Blog – Value Investing Almanack – Safal Niveshak

Spotlight: Beware the Mirage Called Financial Freedom

April 5, 2018

Financial freedom shows you the dream of living a boss-free life. Unfortunately, hoping the money to de-slave you is a dangerous strategy. Money merely changes who you are a slave to. Earlier it was the boss; later it’s money itself. Slavery persists. Just the ownership of the slave changes.

9th January 2018 was the last day at my office. I quit my software job to spend more time pursuing the work that I love, i.e., reading, writing, and building my personal projects. I received calls from a handful of friends when I broke the news. Most of them congratulated me and some showed concerns too about my seemingly hasty decision.

However, one of them asked me a sincere question – “Are you financially free to justify this bold decision?”

It’s hard to discuss money without bringing up the topic of financial freedom, isn’t it? Unfortunately, the idea of financial freedom, like the concept of God, has been abused so much especially in last 10-15 years that it has lost its meaning.

Lessons from Writing Routines of the Best

March 30, 2018

Writing is not only a powerful tool for better thinking but a skill that’s soon going to become a must for every knowledge economy worker, including an investor. Consider Warren Buffett. He is one of the best writers ever in the business world. It is not a coincidence that he is also one of the best investors of all time. If you cannot write clearly, most likely you do not think very clearly. And if you do not think clearly, you are in trouble. If you are not consciously working on improving your writing skills, you are making yourself vulnerable to the threat of being rendered obsolete by machines.

I am always on a lookout for new opportunities to learn to become a better writer. Even a small piece of improvement every day will eventually add up to a significant transformation in the way I communicate.

Writing Routines is a tremendously useful website for people who want to hone their craft of writing. I have been reading the interviews (of accomplished authors) that they publish and have distilled out several ideas to share with you.

In Praise of Writing

Before I begin with the writing ideas, here’s a word from Anne Lamott who wrote an excellent must-read book called Bird by Bird:

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.

It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

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My Interview with Jason Zweig

March 29, 2018

Note: This interview was originally published in the December 2016 issue of Value Investing Almanack. To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

“I wish I could talk to this guy,” I told my wife when I read Ben Graham’s The Intelligent Investor first time sometime in 2005.

“But he is dead, right?” she said.

“Oh, not Graham,” I exclaimed, “But Jason Zweig who has edited this version of Graham’s book.”

“I am sure you would one day,” she said with an air of confidence. But I junked her thoughts saying, “Why would he even want to talk to me?”

Well, I had this discussion in mind when I wrote to Mr. Zweig in mid-October last year to request him for an interview for our Value Investing Almanack newsletter. I knew it was a shot in the dark, something I had not done for a long-long time after missing a few such shots in the dark on stocks I lost money owning.

But this shot worked, and worked well for me. Not only did Mr. Zweig agree immediately for the interview, he also made me comfortable by asking me to address him as, well, Jason. 🙂

InvestorInsights: Rishi Gosalia

March 20, 2018

Rishi Gosalia works as a software engineer at Google. He has been investing his own capital since 2007 and more recently managing money for family and friends. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003 as a Distinguished Scholar with an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics. Outside of engineering and investing, Rishi loves to travel, hike, read, and teach. He lives in San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two kids.

In this interview, Rishi talks about his journey of self-learning and investing, and his experiences in compounding and multi-disciplinary thinking.

BookWorm: More Than You Know

March 15, 2018

In the value investing world, Michael Mauboussin is the foremost authority on business strategy and decision making. Anything he writes is worth reading twice. Although, the book we’re reviewing was written by him a decade ago but it has insights that are timeless for investors.

Michael Mauboussin has spent his life studying investment strategies and intricacies of human decision making. He’s a world known expert in one of the most debatable topics in the field of business strategy, i.e., role of luck in defining the success of an individual as well as an organization.