Exams and doors

Well, the first term is almost over (I mean, lectures are over).. the exam is on Dec 11.. and I am already scared...

last post for this season... a brain teaser discussed by James Taylor (a prof at Ox, see below post for who he is)... seems like this is also a TV game in UK.... and most asked question in interviews!

There are three doors - one of them contains and if you call correctly you get it all. Other door contains nothing and you fail if you call it wrong...
Step 1: You can call a door as the door containing gold.
Step 2: The conductor gives a clue on the other two doors ("Door X does not contain gold") and he has to speak the truth.
Step 3: You can revise your call.

Big question: after knowing the clue, will you STICK to your door or SWITCH the doors?

lemme give an example...
Step 1: you call door 1
Step 2: Conductor says "Door 2 does not contain gold"
Step: will you STICK to your first door or SWITCH to the third door?

Answer is only one (not the "it depends" type)... and the reason can be given either in real life format or in theoritical (clue - probability)....

Any takers?

Bears, bulls and forests

Here is a quick definition of bull and bear market. I haev heard these terms so often, but hardly had the time to check!!

In the investment arena, financial markets are commonly believed to have market trends that can be classified as primary trends, secondary trends (short-term), and secular trends (long-term).

Primary trend: A bull market is a prolonged period of time when prices are rising in a financial market faster than their historical average, in contrast to a bear market which is a prolonged period of time when prices are falling. Investors can be described as having bullish (bull = buy) or bearish (bear = sell) sentiments. Upward market trends are witnessed when bulls (buyers) outnumber bears (sellers) - downward for vice versa.

Secondary trend: A secondary trend is a temporary change in price within a primary trend. These usually last a few weeks to a few months. A temporary decrease during a bull market is called a correction; a temporary increase during a bear market is called a bear market rally.

A secular market trend is a long-term trend that lasts 5 to 20 years, and consists of sequential primary trends. In a secular bull market the bear markets are smaller than the bull markets. Typically, each bear market does not wipe out the gains of the previous bull market, and the next bull market makes up the losses of the bear market. Vice versa for secular bear market.

Finance industry in a nutshell

Well, I was not that great in following finance markets. Now that we are in Ox hearing about and attending all these finance lectures - here are a few short definitions (courtesy: wikipedia.com). These are in no way comprehensive, but a good start..

Private equity is a broad term that refers to any type of equity investment in an asset in which the equity is not freely tradable on a public stock market. Passive institutional investors may invest in private equity funds, which are in turn used by private equity firms for investment in target companies. Categories of private equity investment include leveraged buyout, venture capital, growth capital, angel investing, mezzanine capital and others. Private equity funds typically control management of the companies in which they invest, and often bring in new management teams that focus on making the company more valuable.

Venture capital is capital typically provided by outside investors for financing of new, growing or struggling businesses. Venture capital investments generally are high risk investments but offer the potential for above average returns. A venture capitalist (VC) is a person who makes such investments.

Investment banks help companies and governments and their agencies to raise in raising funds in the capital markets (both equity and debt)

The capital market (securities markets) is the market for securities, where companies and the government can raise long-term funds. The capital market includes the stock market and the bond market.

An angel investor is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for ownership equity. Unlike venture capitalists, angels typically do not manage the pooled money of others in a professionally-managed fund. However, angel investors often organize themselves into angel networks or angel groups to share research and pool their own investment capital

Generally, a hedge fund is a lightly regulated private investment fund often characterized by unconventional investment strategies and often making use of legal structures (sometimes offshore) to mitigate the effects of local regulation and tax regimes. In contrast to regular investment funds, which are usually limited to only being able to "go long" (buy) instruments such as bonds, equities or money markets, hedge funds also have the ability to "short" (sell) instruments which they believe will fall in price. In this way, hedge funds are able to create more complex investment structures which can, for example, profit in times of market volatility, or even in a falling market. In finance, a hedge is an investment that is taken out specifically to reduce or cancel out the risk in another investment.

The phrase mergers and acquisitions or M&A refers to the aspect of corporate finance strategy and management dealing with the merging and acquiring of different companies. Historically, Investment Banks (intermediaries which assist companies in selling ownership of themselves as stock or borrowing money directly from investors in the form of bonds) have been closely associated with merger and acquisition activity since a M&A is a sales opportunity for the Investment Bank. If the company wants to merge with another, it must attain a fair market value for its shares to be swapped which would involve an investment bank. If it wants to buy the other company with borrowed money, it would most likely borrow directly from investors in the form of bonds through a private placement, engineered by the investment bank. Thus, Investment Banks position themselves to act as advisors on mergers and acquisitions.

How much am I worth?

Well... I am used to staying long in the Oxford library (they close at 11:00 PM and I am the last one to leave, er.. be pushed out).

One of my friend, who saw me leave late everyday quipped, "Hey man, you are like furniture in our library. Probably we should depreciate you over the next few months". Now that is what I call - 'Going crazy with studies'. :))

Class photo

Well , thanks to Tiwari and Saitosan, here are our pics from photo shoot..

And this our common roon (canteen)... looks so nice, isn't it? Well, hot water costs 20 pence here.

And this is how our classes look... did I tell you? each class is 3.5 hours long!!! (god mercied on us with a 20 min break in-between)

FTSE and JW linked

Here is the funniest academic story you would have ever heard. The MBA Decision science class is tutored by Prof. James Taylor. He is one of the funniest, yet clever and knowledgeable, professors I have ever seen.

This past week he taught about multiple regression (don’t worry about the term) and he wet to explain his work in trying to define a relation between FTSE and JW. FTSE is the financial share index. The equation was something like FTSE100t = 7039.60 – 210.89JWt + et

He seemed to be so proud of his statistical analysis and derivation. We went onto to validate the analysis (there are some set parameters like t-stat, r square, etc). Everything seemed to be just great and the whole class was kind of appreciating his efforts.

He slowly turned back and asked the class, “Why didn’t anyone ask me what is JW? Let me how you what JW is made of. He then switched on the other display which showed both his kids on the sofa. JW is apparently Jake’s Weight – they have been weighing his son’s weight every month and he was trying to correlate Jake’s Weight and FTSE index.

We laughed at being fooled so easily. The moral of he story: Be careful when you try to correlate two “trendy” variables. He sure is genius, isn’t he?

Bhagavat gita in Management

Karma Capitalism from Business Week

Wonderful article. The article was so close to me, since I was an ardent follower of Bhagavat Gita, have heard greatly abt half the Management gurus listed in this article... and can relate to these US companies and India n culture. Question to ponder: Is old returning back?

CEO fo Amgen, Founder of Apple, and Managing Director at McKinsey

How would you feel if you met all these folks, shook hands with them and asked them podernign questions on future?

Well, this is what Oxford can do. Prepare the 27-year (alas, I turned 28 last week!) old non-so-popoular figures and make them meet with industry figures you cannot even imagine.

CEO of Amgen:
http://www.amgen.com/about/leadership_team.html
Mr. Kevin Sharer, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Amgen, Inc. visited Said Business School on for the introduction speech. Amidst the crowd of 300, I stood up and asked, "Do you really use any MBA tools and techniques in your day-to-day life? What is your advise on how we treat this academia?". He laughed, looked at the new Dean, smiled again and said, "The best thing that your MBA does to you is to shape YOU. You guys really do not know how important it is to get an MBA from Oxford. You sure are gifted. If you walk upto my company's door and introduce yourself as an Oxford graduate, we are gonna hear you just for that".

Founder of Apple:
http://www.woz.org/
Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple (Yeah, the same apple from Forest Gump) visited Oxford a couple of weeks back to promote his new book. He seemed too technical (Steve Jobs apparently was the business mind behind Apple?), a born-genius kind. The speech was very motivational and informative. Apparently, he is very proud of his accomplishments.

Managing Director and McKinsey
http://www.mckinsey.com/ideas/wef2005/biographies/dominiccasserley.asp
Dominic Casserley, head of McKinsey in the UK, Ireland and the Middle East, talked on "What will the Global Company look like in 2020". The corwd was a selected (yeah, me included!) 40 folks. 20 of them (Yeah, yeah, me included) were selected again to go further for a formal dinner with him. To be honest, I did not realize his power (greatness?) until I came back to home that night and looked up the internet! hmmm.. I need to keep on top of events - so some research before the event. Why leave an oppurtunity for question - I asked him his opinion on India and China becoming the newer markets in 2020. He mentioned the developing countries are posing a threat, but will nto replace US/EU. "What is your opinion on consolidation? WOuld we be left with 4 big companies in each sector by 2020?". He answered, "No. As companies merge and acquire, there will be more players entering the market."

Obviously these answers were not exact to the word. My understanding and language are mixed in the above text.

Go Oxford!!!

The best motivational speech ever

Al Pacino's Inch By Inch speech from "Any Given Sunday "

Are you a lecturer of organizational behaviour at any business school and need to show video at your class (like they do in SBS!)? Are you a corporate manager needing to bring in motivation team? Well, I present to you the great Al Pacino



Here is the transcript of the greatest motivational speech ever:

"I don't know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today. Either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble. Inch by inch. Play by play, till we're finished.We are in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me and we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch, at a time.

Now I can't do it for you. I'm too old. I look around and I see these young faces and I think I mean I made every wrong choice a middle age man could make. I uh.... I pissed away all my money. Believe it or not. I chased off anyone who has ever loved me. And lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know when you get old in life things get taken from you. That's, that's part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game life or football the margin for error is so small. I mean one half step too late or to early you don't quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in ever break of the game every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch. We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch. Cause we know when we add up all those inches that's going to make the fucking difference; between WINNING and LOSING; between LIVING and DYING. I'll tell you this in any fight it is the guy who is willing to die who is going to win that inch. And I know if I am going to have any life anymore it is because, I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch because that is what LIVING is. The six inches in front of your face.

Now I can't make you do it. You gotta look at the guy next to you. Look into his eyes. Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. You are going to see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same thing for him. That's a team, gentlemen and either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That's football guys. That's all it is. Now, whattaya gonna do? "

Dont tell me you dont love him even now. Al Pacino is THE actor.

Oxford Matriculation

We had our matriculation today at Sheldonian theatre. The theatre was awesome old building with huge paintings, chandeliers, and church like setting.

We wore Suit, Sub fusc (kind of gown) and Mortar board (a funky graduation cap).


It kind of felt funky with this whole matriculation thing. I personally felt it was a total waste of time (day?). The University chancelor (or someone important!) read out a few words in Latin which officially enrolled us as an Oxonian!!



We will be wearing this sub fusc to the exams (Yes, all exams! I cannot believe!!). And a similar ceremony will occur when we graduate - in Sep 2007. Well, I hope to get there successfully!

Reached Oxford..

I have reached Oxford!

The journey from India to Oxford was comfortable - though British Airways tried its ways to make a petty cash from my extra luggage, by deciding to call of the 'two hand luggage' scheme, unannounced, in the last minute to comply with 'strict guidelines' that help them monitor terrorist activity. I dunno how reducing a luggage would help them in this process, but hey, I got along!

Reached Oxford and kinda felt at home. Its a mix of Chennai and LA. Chennai - in all the practices and customs (left hand drive); LA in the cleanliness and etiquette (greener pavenments than LA).

I am currently staying in Wellington Square. It is a cheap University accomodation that is in the center of the town. Business School is a just 3 minutes ride away.

I settled in quickly and managed to buy a bike from a local private guy who was noce enough to throw in his lock as well. A new bike costs around 120 pounds and my used bike cost me 49 pounds.

Well this week (Oct 2) is all about induction - sitting thru some boring (or would this be useful later?) lectures and tons of introductions - Computer center, Library, Career services, reception included!! :)

Well, ciao, we have got to a long to-do list to go through..

Reservation policy in India

There is quite a few protests in India against the reservation policy.
http://us.rediff.com/news/quota06.html

I don't blindly support or oppose this reservation based on caste. Rather I would call for people to use it judiciously; Or the reservation could be revised to be based on family financial situation.

The reservation policy was aimed at the upbringing of backward people who did not have the means to venture out colleges and studies that were only known and accessible to higher caste (I am talking probably 1960s). Since then the backward people have considerably utilized this reservation policy and improved their status. The guys are now probably higher government officials, doctors or lawyers. I only oppose the kids of these guys to (mis)use this reservation policy. They should honestly not specify themselves as backward or tribe in the forms - because they are not. On the other hand, for a guy from mountain village - Obviously Yes.

Let me give an example. I knew a school mate who was the richest kid, nephew of the local MP, comes to school in car, and belonged to MBC category. Then there was also this lady who was a cleaner in our school, whose son was also sponsored to study with us, and belonged to OC. Ideally, the latter should be able to use the reservation policy and not the former.

But, hey, there is no such positive thinking in the impulsive Politics. There is an election to be won, pride to be maintained and money to be made; politicians will do any gimmicks to get the vote - allow reservation, give television, free rice, chips and DVDs, free clothes, money -- rice will even come to home, one says. Actually, they don't really want you to work. Their ideal Utopian world does not include an Indian making international business; it envisions an Indian wearing the free dhoti, eating free rice, that came free to his home and watching the free tv, in his freely build home - he just has to manage enough money for the almost free liquor.

De Niro vs Al Pacino

What kind of films do I like? Comedy; more than Comedy I like underworld/thugs kind of movies. The list goes - God father 1 & 3, The untouchables, Scarface, Good fellas, Casino, Donnie Brasco, Heat, Taxi Driver, etc. Seems I feel great

Did you notice the commonality? Knowingly or unknowingly I have followed movies of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Whom would I rate more - Al Pacino or De Niro? Quite a dilemma.

Al Pacino was great for his God father role. He was a cold hearted silent killer. And who could forget Scarface - his black and white pictures sold like crazy. And in Donnie Brasco, he underplayed well. He played the best blind man in Scent of a Woman. Oflate, I saw his latest movie 'Simone'. That is when he went down ten to 4 in my acting scale. I felt he was overacting and too loud; I was not convinced Simone is an apt movie he should even choose to act.

[Here is a clip from Any given sunday - an inspirational speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWoPEU3RwPw)

On the other hand, De Niro, was a great actor right from taxi Driver. The top angle scene in Untouchables, where he hits a spy with base ball bat. It will stay in memory for a few years. Casino and Good Fellas only made him the best conman ever. Taxi Driver and Raging bull adds the much lacked variety. He was kinda average all along. But when I saw Analyze this and Anlayze that - two movies where he played gangster with a touch of comedy - he went upp rising in the chart. De Niro is my only star.

Verdict: If I had to pick one great actor, it would be De Niro.

Oxford.. My life saver

At last.... I got into Oxford Said Business School for the 2006- 2007 Class MBA - ranked 9th in the world.

There has been a pinch of self doubt in the last few days. Am I wasting my time with this MBA thing runing parallel to my heavy work load? Could you only excel in one? Should I pick work and stay on ground like the hundred others.

I had applied to CMU (ding!), ISB (WL), Oxford (Got thru) and was planning to apply to UCLA PT (now I wont).

Atlast God said, I have other plans. "You are better suited for MBA and go for it". Thanks god, I even doubted you.. :)

Whats in a name?

Thinking back, I wanted to enroll into gmatclub.com and I felt it more interesting to make people guess who I am. and not expose my original name (which is kinda hard to pronounce by non-indians, anyway).
It is not like I hate my name, anyways. I love it and I even explain the sankrit meaning of my name to the american clients I meet daily. Sampath basically means "Wealth" - wealth in health, money, knowledge, maturity... you name it. Isn't that cool my parents kept a thoughtful name?

I started with a hardworker, just because I was aware I was not a smart man, but I work more hard to compensate for my 'unsmartness' - but 'hardworker' was registered and seemed like "hardworker_indian" was the way to go. It is kinda long to type, but I dont type t often. MS Win XP stores it in its memory anyway..

I am not good (actualy very bad) at memory - thats the reason I end up carry a mini notepad all the time in my pouch. Most of my little success can only be attributed to that 'extra' hardwork I do.

Thats the story how I got hardworker_indian. Not many of my friends know I actually write this column, except for a few close ones...