GalaTime

This seems like a good occasion to resume blogging - the Hindu New Year - Samvat 2066. Fire-crackers all over in Pune, 52-week high in the Nifty-50 index and renewed economic optimism across the globe.

Quick reminder - you can subscribe to GalaTime via email here:

You still need to visit the site for charts and such, but the daily posts will be delivered to your inbox once you subscribe!

Alternatively, you can add this RSS feed to your aggregator (Bloglines, Google Reader, etc).

Apologies for the lack of posts over the past week - the usual hassles with moving from one city to another - and pleading for a broadband connection with Airtel / Tata Indicom / BSNL / Reliance / . . !

What hope do we have for Internet-based startups when it takes atleast a week to get a broadband connection in a metro, that too with 2 choices of providers?

Regular posts to resume asap.

Meanwhile, the Nifty remains weak, with 3000 far away: looks the the short leg of my bear call calendar spread will work out: 5L Virtual Portfolio: Nifty Calendar Spread

Well, 2008 was certainly an eventful year - those of us involved in the markets got an experience of a life-time. On the personal front, this was the first full year of entrepreneurial & trading experience for me, and it was fantastic in terms of learning - though not as much on the moolah side.

At Moneyoga, we went from a round of VC visits and website updates early on in the year to a focus on system development starting April, and full-time trading all the way till October. Since then, we’ve decided to discontinue further efforts on the Moneyoga.com site itself, and instead figure out a way to better utilize our analytics & systems for wealth management.

Looking to the future, 2009 is going to be a year of many new beginnings from me, including:

• Relocation to Pune - yup, it’s bye bye to Navi Mumbai and back to the place where I grew up.
• An Adjunct Faculty position at SIBM - this is something completely new for me, and it’s going to be fun talking about capital markets with MBA students.
• 2 new intiatives at GalaTime: 5 Lakh Virtual Portfolios & the Gujarati site. (I intend to expand the latter into print media as well).

As for investing / trading / money management, the new direction for 2009 will certainly build upon my data/analytics driven approach to markets and the urgent need for better (cost effective, client friendly, systematic) investment management solutions for retail investors in India.

Well, here’s something new - I’ve managed to hack a Gujarati version of GalaTime. It won’t be a full-fledged blog with several posts a day; but instead a combination of more detailed articles along with short daily features such as ‘Chart of the Day’, etc.

This is all very new - I’m still working out the kinks in the process:

• Create content (I think in English)
• Translate (an uphill task given I’ve never learnt Gujarati officially, but only via speaking)
  • Bless the folks at Gujarati Lexicon . . .
• Type out the content using Unicode
  • . . . and the ones at QuillPad
• Fix typos, grammar, etc.

The site is up at http://www.galatime.com/gujarati/

Do bear with me while I fix the numerous typos asap. But I’ve launched it anyways since there is nothing like public committment to keep one motivated.

I have a request for those of you who care either about site design and/or understand Gujarati - do provide ‘no holds barred’ feedback since it’s easier to fix things earlier on.

PS: Why the focus on Gujjus? Well, if you already don’t know, these bits of information might help: 

• Candidates for the NSE Derivatives Dealers Module have the option to take the test in English, Gujarati and Hindi language.
• “It is not only market-savvy investors from Gujarat, but also lead managers of IPOs from Mumbai, Delhi and other parts of the country, who look at Ahmedabad’s grey-market premium rates as an indicator of the price at which the issue is likely to get listed.”
• 62.8% of the demat accounts are in the five states – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka
  • Gujarat has 18% share. And of Maharashtra’s 22% share, how much do you think is captured by Mumbai?
• My (’aati kya khandala’ class)  Hindi is even worse than my Gujarati.

Anyhow, this should be fun.

Calculated Risk: Sad News: Tanta Passes Away

Tanta wrote a number of posts detailing the inner workings of the mortgage industry. These posts covered a wide range of topics, from mortgage servicing, to everything you want to know about mortgage backed securities (MBS), to reverse mortgages. She called these posts “The Compleat UberNerd” and in typical fashion she noted:

An “UberNerd” is someone who is compelled to understand how things work in grim detail, even if the things in question are tedious in the extreme …”

Tanta liked to ferret out the details. She was inquisitive and had a passion for getting the story right. Sometimes she wouldn’t post for a few days, not because she wasn’t feeling well, but because she was reading through volumes of court rulings, or industry data, to get the facts correct.

No other blogger came close to the depth & quality that Tanta maintained in her posts on the US mortgage mess.

My condolences.

Quick reminder - you can subscribe to GalaTime via email here:

You still need to visit the site for charts and such, but the daily posts will be delivered to your inbox once you subscribe!

Alternatively, you can add this RSS feed to your aggregator (Bloglines, Google Reader, etc).