It has entered the Indian Hall of SHAME

The Indian cricketers led by an uninspiring and unimaginative Captain Rahul Dravid meekly surrendered to an English attack devoid of its frontline batsmen and bowlers. The key differentiator in the just concluded 3rd cricket test at Mumbai was, more than anything else, the captaincy.

While Andrew Flintoff led the team with passion, aggression and imagination to get the best out of a team comprising largely of inexperienced cricketers, the Indian Captain having a wealth of talent at his disposal failed miserably in motivating his team and marshalling his resources.

Indian team showed its negative approach from the very beginning of this test match. The negative attitude reached the zenith when we found Irfan Pathan walking out to open the innings on the 4th day evening. As if an icing in the cake, Indian think tank sent in Anil Kumble as one drop in the guise of night watchman.

May be they thought highly of the tail waging and expected that the top order guys will score better if they waged in the tail. What a thought... from the dream team captain and dream outspoken and working for free (he has no financial reasons you see) coach. One must clarify here that Greg Chappel has taken up the Indian coach assignment purely for achivement and nothing else. The money that he will earn from this assignment seems "not at all important" to his life and finances.

We must send million flowers to Mr. Kiran "hole mouth" More for his public utterances that the current selection committee will never look back on selecting Ganguly, even the later shows good performance in the domestic cricket. What a shame? What if Ganguly scored a back to back double hundred in domestic cricket? No, he cannot be selected for the Indian team. Because, More cannot look back. He has stiff neck you see!

Read the additional piece from www.cricinfo.com

India v England, 3rd Test, Mumbai, 5th day

A diabolical capitulation

Dileep Premachandran in Mumbai

March 22, 2006

One meek collapse too many for India © Getty Images

Capitulations are rarely honourable affairs, but even by Indian standards this was particularly lily-livered and shameful. Even in an Indian batting hall of infamy, which houses such gems as the 66 all out at Durban (1996-97) and the 81 at Barbados a few months later, this has to take pride of place. Faced with an English side magnificently led and inspired by Andrew Flintoff, India could offer nothing but diabolical shot selection and lack of fight that would have shamed a peacenik.

Having played Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire in the dressing room at lunch, England then came out and incinerated a line-up that has been living on former glories for two seasons now. To lose nine wickets in a session and a half is slipshod, but to lose seven wickets in a mere 15.2 overs after lunch borders on the ridiculous. Rahul Dravid, who made a rare error of judgement to start the slide, was being extremely charitable later when he said that some of his boys had chosen "the wrong options". As at Bangalore against Pakistan last year, India offered all the resistance of a Coke can under a steamroller when a little pressure was applied.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni's scatterbrained effort encapsulated the surrender. Not content with having given the hapless Monty Panesar catching practice once, he went for it again, forgetting minor details like the state of the game. He can count himself fortunate that he was born in Ranchi, and not Darwin. At Sydney in 1993, Damien Martyn played a shot that was infinitely less atrocious, and then spent the best part of his 20s wandering the wilderness.

But the culpability started at the very top. It's a damning indictment of India's batting resources that the third-highest run-maker for them in the series was Anil Kumble with 128 runs. Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Dhoni managed 284 runs between them - 11 more than the modestly talented Paul Collingwood - with Sehwag's fitness or lack of it now of paramount concern.

Inzamam-ul-Haq's back problems give Pakistan supporters sleepless nights, but in his case, he can point to the rigours of a legendary 15-year-career. Sehwag has been playing Test cricket a little over four seasons and his puffed-up figure and lethargic reactions in the field are more in keeping with someone Shaun Udal's age. Flintoff himself was once derided as a fat boy, and his transformation into the world's best allrounder has had everything to do with getting himself in good shape for the task.

Apportioning blame after such debacles is easy, but if anyone emerges with credit from this nightmare, it's the bowlers, who were just magnificent and kept India in the game after an indifferent opening day. Anil Kumble led by example, as he always has, and S Sreesanth and Munaf Patel have nothing to be ashamed of after a series in which their immense potential was revealed.

But where India's pace bowlers were good, England's were exceptional. Both Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard - as impressive on this tour as Jason Gillespie had been in Australia's 2004 triumph - bowled with unstinting effort and tremendous skill on a pitch that offered little more than decent bounce. They moved the ball around just a touch at lively pace, and the dismissal of Wasim Jaffer, trapped in front after being set up by a succession of bouncers, was indicative of how adroitly they implemented the game-plan.

There was a touch of romance too at the end. Even if Udal never plays for England again, he'll never forget the afternoon when he did for Tendulkar to set in motion the Indian pack-of-cards trick. He's certainly no mystery spinner in the Jack Iverson mould, but his attitude and perseverance epitomised the real strength of this England side. They came into the Test series in disarray, and left it with a draw that felt almost as good as a victory.

Dileep Premachandran is features editor of Cricinfo

© Cricinfo

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How to grow your money?

We all look for attractive rates of return for growing our money. Most of all of us think that big returns are necessary to grow our wealth.

We are not happy with interest rates on government securities, post office savings schemes or bank fixed deposits.

We tend to generally take higher risks in our pursuit for higher returns and in our hunger for more and more returns just push our risk scale up for even higher returns.

More often than not, the risk materialises rather than the returns and we end up losing rather than gaining. And net returns generally are negligible or negative.

This, despite years of education and lot more avenues post education, for adding to the knowledge and getting wiser.

People do not also analyse there own life track records for successes and failures in investments.

Mostly we just keep going by instinct and herd approach. If we stop and think, we will sure see that in all cases when we were successful, we have been thoughtful, patient and above all reasonable in our expectations.

If one is reasonable in expectations, greed takes a backseat which in turn automatically reduces the risks.

This point is nicely driven home by none other than the greatest investor of our times, Mr. Warren Buffet, in his letter to the shareholders of his Investment holding company Berkshire Hathaway.

Read on. And benefit from his wisdom.

**************************************************************
How to Minimize Investment Returns

It's been an easy matter for Berkshire and other owners of American equities to prosper over the years. Between December 31, 1899 and December 31, 1999 , to give a really long-term example, the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. (Guess what annual growth rate is required to produce this result; the surprising answer is at the end of this section.) This huge rise came about for a simple reason: Over the century American businesses did extraordinarily well and investors rode the wave of their prosperity. Businesses continue to do well. But now shareholders, through a series of self-inflicted wounds, are in a major way cutting the returns they will realize from their investments.

The explanation of how this is happening begins with a fundamental truth: With unimportant exceptions, such as bankruptcies in which some of a company's losses are borne by creditors, the most that owners in aggregate can earn between now and Judgment Day is what their businesses in aggregate earn.

True, by buying and selling that is clever or lucky, investor A may take more than his share of the pie at the expense of investor B. And, yes, all investors feel richer when stocks soar. But an owner can exit only by having someone take his place. If one investor sells high, another must buy high. For owners as a whole, there is simply no magic – no shower of money from outer space – that will enable them to extract wealth from their companies beyond that created by the companies themselves.

Indeed, owners must earn less than their businesses earn because of "frictional" costs. And that's my point: These costs are now being incurred in amounts that will cause shareholders to earn far less than they historically have.

To understand how this toll has ballooned, imagine for a moment that all American corporations are, and always will be, owned by a single family. We'll call them the Gotrocks. After paying taxes on dividends, this family – generation after generation – becomes richer by the aggregate amount earned by its companies. Today that amount is about $700 billion annually. Naturally, the family spends some of these dollars. But the portion it saves steadily compounds for its benefit. In the Gotrocks household everyone grows wealthier at the same pace, and all is harmonious.

But let's now assume that a few fast-talking Helpers approach the family and persuade each of its members to try to outsmart his relatives by buying certain of their holdings and selling them certain others.

The Helpers – for a fee, of course – obligingly agree to handle these transactions. The Gotrocks still own all of corporate America; the trades just rearrange who owns what. So the family's annual gain in wealth diminishes, equaling the earnings of American business minus commissions paid. The more that family members trade, the smaller their share of the pie and the larger the slice received by the Helpers. This fact is not lost upon these broker-Helpers: Activity is their friend and, in a wide variety of ways, they urge it on.

After a while, most of the family members realize that they are not doing so well at this new "beatmy- brother" game. Enter another set of Helpers. These newcomers explain to each member of the Gotrocks clan that by himself he'll never outsmart the rest of the family. The suggested cure: "Hire a manager – yes, us – and get the job done professionally." These manager-Helpers continue to use the broker-Helpers to execute trades; the managers may even increase their activity so as to permit the brokers to prosper still more. Overall, a bigger slice of the pie now goes to the two classes of Helpers.

The family's disappointment grows. Each of its members is now employing professionals. Yet overall, the group's finances have taken a turn for the worse. The solution? More help, of course.

It arrives in the form of financial planners and institutional consultants, who weigh in to advise the Gotrocks on selecting manager-Helpers. The befuddled family welcomes this assistance. By now its members know they can pick neither the right stocks nor the right stock-pickers. Why, one might ask, should they expect success in picking the right consultant? But this question does not occur to the Gotrocks, and the consultant-Helpers certainly don't suggest it to them.

The Gotrocks, now supporting three classes of expensive Helpers, find that their results get worse, and they sink into despair. But just as hope seems lost, a fourth group – we'll call them the hyper-Helpers – appears. These friendly folk explain to the Gotrocks that their unsatisfactory results are occurring because the existing Helpers – brokers, managers, consultants – are not sufficiently motivated and are simply going through the motions. "What," the new Helpers ask, "can you expect from such a bunch of zombies?"

The new arrivals offer a breathtakingly simple solution: Pay more money. Brimming with selfconfidence, the hyper-Helpers assert that huge contingent payments – in addition to stiff fixed fees – are what each family member must fork over in order to really outmaneuver his relatives.

The more observant members of the family see that some of the hyper-Helpers are really just manager-Helpers wearing new uniforms, bearing sewn-on sexy names like HEDGE FUND or PRIVATE EQUITY. The new Helpers, however, assure the Gotrocks that this change of clothing is all-important, bestowing on its wearers magical powers similar to those acquired by mild-mannered Clark Kent when he changed into his Superman costume. Calmed by this explanation, the family decides to pay up.

And that's where we are today: A record portion of the earnings that would go in their entirety to owners – if they all just stayed in their rocking chairs – is now going to a swelling army of Helpers.

Particularly expensive is the recent pandemic of profit arrangements under which Helpers receive large portions of the winnings when they are smart or lucky, and leave family members with all of the losses – and large fixed fees to boot – when the Helpers are dumb or unlucky (or occasionally crooked).

A sufficient number of arrangements like this – heads, the Helper takes much of the winnings; tails, the Gotrocks lose and pay dearly for the privilege of doing so – may make it more accurate to call the family the Hadrocks. Today, in fact, the family's frictional costs of all sorts may well amount to 20% of the earnings of American business. In other words, the burden of paying Helpers may cause American equity investors, overall, to earn only 80% or so of what they would earn if they just sat still and listened to no one.

Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, "I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men." If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion : For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Here's the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this section: To get very specific, the Dow increased from 65.73 to 11,497.12 in the 20th century, and that amounts to a gain of 5.3% compounded annually. (Investors would also have received dividends, of course.) To achieve an equal rate of gain in the 21st century, the Dow will have to rise by December 31, 2099 to – brace yourself – precisely 2,011,011.23. But I'm willing to settle for 2,000,000; six years into this century, the Dow has gained not at all.

Source: Warren Buffet's letter to shareholders 2005 (Berkhire Hatahway Annual Report)

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Best Buy March 10 2006

BEST BUY RECOMMENDATION

(Note: The shares recommended here are purely from my personal analysis as a hobby and I do not take any responsibility for the outcome of the decisions of the user based on my recommendations)

Recommendation for 10/03/2006

Buy National Aluminium (NALCO) in cash or futures. Current Market price is Rs.285 in cash and Rs.281 in futures.

Targets Rs.349 & Rs.385 (Cash can even score Rs.400). Stop Loss is Rs.262.

Disclosure: I do not hold these shares or their derivatives.

Previous Best Buy


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Some Lawly facts of life

There are many things in life that just happen and we get irritated when that happens. However, if you recount them all and give them a generality to note that it happens to not just us, but most of all the people in the world sure you will get some solace.

Read the lawly facts of life presented below.

You will know that you are not alone. We are all in the same boat!

With that knowledge, smile, when you are affected by any of these laws again!!!

LAW OF QUEUE:
If you change queues, the one you have left will start to move faster than the one you are in now.

LAW OF TELEPHONE:
When you dial a wrong number, you never get an engaged one.

LAW OF MECHANICAL REPAIR:
After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.

LAW OF THE WORKSHOP:
Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

LAW OF THE ALIBI:
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

BATH THEOREM:
When the body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.

LAW OF ENCOUNTERS:
The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

LAW OF THE RESULT:
When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will!

LAW OF BIOMECHANICS:
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

THEATRE RULE:
People with the seats at the furthest from the aisle arrive last.

LAW OF COFFEE:
As soon as you sit down for a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

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