Jekyll2023-06-02T02:38:59+00:00https://ubergeek.me/feed.xmlZaid HakakMy small space in a crowded place.Learning To Invest - Part 12017-12-27T00:00:00+00:002017-12-27T00:00:00+00:00https://ubergeek.me/writings/learning-to-invest<p>At work I am inundated with financial buzz words all the time, It is {code} vs equities, derivatives… Being a tech guy, I knew next to nothing about what was being discussed.</p>
<p>As days passed by and I settled down to engineer Minance’s tech, which also powers our new website(which will be up in a few weeks), mobile apps and web dashboard, my interest towards investing in stock markets grew and the curious cat inside me wanted to dive right in. I was excited. Why did I want to invest? Three reasons. One, learning about investing would help me manage my finances better; two, help me build better products for Minance, and three, save tax. All I needed now was someone to guide my sails.</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*xFV64SfNNT0Exf9o5k_Zeg.jpeg" alt="Learning_to_Invest_1.jpg" /></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I decided to go to the best source I knew, Anurag Bhatia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Anurag is Minance’s CEO and a seasoned investor. He asked me to first identify what my investment goal was, essentially a self-evaluation. I’m financially stable, and with no major expenses coming up, hence I can invest for the long term. This let me build corpus while also saving tax on my income.</p>
<p>However as a Muslim, I have certain rules that I have to abide by, which include prohibitions against making money from interest based securities as well as forbidding investments in alcohol, gambling, and firearms.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Shari’ah compliant investing or Islamic Finance if you will.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*pDmRvaSX49aBiIEd669L1w.jpeg" alt="Learning_to_Invest_2.jpg" /></p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Zaid</em>: What is the difference between investment philosophy, and investment strategy ? What should I choose?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Anurag</em>: Investment philosophy is a set of guiding principles that determine your decision making process. Investment strategy is the method you use to invest. In your case, your investment philosophy should be buying stocks in growth companies and holding them for 3–5 years. Your strategy should be building a portfolio of 15–20 growth stocks after researching them instead of going the mutual fund route.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Zaid</em>: Which is better, yearly lump sum investments or monthly SIP’s?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Anurag</em>: Empirical studies show that SIPs are always more profitable when the investment timeframe is more than 10 years.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Zaid</em>: Do we have any Shari’ah compliant investment options in India?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Anurag</em>: No. There has not been much push from RBI or SEBI to bring in Shari’ah compliant investments. There was some chatter from RBI to set up an Islamic Bank but that went nowhere. There’s a Shari’ah compliant mutual fund by TATA though.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We initially narrowed down my options to two choices:</p>
<ul>
<li>Equities for long term investment and</li>
<li>ELSS (Equity Linked Saving Scheme) for tax savings.</li>
</ul>
<p>We did some quick research and came to know that a Sharia Compliant ELSS does not exist in India, so that went off the list and Anurag advised me to invest my capital in a curated list of stocks. After a ton of research, we shortlisted the following stocks to be included my portfolio.</p>
<ol>
<li>KEC International</li>
<li>Finolex Cables</li>
<li>Dr. Lal Path Labs</li>
<li>Godrej Properties</li>
<li>Vakrangee</li>
<li>India Glycols</li>
</ol>
<p>Now let’s go through each of the stocks we chose and dissect these companies.</p>
<p><strong>KEC International</strong> is India’s second largest manufacturer of electric power transmission towers and one of the largest Power Transmission Engineering companies in the world and is part of the $4.0 billion RPG Group.
It has a strong global footprint with improving margins from SAE Towers (gaining traction from Brazil) and Saudi JV. Soubhagya scheme will aid domestic order growth for T&D and Cables. Foray into Africa reduces the risk from few geographies. Railway track electrification and signalling is growing at 230% YoY adding top-line and diversification.</p>
<p><strong>Finolex Cables</strong> is an Indian manufacturer of electrical and telecom cables and is a part of $510 million Finolex Group. JV with J-Power systems will gain traction in high power transmission (500Kv) along with Telecom cables showing growth. CFL/LED and Switches division has a CAGR of ~ 20%. High capex cycle will provide green-shoots. Decision of not selling leftover Copper rods to outsiders and focus on captive consumption gives head room for margins to grow while rising copper prices are a threat as raw material costs can squeeze margins.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. Lal Path Labs</strong> is an international service provider of diagnostic and related healthcare tests with an annual revenue of $142 million. Focused on asset light (leasing) and a Hub -Spoke model have improved margins. Targeted expansion by developing reference labs in Lucknow and Kolkata have improved their geographical presence. With increase in health awareness, disposable incomes and literacy rates, households increasingly demand better healthcare facilities and quality of care. Also increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases will add traction in the future.</p>
<p><strong>Godrej Properties</strong> is an Indian real estate company with an annual revenue of $270 million. In its push for affordable housing Godrej Properties (GPL) has acquired a new group housing project in Sohna (new market entry). Despite sluggish residential demand in NCR over last 4 years, GPL has leveraged its strong brand name and product quality well, leading to strong sales in most of its ongoing NCR projects. In past 5 years, the company has been steadily ramping up its project portfolio in the NCR through JDA/JV/Development Management deals with local developers.This allows the local partner to handle various project approvals/clearances, while GPL focuses on leveraging its strong brand name and product quality to provide the necessary selling/marketing push. Consequently, most of GPL’s NCR projects have seen strong new sales and sold 80% plus inventory in its ongoing NCR projects. Importantly, the company recorded such strong performance despite overall NCR residential demand being sluggish in past 3–4 years.</p>
<p><strong>Vakrangee</strong> is a technology solutions company, focusing on creating India’s largest network of last-mile retail points-of-sale, to potentially enable every Indian to seamlessly benefit from financial inclusion, social inclusion, Digital India, Skill Development, Employment, Government programmes and a wider access to basic goods and services. With an annual revenue of $6.1 million, they have no long term debt and are constantly expanding and increasing their penetration. Camany has been maintaining profit growth of over 50% in the last 5 years and has maintained a high 3 year ROCE of 30% .</p>
<p><strong>India Glycols</strong> holds the distinction of being the only green petrochemical company of its kind. With an annual revenue of $386 million, it is one of the leading manufacturers of glycols, ethoxylates and PEGs, performance chemicals, glycol ethers and acetates, natural gums and potable alcohol. India Glycols is the first and only company in the world to have commercialized the production of ethylene oxide, its derivatives and glycols from renewable agricultural resources. The profit has doubled and margins have improved. Revenue is increasing .</p>
<p><em>In the next part of this series we will focus on the mathematics of building an efficient portfolio. Until then, Happy New Year!</em></p>
<p>…</p>
<p><em>This article was originally published at <a href="https://wonkery.minance.com/learning-to-invest-in-the-indian-stock-market-with-anurag-bhatia-part-1-4332e051d9d7">Wonkery</a>, Like it? Read more Wonkery <a href="https://wonkery.minance.com/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Interested in <a href="http://www.minance.com">Minance</a>? See how we can help you with wealth management.</em></p>At work I am inundated with financial buzz words all the time, It is {code} vs equities, derivatives… Being a tech guy, I knew next to nothing about what was being discussed.Database Views With Django2017-08-10T00:00:00+00:002017-08-10T00:00:00+00:00https://ubergeek.me/writings/Database-Views-Django<p>In the Django ORM, a database table is tied to a Django ORM model, but it is also possible to tie a database view with a Django ORM model. By doing so, you can hide the data aggregation logic on the database level (in view creating SQL). And most of the ORM features, like double underscore foreign key lookup, still work for the model tied to a database view.</p>
<h3 id="the-regular-models">The Regular Models:</h3>
<p>This example uses the following regular models. Each model has a database table tied to it.</p>
<div class="language-python highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.db</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">models</span>
<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">Graph</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">models</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">Model</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="n">user_id</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">models</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">CharField</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">db_column</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">'USER_ID'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">primary_key</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">max_length</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">20</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">date</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">models</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">DateField</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">db_column</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">'DATE'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="n">product</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">models</span><span class="p">.</span><span class="n">DecimalField</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">db_column</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">'PRODUCT'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">max_digits</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">35</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">decimal_places</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">2</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">Meta</span><span class="p">:</span>
<span class="n">managed</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">False</span>
<span class="n">db_table</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">'NET_PRODUCT_WISE'</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>The graph model is used to store the data used to populate the graph. It has a foreignkey to the user_id model.</p>
<h3 id="the-database-view">The Database View</h3>
<p>The database view is created by following the SQL and it can be injected into a customized data migration with the raw SQL execution command.</p>In the Django ORM, a database table is tied to a Django ORM model, but it is also possible to tie a database view with a Django ORM model. By doing so, you can hide the data aggregation logic on the database level (in view creating SQL). And most of the ORM features, like double underscore foreign key lookup, still work for the model tied to a database view.The Learning Curve2016-05-06T00:00:00+00:002016-05-06T00:00:00+00:00https://ubergeek.me/writings/yakshaving-learning-curve<p>As a learner, difficulty is almost always proportional to learning.
Literally every day I try to get out of my comfort zone, sometimes I fail, sometimes I get things done and sometimes I end up Yak-Shaving.
Well let’s talk about Yak Shaving for a few seconds.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You want to borrow your neighbours hose so that you can wash your car, but remember last week? You broke their rake, so you need to go to the hardware store to buy a new one and that means driving to the hardware store, Now you start looking for your keys. You eventually find your keys inside a tear in a cushion - but you can’t leave the cushion torn, because the cat will destroy the cushion if they find a little tear. The cushion needs a little more stuffing before it can be repaired, but it’s a special cushion filled with exotic Tibetan Yak Hair.
The next thing you know, you’re standing on a hillside in Tibet shaving a yak and all you wanted to do was wash your car.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>The 10,000 Hour Rule</strong></p>
<p>In his book “Outliers - The Story of Success”, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. He went on to study the life of highly successful people to find out how they achieved success.</p>
<p>As per Gladwell’s research: We could choose a field, practice it for 10,000 hours and voila!
You ahve mastered the skills.</p>
<p>By now you already know the mantra of success, It’s that simple: Drop out of college, start a company, and become a billionaire, right?</p>
<p>Wrong.</p>
<p><strong>Deliberate Practice</strong></p>
<p>Thanks to “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, people mistakenly think if they practice something for 10,000 hours they will become great at it.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0544456238/?tag=jamesaltuc-20">Anders Ericsson</a>, the professor who first theorized the 10,000 hour rule, has me corrected on this. “It’s not practice, but deliberate practice.” He says.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You have to have feedback as quickly as possible. 10,000 hours with a mentor, with constant feedback, is critical.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What better feedback than skateboarding? You skate, you make a mistake, you fall, you bleed. Repeat.</p>
<p>If you don’t get better, you break bones and have to stop. If you learn from your mistakes with the help of you coach, you stop bleeding.</p>
<p>If you are thinking about a starting a business it become more difficult. It can take years for a business to fail or succeed. So you don’t get that instant feedback.</p>
<p>So the best approach to get better at something like business, or writing, or anything, you have to break it up into small chunks that teach you quickly how not to fail.</p>
<p><strong>Optimising The Learning Curve</strong></p>
<p><img src="/images/SteepLearningCurve_Uber1Geek.jpg" alt="SteepLearningCurve_Uber1Geek.jpg" /></p>
<p>Optimised learning curve refers to the steepest learning curve.
A good way to identify the steepest learning curve is to look out for the most difficult task at hand. Choose difficult task and keep yourself constantly under pressure.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One needs to find the right balance between being under pressure and managing stress at the same time, this varies from individual to individual, so you’ll need to fine tune it to your likeness.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For example when you have multiple tasks for perform, choose one with the most imminent deadline. You can beat procrastination like this.</p>
<p>Another sign for spotting steepness is unfamiliarity with the “body of knowledge” under consideration. If you keep practicing things that you’re already good at, you’re not actually learning much, you are just stuck in a vortex. Sometimes, constant work in a single area is required - like for domain experts who want to dive deeper, but for most learners (especially undergrads) this is not true.</p>
<p><img src="/images/graph_of_learning.jpg" alt="graph_of_learning.jpg" /></p>
<p>When choosing a problem you have 3 choices :</p>
<ol>
<li>You already know how to solve it (Comfort Zone)</li>
<li>You don’t know how to solve it, but you know what to learn in order to solve it (Learning Zone)</li>
<li>You are clueless and have no idea about the problem (Panic Zone)</li>
</ol>
<p>Another important thing is to realize when to leave a particular learning activity. Learning something new and interesting is often like reading a thriller novel - We find it boring first, then we are totally into it and at the end all the secrets are exposed.</p>
<p>You need to know when to stop reading that novel. You need not become a world expert at everything. Your expertise should be ‘T’ Shaped - Knows a bit about a lot of things and knows a lot about something. Change your niche when you think you’re not learning enough.</p>
<p><em>*Illustrations by Arwa Khalid and Natasha Wani .</em></p>
<p><em>*With inputs from Mir Nazim.</em></p>As a learner, difficulty is almost always proportional to learning. Literally every day I try to get out of my comfort zone, sometimes I fail, sometimes I get things done and sometimes I end up Yak-Shaving. Well let’s talk about Yak Shaving for a few seconds.Slipstream Life Hacking2016-04-23T00:00:00+00:002016-04-23T00:00:00+00:00https://ubergeek.me/writings/slipstream-lifehacking<p>There is a good chance that you may have dropped a buttered toast atleast once in your life, you might have observed that the toast always lands the butter side down, creating a greasy mess on your table or the floor. Why does it always land the butter side down?
Well, a team of researchers from Manchester MET University dropped 100 slices from the table and have found the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2410532/Why-toast-falls-butter-Scientists-finally-uncover-reason--height-table.html">answer</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Guess who’s involved? Uhmm..
It’s Mr.Somersault.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Scientists say toast falls butter side down because it only has time to rotate half a somersault before landing. Well I don’t want to go into details of the Butter Toast Theory, my main purpose was to lay emphasis on failure, As you sail though the journey of life, you will realize failure’s are evident, dropping the toast on floor is a failure but what do you do after that? you go and make yourself a new one.</p>
<p>I have failed to pass a test quite a few times during my graduation, primarily due to other occupations and my dis-interest in mainstream academia but then what did i do?</p>
<p>I didn’t lose hope, I made the effort to appear again.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As Professor Harold Hill has said — “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The most important part of achievement is to start, even though finishing is often thought of as having arrived. It’s so easy to get caught up in wondering about how things will turn out that we lose sight of getting started. Also, if you are always worried about failing, or the obstacles that may come up along the way, this can deter you from even starting. But it is all imaginary thinking because you only know what will really happen when you start moving towards your goal and deal with these challenges as you come upon them.</p>
<p>Be flexible with “not-so-important” details in life. Don’t complain about the laptop you have or the internet speed. Always optimise your <a href="http://ubergeek.me/yakshaving-learning-curve/">learning curve.</a></p>There is a good chance that you may have dropped a buttered toast atleast once in your life, you might have observed that the toast always lands the butter side down, creating a greasy mess on your table or the floor. Why does it always land the butter side down? Well, a team of researchers from Manchester MET University dropped 100 slices from the table and have found the answer.Hello World !2016-04-21T00:00:00+00:002016-04-21T00:00:00+00:00https://ubergeek.me/writings/Hello-World<div class="language-python highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="k">print</span> <span class="s">"A simple Hello could lead to a million things."</span>
</code></pre></div></div>print "A simple Hello could lead to a million things."