Sameer Mathur

I have come across Taiwanese, Americans, Indians, Iranis, Israelis, with the name SAMEER, directly or indirectly. So I decided to look for it and here is what I found from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

First Name : Sameer
Sameer is a name of Sanskrit origin (समीर sameer "gust of wind/a cool gentle breeze on a hot summer day". "Sameer" is also a name from Arabic origin meaning "entertainer". This name is popular amongst Indian Hindus as well as Arab Muslims and Christians.

Last Name : Mathur
According to the Hindu theology Lord Brahma, the Creator, created Lord Chitragupta out of his own body. When Lord Brahma had created all the four Varnas, he thought that there must be someone to keep records and account of each Varna - so he went into deep meditation of the Lord. When this meditation was over, he found standing in front of him a radiant human figure holding a pen and an inkpot in his hands. Thereupon Brahma said, "Thy manifestation has come about through my mind (chitta) and in secret mystical (Gupta) manner, thy name shall be Chitragupta and as thy creation has been from the whole of my body (kaya), therefore thy progeny will be called Kayastha. So ever since then reading and writing has been the hereditary occupation of the Kayasthas, the descendants of Lord Chitragupta, and in all governmental institutions the Kayasthas have held high administrative posts. Mathur's are considered very high end and very intelligent.

Bear is coming !!

Stock Markets round the world are rallying and Sensex is no where behind. Currently Sensex to a large extent follow the US markets, which is in its late bull phase as follows:

1. There has been 17 interest rate rises each of 0.25% till June 06. This is a long and extensive interest rate hike when compare with the previous business cycles. High interest rate is a standard feature of late bull phase in business cycles.
2. Unemployment rate is going down steadily although not reaching full employment yet. Low unemployment rate is also a feature of late bull phase.
3. Commodity price has risen extensively in the past one year. Because booming economy and production, the demand for raw materials tightens. This is a typical feature of late bull phase which usually extend into the bear phase.
4. Inflation signals start to beep. This force the FED to increase interest rate to dampen inflation at the expense of economic growth which might induce bear market. Inflation is a lagging indicator, and is a good signal for bear market.
5. During the regular interest rate rises like the first 15 rate hike, each rise have small impact on the stock market, but the recent response to interest hike is very violent, but this is also a late bull phase features.

That means that Sensex might also go along with Bears and the chart below pretty much confirms that.
Below is a trend chart for Sensex, Ideally the Indice should be within the green lines and any deviations indicate a strong rally which often proceeds with strong bear runs. Again I would not elaborate on the chart and leave it on readers discretion :)

Notes:
1) Red line does not represent actual trend but is representation of forecast.
2) Month of Dec is based on my prejudices and not on any mathematical model.


BSE : SENSEX

Gold

Gold's allure might be irrational, but for centuries the metal called as "barbarous relic" has had mystic hold on the human imagination.

"Gold is the child of Zeus; neither moth nor rust devourth it" Pindar wrote in fourth century BC Fittingly, gold dissolves only in cyanide.

Lately there is lot of buzz over sensex performance, So I was wondering if someone wants to invest in non-equity instruments then what ? What comes to my mind first is Real Estate and probably Gold. So the first question that pops up is that how the investment in these instruments different from stock market, do they have the same risk, do they have the same liquidity, etc ? I don't know.

So I decided to look at the figures, everytime I am in a fix, I always try to look at some pertinent data......more the data better for me, unfortunately data is always insufficient at-least for me :) Anyhow, for Real Estate I wasn't able to find enough data, so I decided to look at GOLD. And came up with a theory which can be inferred from the graph below...... START SAVING MONEY.

I guess the graph is self explanatory (thats one of the reasons why I like graphs :) )


Note : This is a theory that I have made considering the US stock market (and neglecting many other nitty gritty details of US stock market, due to lack of sufficient data with me. I would have liked to have a detailed chart for Dow, S&P or Nasdaq but since I wasn't able to get one, I just tried to look at one aspect ie the great crashes in US history.
Also note that after every crash there is an upward correction in gold prices.

BahrainFormula1

I am a fan of formual1, not just because its car racing and one team looses and other wins, but more of because it involves so much of planning, execution, strategy, skills, innovation and definitely risk taking ability on part of everyone. It starts with testing where the team tries to understand the car, the track, the weather, the competition, the tires etc. Anyways, Bahrain race was amazing, Ferrari's and McLarens, both had a very good package, during the first two legs Ferrari's seemed to dominate and during the last leg McLarens. Though there is no explanation why different team dominated during different legs, here is what I think

a) First two legs both the teams had soft tyres
Now for this race after Malaysia heating problem, Ferrari's used rear brake cooling inlets. So with soft tyres they as everyone could, can speed well but while decelerating where G force goes as high as 5G, Ferrari's had an advantage. Ferrari's would have been able to decelerate faster which produces more heat, in a heated environment (Bahrain) but innovative cooling system helped to compensate that. McLarens would have struggled during decelerations.

b) Last Leg.
Last leg was with hard tyres, that means deceleration is limited by tyres, no more excessive heating by hard decelerations and Ferrari's loosing its advantage. The result do substantiate this theory, with McLarens gaining 3 seconds everylap, relative to Ferrari's.

The question that I am not able to understand is, why McLarens did not include any additional cooling knowing that Bahrain is a hot track ? Also why Ferrari's seemed not so competitive without the cooling advantage ?

Indian Software Industry

The word software and India/Indian often share a symbiotic relationship. Though software is a very broad term still Indians enjoy the privilege of being or at least the perception of being, the forerunners of software industry.

The question arises what is the role of Indian Software industry and why is it important ? A study by Harvard reveals that the consumers of softwares are primarily western countries with US being the primary developer of these software and India playing a big role in maintenance and support of these softwares.

I have seen many large Indian software companies moving from a "software" company to a purely "testing company", the reason being huge demand, better profits and easy support. But are these factors sufficient for a long term growth of a company ? I guess for any company one of the factors in its long term strategy should be value creation for its clients/users. Low cost does create value but it has to be fueled by innovation, which many Indian companies lack and as a result increasingly the clientèle will shift to those places who are just low cost producers. Its happening, talking to some of my friends at IBM I came to know that many jobs have shifted from India to China. I know a big US based company who has shifted the base of a software division from India to Russia. The reason was Russians along with low cost producer, are innovative and efficient. Personally I feel that increasingly companies will move to lower cost producer countries (at least in Software) like Mexico, Russia, China, Philippines etc. There will be jobs cuts in India and before that happens India certainly would have to start thinking seriously from the perspective of innovation.

I am not sure to what extent companies are engaged in Research and Development. If they have active R&D group its great, if not then increasingly companies should spend on Research and Development, they should spend on training their employees so that they are ready, a greater effort need to be made in order to look for opportunities so that they start understanding the software product life cycle.