Parth's blog

Where are the other Humans ? Tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars are evolutionary siblings (Genus panthera ). So are horses, zebras and donkeys (Genus Equus ). Where are our evolutionary siblings? From about 2 million years ago to until around 30-40 thousand years from now, our sibling species lived on this planet. We are Homo Sapiens . They were Homo Erectus, Homo Floresiensis, Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals), and others. No, they were not monkeys. They were Humans . The other members of Genus Homo . Somehow, they became extinct, but we survived. Perhaps we had played a role in the extinction of the Neanderthals ; but we’re not quite sure. Slowly, we spread out from Africa to the rest of the world, and we are thriving—at least for now. We chose to call our humble selves Homo Sapiens ; meaning ‘wise man’ in Latin. Nearly fifty millennia ago, a magical spark happened to our brains that enabled us to imagine things. We call it the Cognitive Revolution, when we become intellig...

Investing in equity is unarguably one of the best, if not the best, investment options available to the long-term investors. If the economy has to grow, businesses in the country have to flourish; and if businesses flourish, so will the market price of these businesses and the investors’ wealth. Also, investing through mutual funds (MF) is the only sensible way to invest in equity for the majority of investors as against stock-picking . In the last couple of years a large number of Indian investors have realised this fact which is reflected in the steadily rising amounts being managed by the MF schemes. However, countless retail investors are observed confused about finding the best MF schemes for them. The misleading advertisements and mis-selling by the distributors make the matter worse. This article is an attempt to inform the readers about which MF is right for the purpose of long-term wealth creation while minimising the risks. To outline briefly, there are two types of equit...

One should always be suspicious of words like ‘secret’, ‘shortcut’, ‘formula’ etc. when it comes to investing, or most other things in life for that matter. Generally, there are no shortcuts in life. In the end, you must log-out of the Netflix and do the tedious jobs of working-out, eating broccoli and analysing a business in detail. Basically, almost all successful long-term equity investing is about (1) estimating future earnings of a business and (2) buying them at a price lower than the ‘value’ corresponding to those future earnings. This is a tough thing to do, no matter what ‘formula’ you have. Earlier I had written a piece on why most individual investors cannot beat the market-returns and it does not make sense for them to pick individual stocks . Forget about part-timers; majority of professional investors fail to beat the index-returns after accounting for their fees and transaction costs. Hence, it makes sense for most investors to buy the index and end up being an abo...

A living being is most vulnerable to the innumerable dangers in its surroundings while it is asleep. Further, a sleeping creature cannot hunt, eat or indulge in reproduction. In spite of that every species studied to date sleeps. Why is that so? Has evolution made a blunder by incorporating sleep in living organisms? Obviously not. Benefits of sleep outweigh, by wide margins, the obvious hazards caused by it. Sleep does vast variety of functions, without which it is not possible for brain and body to work. Not surprisingly, humans are the only species that intentionally deprive itself of sleep. In the book ' Why We Sleep ', Dr. Matthew Walker , a sleep researcher for two decades, explains innumerable functions of sleep and detrimental effects of lack of it. He unravels the underlying science along with description of numerous experiments supporting these findings. The brilliance of the author is reflected in his ability to explain the complex science of sleep witho...