What goes up, up and further up..... has to be suspended for one hour when it comes down....

I have always thought, a certain amount of stoicism about the markets is a healthy habit to develop. Recently, when the Indian Sensex fell intra-day around 1700 points hitting what they call a 10% lower-circuit, SEBI suspended trading for an hour, probably to cool it off. (For novices like me, I think the phrase 10% lower circuit roughly means that Sensex fell 10% in a single session). I wonder why they didn't do such a restrictive thing when the markets went up, up and up too ? Going up is okay, coming down is not, is it ? Or they should have allowed the free fall under gravity, come what may, so that the market finds its own realistic evaluation bottoms, whatever that might be and rest comfortably on the sofa. If indeed it is overvalued, then a prick of the balloon might actually have been helpful in knowing the solid stuff within. Looks like: It's somehow okay for the market to pick a large number of points spread over a week or so, although such pace is far different from earlier acceleration levels and not reflect fundamental strengths .... but it's somehow not okay when it falls. :). It's okay to make unusual gains when they are spread over a week but not okay to lose such gains on a single day however unusual the gains may have been.

I wonder how the free market enthusiasts would like to look at this : Is this financial systems regulation or interfering with free markets ? Another blog of Ramnath, Free Markets India, tries to keep a log of the various forces pulling and pushing, for or against the pursuit of free markets. I can understand corporate or political lobbying for exclusive economic privileges can be categorised as a pull or a push, but i think it's difficult to categorize regulatory actions. It's tough to draw a line between what is healthy regulation, developing robust financial systems, putting market infrastructure in place etc and what is just ad-hoc damage control. That day, even FM intervened to make a statement, which I thought was a little extra. Of course, I haven't researched to write this post, but I wonder if there is such a thing called breaking a 10% higher circuit, in the SEBI regulations, just like the 10% lower circuit. Asked an economics friend about whether such a thing is of importance to the free markets discussion. He said, in real life, there are a lot of constraints to free markets and these constraints are to be handled first in the pursuit of free markets. I might have to read up Raghuram Rajan to understand what these are.

I tend to subscribe more to the long term value addition approach. I think if one can:
park and wait in good (intrisically value adding) stocks/funds, stoically,
remember a bit of Shankara's references to Economics in Verse 30 of Bhaja Govindam, :) :) ,
be not worried about the everyday ups and downs,
keep cool without looking for reassurance from the FM to heave a sigh of relief,
sit on the eggs and wait for them to hatch for five or ten years,
then equity has the scope to fetch far better returns than other forms of investment in an equivalent period. Of course, this doesnt apply if one is sitting on a donkey fund or a dead stock or special disasters. Otherwise, A little peep, now and then, to just see the eggs are fine should do.

Quite possible, I am over-simplifying here what the Finance guys read across a few semesters. I have seen the non-tech guys trying to figure out a simplistic understanding of the tech abracadabra, and succeed in achieving a functional understanding and the non-finance guys try to do the same thing to finance subjects. When I was first unsuspectingly "exposed" to the verbal weapons called Debit and Credit, when the duo mockingly stared at me from the blackboard, Drawing a T-shaped organism to tally numbers used to cause nightmares and make me sit up and draw the Holy Cross on my chest. I used to cheer myself up with the Lakshmi Ashtothram, try to ignore those two words as mere hallucinations and think of it as just Inflow and Outflow. As if water flowing into a tank would be Debit and water flowing out of the tap, then, must be certainly Credit. Or is it the reverse ? :) . Well, depends on whether we are talking about the tank or about the bucket. Closing the tap and measuring the water must be.... wait, is it Balance Sheet ?. Whateva. Something is better than nothing. Of course, Everything is even better, if you can handle it. There is no powerful substitute to in-depth research into a subject.

Seeking the Source

I have a fascination for rivers. One reason is my early impressions of Cauvery in full flow at Srirangam in my childhood days. Nowadays, it's more often dry due to "known issues" but the images of the river in all its majesty have stayed. Okay, if you want, etched in my memory. It used to be mentioned in our textbooks that while in some places it can get as narrow as "aadu thaandum kaviri" (so narrow as a goat can cross it in a jump) , it also becomes "Akanda Kaveri" (so vast that you see water till where your eyes can reach). Krishna @ Kanakadurgam is very good, it's tough to be in flow all year round in the south and it's Andhra Pradesh's good fortune that it is blessed with two of them, Krishna and Godavari.

Best so far and almost matchless are Ganges and the other further north rivers that drive in to the Ganga. Mandakini @ Kedar, tops them all. Heard Brahmaputra is among the most ferocious rivers and makes it extremely tough for river-rafting. Our raft coach, whom i believe has rafted in 11 countries, rated Brahmaputra as the toughest and the most exciting raft destination. A friend who visited Beas @ Kulu, Himachal Pradesh was full of praise for it.

Two rivers I want to visit some day : Godavari and Narmada. Godavari for comparing it with Krishna, particularly, Godavari @ Bhadrachalam. Seems there is a two-day trip on boat that ends at Bhadrachalam. Narmada, for the fanciful images I have about its grandeur and also about its enormity as discussed by the NBA. Walking all the way from Kerala, Adi Shankara is said to have met his guru Gowdapada on the banks of the River Narmada. Why mention this here, well, he is one of my icons, so I have to bring in my icons and all their fascinations into my posts. Someday, I should post nice pictures from our Chardham trip, taking the blog to the next level, photo blogging. Even as I write, Ramnath has already beat me to it by posting pictures of the Bhagirathi Mountain, hopefully I will supplement that by posting pictures of the Bhagirathi River.

Chitravathi is rarely in good flow, but when it recently indeed was, we all made a beeline to the river especially to watch it flow. There was even some news/rumour that some bund/dam upstream was broken due to heavy rains and chitravathi would flood, that was not to be. Or as in local slang, antha scenu ledhu. But it was in pretty good flow. And that was good scenery. A friend of friend of somebody offered Chilli Bajjis, it aptly fitted the occasion, so we put a heheheh face and gladly accepted, munched and shot off and dedicated that day's group discussion entirely to the Chitravathi river, its origin, its problems, it's floods in the earlier years and to the responsible policemen who were warning the folks not to venture into the river. Now there is a also a nice road that runs parallel to the river, so makes it a very good stretch for walkers, thinkers, poets and meditators (as long as you are not on the road). And hey yes, more recently, for bloggers too. One of my friends mentioned it's particularly wonderful on cool early mornings. Hmm.. to confirm that personally, I will have to change my schedule and check out some day.

As kids, we were trained to chant a sloka when we are just about to finish our bath, invoking the sacred rivers. My sanskrit is poor and even worse when I put it in English, but here it is:

Gangecha Yamunechaiva Godavari Saraswathi
Narmadey Sindhu Kaveri Jalesmin Sannidhim Kuru

(The meaning is here. )

I think rivers have something ethereal about them. For one, they have a calming effect on your mind. After a brief calm, they can ignite your imagination. They make you reflect on your imaginations and prod you to seek their source, i mean the river's source, and when you reach their source, they inspire you to find the source of your imaginations. And once you are done, they make you blog about what they have done to you.

Blogmentor Parampara

So... Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here, finally. Been thinking of starting a blog for the past two years but it never materialised for the usual reasons. One of these Web 2.0 sites should study what inhibits people like me with an initial inclination to blog/interact on the web and makes them put it off for later. And probably also why interest wanes after a while.

Among others, the two things that helped it happen are :

(a) Inspiration from a friend whom I should call my "blogmentor" Ramnath
(http://ramz.blogspot.com/ ) and
(b) a laptop, broadband connection in my room.

I was never comfortable about the idea of blogging from office and I am too lazy to walk down all the way to a cyber cafe for the noble cause of creative writing.

Two things to create when you need to make people buy a product/service:
1. Interest and
2. Access. (Aaha, what gyaan !!) .

There should be something like the blogmentor parampara like the guru-shishya parampara, who inspired whom to start blogging.

Started the blog on the Vijayadasami day, but quite funny that I didn't know what to write after I created the blog. So today I thought I will push myself to write something up. To call it a writer's block will be too hi-fi a term to describe the starting trouble. Nor can I say my mind went blank, you might think I have attained too high a spiritual state too quickly. Probably I should start by providing links to stuff I have written earlier but that would be like serving cold bindi fry from the refridgerator, the majaa is lost, not on Day 1, so will reserve that for a gloomy day. Hopefully, I will pick up some momentum and write without pushing.

In the meanwhile, you are welcome to push me. And thanks Ramnath for the first.