InvestMent Strategies Warren Buffet Bets Upon

One thousand dollars invested in Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway
stock in 1965 would be worth roughly $ 5 million today! This astonishing
success didn’t come through Buffet’s use of high-tech computer trading
models or intricate market timing systems. Instead, it came through his
stubborn adherence to the time-honored fundamentals of value investing.
The book, “How Buffet Does It”, is a step-by-step guidebook for investing like Buffet in
any market environment. This book presents 24 ideas Buffet has followed from day one.
Your reviewer enumerates below these twenty-four ideas with his comments for your ready
reference:

1. Choose Simplicity over Complexity : When investing, keep it simple. Do what’s easy
and obvious. If you don’t understand a business, don’t buy it.

2. Make Your Own Investment Decisions : Don’t listen to the brokers, the analysts, or
the pundits. Figure it out for yourself. Become a value investor. It’s proven to be a very
rewarding technique over the long term.

3. Maintain Proper Temperament : Let other people overreact to the market To succeed
in the market, you need only ordinary intelligence. But in addition, you need the kind of
temperament to help you ride out the storms and stick to your long-term plans. If you can
stay cool while those around you are panicking, you can surely prevail.

4. Be Patient : Think 10 years, rather than 10 minutes. Don’t dwell on the price of stocks.
Instead, study the underlying business, its earnings capacity and its future. If the question
is, “How long will you wait?” – “If we’re in the right place, we’ll wait indefinitely” says Buffet.

5. Buy Business, Not Stocks : Once you get into the right business, you can
let everyone else worry about the stock market. Business performance is
the key to picking stocks. Study the long-term track record of any company that
is on your buy list. Buffet looks for following five main things before investing in a
company.

Business he can understand
Companies with favorable long-term prospects
Business operated by honest and competent people
Businesses priced very attractively
Business with free cash flow .

Don’t think about “stock in the short term.” Think about “business in the long term”.

6. Look for a Company that is a Franchise : Some businesses are “franchises”.
Franchise generates free cash flows.

7. Buy Low-Tech, Not High-Tech : Successful investing is rarely a gee-whiz activity.
It’s less often about rockets and lasers and more often about bricks, carpets, paint,
shaving blades and insulation. Do not be tempted by get-rich-quick deals involving
relatively complex companies (e.g., high-tech companies). They are the most
unpredictable in the long run. Look for the absence of change. Look for the business
whose only change in the future will be doing more business, e.g Gillette Blades.

8. Concentrate Your Stock Investments A the “Noah’s Ark” style of investing –
that is, a little of this, a little of that. Better to have a smaller number of
investments with more of your money in each. Portfolio concentration – the
opposite of diversification – also has the power to focus the mind. If you’re
putting your eggs in only a few baskets, you’re far less likely to make
investments on impulse or emotion.

9. Practice Inactivity, Not Hyperactivity : There are times when doing nothing
is a sign of investing brilliance. Be a decade’s trader, not a day trader.

10. Don’t Look at the Ticker : Tickers are all about prices. Investing is about a
lot more than prices. It is about value. It is about wealth. Abstain from looking
at share prices every day. Study the playing field and not the scoreboard.
Know the value of something rather than the price of everythin

Origin of the name Mitsubishi "PAJERO"

For the curious, the Spanish word pajero means ‘wanker’, from paja meaning ‘wank’ (literally, ‘straw’), in the expression hacerse una paja, (literally ‘to do oneself a straw’). These slang expressions come from the fact that both a straw and the penis are similar in being pipe-like. It is the first meaning to come to mind to Spanish speakers in both Spain and the majority of Latin America.

Pajero has some non-rude agricultural meanings, referring to someone selling or transporting straw or (in the Canary Islands dialect) the barn where it is kept. These are the original meanings of the word, but not common these days. It is also an obscure nickname for people from Santo Domingo de la Calzada in La Rioja, presumably due to historical straw production in the village.

In the dialects of Nicaragua, Colombia and Guatemala, paja is used to mean ‘tap’ (i.e. the end of the ‘pipe’), and so, in Nicaragua at least, a pajero is a plumber, to the mirth of other Spanish-speakers.

However, none of these rude or innocent meanings gave the vehicle its name. There is a feline, scientifically classified as Oncifelis colocolo, which is known in Spanish as the gato pajero (‘grass cat’) or gato de las pampas (‘Pampas cat’). It is similiar to the ocelot and hunts small animals in the reeds and grasslands of South America. There are several subspecies, including Oncifelis colocolo colocolo found in central Chile and Oncifelis colocolo pajeros found in central Argentina. In this official press release in Japanese (media.mitsubishi-motors.com/pressrelease/j/products/detail310.html), Mitsubishi explains that they got the name for the vehicle from the latter subspecies, which they call by its short name Felis pajeros. The Pampas cat featured on the emblem on early Pajero SUVs.

--
Chirantan Mandal,

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Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level. Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled. - R.M.Pirsig

Esoteric Kolkata

 

Most modern Indian cities strive to rise above ethnicity.

Tell anybody who lives in Bombay that he lives in a

Maharashtrian city and (unless of course, you are speaking

to Bal Thackeray) he will take immediate offence.

We are cosmopolitan, he will say indigenously. Tell a

Delhiwalla that his is a Punjabi city (which, in many ways,

it is) and he will respond with much self-righteous nonsense

about being the nation's capital, about the international

composition of the city's elite etc. And tell a Bangalorean

that he lives in a Kannadiga city and you'll get lots of

techno-gaff about the internet revolution and about how

Bangalore is even more cosmopolitan than Bombay.

 

But, the only way to understand what Calcutta is about

is recognize that the city is essentially Bengali. What's

more, no Bengali minds you saying that. Rather, he is proud

of the fact. Calcutta's strengths and weaknesses mirror those

of the Bengali character. It has the drawbacks: the sudden

passions, the cheerful chaos, the utter contempt for mere

commerce, the fiery response to the smallest provocation.

And it has the strengths (actually, I think of the drawbacks

as strengths in their own way). Calcutta embodies the

Bengali love of culture; the triumph of intellectualism over

greed; the complete transparency of all emotions, the disdain

with which hypocrisy and insincerity are treated; the warmth

of genuine humanity; and the supremacy of emotion over all

other aspects of human existence.

 

That's why Calcutta is not for everyone. You want your cities

clean and green; stick to Delhi. You want your cities, rich

and impersonal; go to Bombay. You want them high-tech and full

of draught beer; Bangalore's your place. But if you want a city

with a soul: come to Calcutta.

 

When I look back on the years I've spent in Calcutta - and I

come back so many times each year that I often feel I've

never been away - I don't remember the things that people

remember about cities. When I think of London, I think of

the vast open spaces of Hyde Park. When I think of New York,

I think of the frenzy of Times Square. When I think of Tokyo,

I think of the bright lights of Shinjiku. And when I think of

Paris, I think of the Champs Elysee. But when I think of

Calcutta, I never think of any one place. I don't focus on the

greenery of the maidan, the beauty of the Victoria Memorial,

the bustle of Burra Bazar or the splendour of the new Howrah

'Bridge'. I think of people. Because, finally, a city is more

than bricks and mortars, street lights and tarred roads. A city

is the sum of its people. And who can ever forget - or replicate

- the people of Calcutta?

 

When I first came to live here, I was told that the city would

grow on me. What nobody told me was that the city would change

my life. It was in Calcutta that I learnt about true warmth; about  simple

human decency; about love and friendship; about emotions

and caring; about truth and honesty. I learnt other things too.

Coming from Bombay as I did, it was a revelation to live in a

city where people judged each other on the things that really

mattered; where they recognized that being rich did not make you

a better person - in fact, it might have the opposite effect.

 

I learnt also that if life is about more than just money, it

is about the things that other cities ignore; about culture,

about ideas, about art, and about passion. In Bombay, a man with

a relatively low income will salt some of it away for the day

when he gets a stock market tip. In Calcutta, a man with exactly

the same income will not know the difference between a debenture

and a dividend. But he will spend his money on the things that

matter. Each morning, he will read at least two newspapers

and develop sharply etched views on the state of the world.

Each evening, there will be fresh (ideally, fresh-water or

river) fish on his table. His children will be encouraged to

learn to dance or sing. His family will appreciate the power

of poetry. And for him, religion and culture will be in

inextricably bound together.

 

Ah religion! Tell outsiders about the importance of Puja in

Calcutta and they'll scoff. Don't be silly, they'll say.

Puja is a religious festival. And Bengal has voted for the

CPM since 1977. How can godless Bengal be so hung up on a

religions festival? I never know how to explain them that

to a Bengali, religion consists of much more than shouting

Jai Shri Ram or pulling down somebody's mosque. It has little

to do with meaningless ritual or sinister political activity.

 

The essence of Puja is that all the passions of Bengal

converge: emotion, culture, the love of life, the warmth of

being together, the joy of celebration, the pride in

artistic ex-pression and yes, the cult of the goddess.

 

It may be about religion. But is about much more than just

worship. In which other part of India would small, not

particularly well-off localities, vie with each other to

produce the best pandals? Where else could puja pandals go

beyond religion to draw inspiration from everything else? In

the years I lived in Calcutta, the pandals featured Amitabh

Bachchan, Princes Diana and even Saddam Hussain! Where else would

children cry with the sheer emotional power of Dashimi, upset

that the Goddess had left their homes? Where else would the

whole city gooseflesh when the dhakis first begin to beat

their drums? Which other Indian festival - in any part of

the country - is so much about food, about going from one

roadside stall to another, following your nose as it trails

the smells of cooking?

 

To understand Puja, you must understand Calcutta. And to

understand Calcutta, you must understand the Bengali. It's

not easy. Certainly, you can't do it till you come and live

here, till you let Calcutta suffuse your being, invade your

bloodstream and steal your soul. But once you have, you'll love

Calcutta forever. Wherever you go, a bit of Calcutta will go

with you. I know, because it's happened to me. And every

Puja, I am overcome by the magic of Bengal. It's a feeling

that'll never go away.