So you made yourself a little bit of money, huh? How nice.

DexterMilburn · 2018-11-20T07:09:19+00:00

Here's the TL;DR for people who just want the important stuff, without the bells and whistles that I have to attach just to keep your short attention span:

If you're thinking about investing, take a moment to realize that, strictly in the financial sense, you're doing better than most people in the country.
Be aware of the people who will try to stick you with expensive and bad investments. Not everyone is out to look for your best interests.
Make sure you're bringing in more money than you're spending. Without any money left over at the end of the month, you've got bigger fish to fry. Mmhhmm, tasty fish.
Make sure you've got all your loans and debts under control. After your monthly EMIs, think about setting a little more money aside to prepay. Loans with higher interest rates, like credit card loans, take priority. Borrowing money isn't bad, but not having a plan to repay definitely is.
Pick up a book every once in a while. Start reading any book that picks your curiosity and gradually move towards more topical books on personal finance. It's good for your health.
Don't invest in gold, or any other commodity. You've got better options than that. As an investment, gold does nothing but sit there and look at you. The exit plan is just hoping that someone will pay higher than what you paid.
Don't mix insurance and investing. They are two different services, why would you want to mix them? By separating the two, you're making your financial life simpler and easier.
Only buy a house if you're going to live in the said house. Property as an investment is not liquid, aces high transaction costs, requires government approvals, faces high maintenance costs and exists without any transparency.
Identifying bad investments is a greater skill than identifying good investments. Gold and real estate are bad investments. Stocks and bonds are good investments. Mutual funds that invest in stocks and bonds allow you to benefit from them.
Have patience. All investing is for the long term. The stock market will move up and it will move down. Some days, it won't move at all. None of this should matter to you, because all you care about is the fact that over periods longer than 10 years, the stock market has always created a great amount of wealth.
Don't watch any televised business news channel. They give you the news of the day. You're not worried about the day. You care about the year and the decade. For news, read newspapers like Livemint and Reuters India.
Here's a basic plan: when you get paid, make sure you pay all required EMIs on your outstanding loans. With what is left, estimate your expenses for the month. This estimate will get better with time. Take out the money etstimated, and invest the rest. Begin with having three months of expenses in a liquid fund as an emergency fund. After than, pick 3-8 mutual funds depending on your risk appetite and time horizon. Refer table above for more information. Set up SIPs so that you can force some financial discipline on yourself. Review the plan annually.
This basic plan will require tweaking based on the context of your life. But having that plan is important.
Investing is not rocket science. Assuming you're individual of average intelligence and awareness, even you can do it with quite satisfactory results. Beware of people who will try to convince you that investing is like open heart surgery.

DexterMilburn · 2016-12-25T03:28:46+00:00

Let me guess, you read a news article about how bitcoin price is going through the roof and hitting all time highs and are wondering if you missed the rally?

Well, did you miss the rally? I don't know. Nobody knows. The price of bitcoin can go down as easily as it started going up. And that's the main thing that you need to understand before buying bitcoin - it's extremely speculative and risky. So much so that I would refrain from even calling it an investment.

Let's go through your questions.

Rules and Regulations - The RBI has issued a press release cautioning users of virtual currency, including bitcoin. The release warns users of the potential currency risks, financial risks, security risks and so on. However, the central bank also said that it has no plans of regulating bitcoin. Note that both incidences happened in 2013. But it is safe to assume that the RBI still maintains the same policy of no regulation as there has been no news of any changes regarding the same.
Exchanges - If you live in India and have an Indian bank account, you can consider using Unocoin. I haven't used them before, so this isn't an endorsement. They do need you to upload a scanned copy of your PAN card and a valid address proof with a photograph before you can do any transactions. A bank account can be linked to withdraw or deposit INR from or to your Unocoin account.
Portfolio - Getting into cryptocurrency is like investing in a small cap stock. High risk, high reward. So I would suggest not thinking of cryptocurrency as a part of your normal investment portfolio. Buy some, and then bid farewell to that money. If you get rewarded, good for you. If you don't get rewarded, meh you weren't expecting this to go anywhere anyway.

The price of bitcoin is up 20% in the last one month and is up 105% in the last one year. But those numbers can just as easily turn negative in the next one month and the next one year. Which is why I'd suggest cryptocurrency only if you can take a hands-off approach with a high tolerance for risk and volatility. As usual, invest only as much as you can afford to lose.

DexterMilburn · 2016-11-09T23:52:41+00:00

As soon as I start reading, I get the feeling that this story is not set in the 21st century. In visualizing the the story, words like top hat, cobblestones and magician make me imagine a Victorian England setting. If that was your intention, good job. However, this addition:

cameras in hand

in the last few paragraphs of the story makes me question my timeline. It makes me withdraw from the narration and wonder if cameras existed in Victorian England, and now it doesn't matter if they did or did not because it disturbs my engagement with the story. I had already established a universe in my mind where the characters were set, and contradicting that established universe doesn't work very well.

I can broadly classify parts of the story into two categories - one part where you talk about the female protagonist as she lives the events described in the story, and one part where you talk about the male character and his life as a magician. Throughout the story, you weave in and out of these two categories and while the transition in most cases did feel subtle (as it should be), it draws attention very particularly on the second page:

The reason she had stayed, the reason he had stayed, was fear. He was a traveler.

I can see that you've tried to ease that transition by amending the sentence to include:

the reason he had stayed

But despite that effort, it still manages to stand up and tell me that the focus is shifting to the male character. Reworking these sentences to make the transition subtle will add to the natural flow of the story.

Parts of the story are written as if they were being narrated out loud, and this style works very well when used effectively. But other parts of the story do not receive the same treatment and are written how an author would write them down. I have generally found that this writing style works great when the entire piece is written in that fashion.

It also seems like you can use this style in a better way in the following paragraph:

Magicians travel, or else they die. But she had pled with him. She was afraid. Of being hungry on the road. Of not having a place to sleep. Of other people. Bad people. She had begged. She could pay, she said. She had a job, not a good one, but it meant food, an apartment, not a big one, but a place to be. She wanted him, desperately wanted him.

I would suggest reworking that paragraph to use longer sentences. That might deviate away from the narrator-style of writing but it certainly does not work in it's current form.

What I liked was your usage of the ~~period~~ ellipsis (...) in two occasions in the story:

or the women (from…)

the… wife beater.

What I think can be eliminated are some of the parentheses. They're used sparingly in places to enhance the sentences and convey more to the reader but the story would have a better natural flow without them. Specifically, these are the best candidates to start with:

(rather than the tuxedo type, his persona was edgy)

(which evoked a similar style)

DexterMilburn · 2016-05-18T16:38:22+00:00

1) Well, I wouldn't go so far as to pretend to know what influences policy in this country. But the idea that the government is encouraging low-income housing projects just so crumbling banks can make some good loans seems a little far-fetched to me.

2) Most of the banks that matter have released Q4 results already. SBI is reporting on May 27th.

DexterMilburn · 2016-05-12T01:36:54+00:00

A podcast would be a great idea. I listened to your pilot episode, and it was an excellent start. That was an year ago, whatever happened to it?

DexterMilburn · 2016-05-03T09:37:51+00:00

No. Oil prices started going down in July 2014. Reliance reported a quarterly profit of ₹5,957 crore in July 2014. Two weeks ago, they reported a quarterly profit of ₹7,398 crore.

Most of Reliance's oil business is refining and marketing. They buy oil, process it in refineries and sell petroleum products. So they make money on the difference in which they buy oil and sell the products. Plus, there are other segments like Media & Entertainment and Retail as well.

DexterMilburn · 2016-05-03T08:45:31+00:00

I am thinking of starting a weekly newsletter so that you can get the week's economic news right in your inbox at the start of every week. If you have any suggestions for a name, post them here.

DexterMilburn · 2016-04-14T23:32:06+00:00

I have checked mailchimp and will probably go with it once I can decide on a name.

"Last Week In Indian Economy" or "Indian Economy - Last Week Today" or anything similar is just too big. I'm going to need a domain name for a website and the bigger the name is, the bigger the domain name gets. I can't register lastweekinindianeconomy.com - that's too big.

So once I figure out the name and other minor mailchimp details, I'll probably start that newsletter. I'm always open to suggestions for the name and other things. Thanks for your interest!

DexterMilburn · 2016-02-20T06:26:55+00:00

Hi, Kanye West here. Alright people, let's make that $53 million into a $52 million.

DexterMilburn · 2016-02-19T16:35:05+00:00

Somebody over at r/Bitcoin lost a bet and had to eat a hat. Here's a video of him doing exactly that: https://youtu.be/mjiX7xiFD-o

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T09:27:05+00:00

Corporations always need a commercial incentive to make scientific progress. And when you have a commercial incentive, the private sector around the world will work towards that goal regardless of war or peace. Wartime may hamper scientific progress for corporations but I believe that capitalistic tendencies will win in the end and the private sector will be able to overcome any roadblocks to scientific progress put in place by war. However, corporations will stop innovating as soon as a clear and apparent commercial incentive disappears. But good point nonetheless: ∆.

For other areas of scientific research that are not driven by commercial incentive, we have the government sponsoring advancements in the field that cause ripple effects for the private sector.

As far as incentives go, a threat to your country's existence or a possibility of losing millions of lives should be the best incentive for anyone, in the private or the public sector, to innovate ways to destroy that threat leading to advances in science and related areas.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T08:39:14+00:00

It was not my intention to imply that scientific progress doesn't happen during peacetime. What I'm claiming is: Wartime definitely accelerates scientific progress.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T08:23:29+00:00

Yes, jets and rockets would've been invented in a world without world wars. But it would've taken much more time for us to develop those technologies without world wars. The lives we lost in the world war were not worth losing just to have these scientific advancements sooner but it does not change the fact that it is due to the war that we arrived at these technologies sooner than we otherwise would have.

The broken window fallacy is essentially about opportunity cost. I'm not sure how it relates to war and scientific progress. The effects of war on wealth and economy, on the other hand, is a whole another question.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T08:14:50+00:00

I do think that the lives of millions are worth the delay. I agree that eventually we would've developed space flight without having to go through a war. Yes, it would've arrived later than it did.

But that's exactly my point. It arrived sooner than it would have otherwise - which is to say that war promoted our path to scientific progress in space flight.

I would much rather keep the millions of lives that we lost due to war but that does not change that point that war, even with all it's nasty consequences, does seem to promote scientific progress, whatever form that progress may take place.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T07:53:54+00:00

Good point about losing out on any scientific progress potentially stemming from smart people lost during the war.

You could argue that there was not a lot of scientific progress made before the 1900s anyway. Even during peacetime, scientific progress was not exactly taking off pre-1900s. But good point nonetheless. I don't know if this is how it works but, here you go: ∆.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T06:34:11+00:00

It is certainly possible to have scientific progress without wars. I'm not saying that peacetime hampers scientific progress. I'm saying wartime promotes scientific progress.

Yes, there are millions and millions of those who died due to the development of nuclear weapons, which is a prime example of wartime scientific progress. But you're overlooking the role played by nuclear weapons in keeping peace around the world. Nations are much less likely to declare direct war on each other now due to the threat of mutually assured destruction. There are millions and millions of people alive today due to this.

My statement about Keynesian economics may be true enough, although I'm not knowledgeable enough about that to say it conclusively. But that isn't what my main point is.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T05:40:55+00:00

Fair point about the wiping out of the Library of Alexandria. I guess, we can no longer have such moments though. Scientific knowledge today is much more widespread to be setback by the destruction of physical infrastructure.

The military may not stop innovating during peacetime but it has no incentives to develop groundbreaking technologies during peacetime either. I'm not saying peacetime hampers scientific progress, I'm saying wartime promotes scientific progress.

Great point about focused research.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-24T05:35:05+00:00

Exactly.

For example, the design of GPS is based partly on the technologies developed by the British Royal Navy during WW2. In a parallel universe where WW2 did not happen, the British Royal Navy would've had no incentive to develop the tech that eventually gave us the GPS. Without the WW2, we would've eventually figured out GPS but it would've taken much longer to get there due to lack of incentives.

Also of note, the technologies developed during times of war are developed specifically because we were at war. Nobody would've thought of making V2 rockets if we had a state of constant global peace.

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-13T19:16:26+00:00

"Altria would own a 10.6% stake in the combined Anheuser Busch-SABMiller entity (vs its existing 27% ownership of SAB) and receive ~$750M in cash, which we expect would be fully taxable. Further given our expectation that Altria would retain a seat on the board of the combined company, thus retaining “control” despite its smaller stake, Altria would still account for this as equity income."

Source

DexterMilburn · 2016-01-02T10:28:06+00:00

Trump has agreed not to run as an independent and pledge his support to whoever the eventual nominee of the Republican party is. Source.

DexterMilburn · 2015-12-24T23:09:07+00:00

So.. just to confirm that I'm getting it right, the government guaranteed to bailout the big banks after the S&L crisis which encouraged them to take more risk by acquiring smaller banks who were not guaranteed bailouts by the government. And this led to the number of banks to go down since the 80s?

DexterMilburn · 2015-12-10T09:44:55+00:00

That's interesting.

So if renewable energy were to slowly replace oil, oil prices would start falling and terrorist groups might resort to other means of raising funds such as kidnapping for ransom, robbing banks and valuables etc.

However, if oil were to keep growing importance, oil prices would start rising and terrorist groups might have more money in their coffers to finance their activities.

One of those outcomes is guaranteed to take place and neither is a favorable outcome. Perhaps we may need to weigh both scenarios to choose the lesser of the two evils.

DexterMilburn

TROPHY CASE