to cling on to! Unfortunately, now, since freely flowing credit has dried up, all the skeletons are coming out of the closet, much like the bones on a riverbed can be seen during a hot summer as the river dries up!

My first question is how? Just how can an auditor miss figures so huge? Aren't you supposed to check the bank balances also? Just what due diligence was done? Was the management's word taken at face value? Who audits the auditor? What were the independent directors doing? The problem may be old but is also one which keeps creeping up time and again to pinch us on the rear. It's almost a case of not wanting to bite the hand that feeds you. My second question is that how one can do fraud of this magnitude without involving dozen of others??

Now Mr Raju sounds very sorry about the whole affair and volunteers to subject himself to the "laws of the land and face consequences thereof". How noble of you sir, having hoodwinked millions of shareholders, numerous financial institutions and your own 50,000-plus employees.

So what should the large investors do with this fiasco that they have landed up with? First course for the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the Securities & Exchange Board of India should be to put in place a temporary management team, comprising of proven leaders from the industry, none of whom have ever been associated with Satyam. Next would be to book, charge sheet, try & place under custody Ramalinga Raju, his brother & his CFO; before even the US SEC & class action suits come into the picture. Then investigate the accounts, restate them, and similarly charge sheet, penalize and put a lifelong ban on Price Waterhouse (the auditors). The next step should be to touch base with each client, build confidence, recount the steps taken to clean the company up, and reassure continuity of operations. Lastly, the interim management should then hand over the reins to a permanent team, once again comprising of non-Satyam people, or if at all, to those within Satyam who have not been remotely close to the previous top management. Also, care should be taken to meet each team of employees separately, make them feel a part of the clean-up drive, take their suggestions on board, and most importantly, arrange for some quick bridge funding to pay their salaries (as the books should show, Satyam would be deep in the red with hardly any cash)

This has loads of implications and repercussions. India has a rather strongly regulated banking sector. So, India was spared the debilitating effects of the credit crisis the world now faces. IT and IT services are India's main USP. So, facing fraud in the sector that in a way differentiates India from other emerging markets is, tough and sad to say the least. Investor and client sentiment would decidedly begin to spiral down. Where can India then move to find its elusive economic stronghold?

This incident has not only done incalculable damage to the image of India Inc, but by virtue of it being unearthed in the poster boy sector of India's corporate world, it has perhaps rocketed our credibility back by a decade or two. You could argue that this is an isolated event and such scandals keep happening around the world. Perhaps this won't change the contours of the Indian IT industry and maybe, just maybe, overseas clients will at best relook their vendors and shift a few. But the question is one of long-term trust. Will Indian companies be able to convince them to do mission critical, high revenue yielding business with India Inc? We may get off a lightly this time, but one thing's for sure - the Infosyses, Wipros, HCLs, Tech Mahindras and Patnis of the world will have to work that much harder to get those huge BT kind of deals again.

Well it is test of Government, SEBI, Corporate India, ICAI, Regulators, Indian IT, Investors and new management of Satyam to make the things worked out. I really scared what will happen to those 50000 techies of satyam with this dark future???

Click Here for all details and reports on Satyam Saga

Corporate Governance – Satyam Fiasco

Big Indian story this year was Satyam investing in Maytas. What binds these two stories together? Corporate Governance. Oh yeah. Stock prices showed how 'One man can make a difference', though that one man was not Michael Knight of the Knight Rider.

On the issue of corporate governance, one event that kind tainted India's image in the world in terms of governance is the Satyam debacle. Why? Again, one man. One man decided to use funds of a listed public company to invest in his son's real estate enterprise or it was only virtual fund which was reflected in balance sheet of the company. In other words, he wanted to run a family business using shareholders' money. The effect - snowballing scrutiny into corporate governance, and a 'Yikes, Indians can do this too????' question from foreign investors who look upon India as a key player in IT services. In a way the hullabaloo that followed the crappy decision of Mr Raju of Satyam bodes well for India, since it shows that the shareholder is still king, and that the company owner is in every way answerable to the millions of investors. Perhaps the democratic government can learn a thing or two about accountability from this model followed by corporate.

In this Wednesday morning a letter from Satyam's chief to SEBI and board admitting of Fraud. It was horrified and unfortunate for SEBI and Corporate India to witness this kind of scam. Even the greatest man of India Inc cant resist himself without commenting on the issue, Narayanamurthy described developments at Satyam as shocking, painful and a good warning for other companies in the sector.

Some of the highlights of the scam are

• Satyam carries inflated cash balance of Rs.5040 cr
• Satyam crashes 77%
• Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju resigns from board
• Auditors accountable for financial situation: SEBI
• Need for investors to know the truth: SEBI
• Violations across several laws: SEBI
• Satyam issue has serious implications: SEBI
• Wrong doings at Satyam should be probed in detail