Friday, August 10, 2007

Riding against the waves

I believe that stock market is nothing but response of brokers' perception regarding the past, the current and the future economic market. The point I want to make here is that when there is a huge drop in the market people tend to think coherently or atleast their perception matches, that leads to a drop. And now a days we can see this on a global scale, where perceptions are pretty much aligned. As a result we normally see that an event in one part of the world can trigger chain of events globally. Stock market is a very good example, where we often see that in case of notable global events stock market more or less behave coherently. (Atleast in extreme market situations).
But there are always fliers or exceptions, where perceptions tends not to appear aligned to the majority. And any deviations from majority comes to attention.

Its like a wise man among fools, where the wise man thinks of others as fools and others think of wise man as a fool :) Pretty interesting, and it happens with me also, when at times I feel like I am not a fool when actually I am.

Anyhow, today globally bears are riding high everywhere except in KL, its upto you to decide who is who :)



Monday, August 6, 2007

F1 and I

To some F1 is quite boring, cars going round and round and round, for some 70 laps. Overtaking is rare, accidents that interests some are rare and most of the time either Ferrari or McLaren wins.

To me its quite interesting, moreover when I think of my job I can very well relate it to that of Formula1 driver. So let me try to point out how Formula1 driver's job is similar to mine.

1) They keep traveling around the world, so do I (I don't stay at a place for more than 1 month).
2) Every circuit has its own properties with different competitive challenges, similarly every client for me is different, their culture, procedures, etc, and everywhere I have a different problem to face.
3) Every year a new car is released that a driver drives. We also release a new product with cool features every year, in fact more than once a year, that we drive.
4) Lot of testing is done by the driver with respect to tyre, aerodynamics, mechanics etc. I also have to do lot of testing in order to collect data for further development of software, equipment, new features etc.
5) A lot of data from everyrace which helps to improve for the next race. For me also lot of data from every client which helps in better success at other sites.
6) Team keep developing cool features like a new aerodynamic wing or a new software to control transmission etc and the driver has to maximize its use. No different for me, we always have new technologies, I have to make sure to find the right use for it.
7) Driver do roadshows to demonstrate and attract fans :) , We also have to do demo's and present technical papers, presentation etc to attract clients .....
8) For any new car the most annoying thing for the driver is the reliability, and more than often I curse our software engineers and tech supports for all our reliability problems :)
9) In a race every team needs to show the best performance in limited amount of time, similarly in a competitive situation every company needs to show the best performance in limited amount of time.
10) Driver needs to wear special gears so do we need to wear special gears, though we don't have any sponsor logo's

I feel like I am Kimi Raikkonen now ;)

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Why Malaysian stock market is the odd one out ?

I have been observing from the past few months that KLSE (Malaysian stock market) behaves quite differently than other stock markets. Will appreciate if anyone can explain that

Today's quick-pick (Look at KLSE)