The best school for sports in South Delhi

Thanks to SPOC, Karan, Shilpi and Dr. Sandeep. According to the web research I did, I think the rank for best sports school would be as follows

1. DPS RK Puram: It has the most coaches and gives coaching in the most number of sports.

2. SPV: Especially in cricket. Has a problem of small size. Old cricketing school, good cricket coaching in the morning

3. Vasant Valley: Same problem of small size, so getting enough good people for a strong team is more difficult. But very good coaching and small class size with individual attention. Places lot of emphasis on sports

4. DPS Vasant Kunj / Amity Saket/ Apeejay Sheikh Sarai / DPS MR/Modern BKR. All have reasonable coaching, good teams and good infrastructure

5. Laxman Public School (trying hard)

There are many north and west delhi schools which do well in the interschool competitions, but they are far away so I dont know them.

Shilpi, there are many misperceptions about DPS RKPuram, some of which I shared with you until recently, when I did the actual research.

As posted on admissionsnursery.com

Some data on the Dow Jones Industrial Average

There were stock market returns in the 1930s, they did not beat safe debt returns in terms of risk (speaking broadly). Look at the following charts

All Time: (In the long term, we are dead and cannot enjoy our money)http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia1900.html

1920-1940
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia19201940.html
Look at the knife you would have had to catch in 1932 (at DJI <40 to get the reward of DJI 150 in 1939. More likely, you would have got in at 1933 at DJI 100 and reached DJI 150 in 1939. Look at 1930 to 1932.How many downward plunges were there - you would have had no returns from 1931 to 1939 if you had called the bottom too early. Old people would die waiting in such a time frame

1940-1960:
No matter where you invest, you make money long term http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia19401960.html

1960-1980: Speaks for itself
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia19601980.html

1980-2000: Also speaks for itself
http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia19802000.html

I dont want returns 10 years from now, I would rather put it in debt securities and wait for a better opportunity in todays market

Investment thoughts for 2009

Only about 60% of the bad news is out, 40% bad news is yet to come (in my estimate). Some of the bad news still waiting to happen are:

Short Term (for 2009):
1. Earnings degrowth in Chinese companies, leading to loan defaults, Chinese bank failures and depressing commodity prices. There is a deafening silence from China right now, the bad news is likely to be humongous.

2. Earnings degrowth in Indian companies - though most companies will ride out the storm

3. Low commodity prices decimating the remaining value in Russian and Brazilian companies with loan defaults and more trouble for International banks

4. Slow grind down in USA with increased job seekers (fresh grads, laid off people and old people who are unable to make ends meet in retirement, all running after the same pool of shrinking jobs), causing marked reduction in salaries - bad news gadget makers and retailers and credit card companies

Long term (for 2010)
5. Collapse of the education market, since the fees are not commensurate with subsequent earnings prospect. There will also be student loan defaults, since high fees paid will not yield returns in the job market

6. Saturation in the computers and techno gadget markets will lead to poor performance by companies manufacturing these, since people will no longer buy useless gadgets when they already have a gadget which does similar work.

7. Decline in dollar value with low interest rate coupled with high fiscal deficit as the govt pump primes the economy will make imports expensive. People will stop buying cheap crap from Chinese companies because they dont need them and they get expensive. Chinese companies manufacturing useless articles will (and are already) going broke.

8. European high tech manufactures and high tech services will have a slowly shrinking market. The grind down there will be slower than US but equally prolonged.

9. Credit card defaults will continue through 2009 and 2010, putting presure on financials. It will also put severe pressure on retailers as is happening now.

10. Unexpected political events (wars) causing reduction in economic activity, effect of demographics in USA as the baby boomers age and the increased cost of medical attention are all risks not yet factored in.

My expectation:
The time to invest in India, China, Brazil and Russia is after their markets come down about 30-40% from current levels when more of the bad news comes out. Maybe later half of 2009 or first half of 2010

The time to invest in US markets is probably never in our lifetime. At least not for the next 15-20 years. If at all one has to invest, then after markets come down another 30-40% from current levels (Dow 5000 levels) in sharp downturns and trade actively, getting out on every sharp upturn.

Long term hold strategy may be to buy into low cost mutual funds at every downturn (Dow 5000 to 6000 levels) for young people. Old people are not able to hold for 10 years, so stay away from this strategy.

Stock selection will be very difficult in the next 10 years, since there is a change in the pattern of world economic activity, similar to what happened in the sixties and seventies. The tree will bear fruit in 2020, which tree nobody knows.

Old people should invest in debt securities for regular income.

Remember:
1. The time to invest long term in stocks after the 1929 crash was 10 years later in 1939.

2. The time to invest after the recession of the seventies and early eighties was 10 years after 1974

3. Stock selection after 1929 and 1974 was successful in the hands of just one or two super investors. And we dont know how much of that was luck siding with them

4. The world was changing in the 1930s. And the 1960s and 70s. The old ways died and nobody anticipated how things would be.

5. The world is on the threshold of unanticipated change, just like the 1930s and 1970s. The old ways will die. New patterns of living will emerge. The rules of investing will of course remain the same. And they are screaming - WATCH OUT! BE CAREFUL! DON'T GET TOO GREEDY!

We live in intersting times. Watch with curiosity, but keep your money safe, dont jump in too eagerly and with too much expectation.

(my post on The Motley Fool website)

November is always a busy month - too many conferences and the attendant need to prepare so many lectures, talks and papers, including rehearsing ones students. There was a phase in my life when I would have welcomed the travel. Now it is just more work.

But the last IAC conference in Allahabad touched a cord - not so much for the conference itself, which was exactly like all other conferences, but for the visit to Anand Bhavan. Nehru's family really lived in the style of rich English gentlemen and both their palatial mansions reflected the luxuriousness of the era. The garden was fabulous. Back then they had the same furniture, electric irons, libraries and cutlery which all of us use only now.

The initial wonder at their lifestyle slowly merged into sheer awe over the glorious freedom struggle - an excellent audiovisual tour was exceptionally evocative, dredging out the submerged memories of history textbooks read long ago. It was like living through history and being a part of it. All my colleagues from other colleges who accompanied me felt the same pull that I did - a marvelous shared experience.

This peek into our past made my first visit to Allahabad quite memorable.

The Subprime Bore

I have been hearing doomsday predictions for the last 7 years about a collapsing US economy and have believed them all. Still hasnt come true yet. And I am getting tired of the Cassandras and have started disbelieving doomsday scenarios.

The subprime crisis is the latest of a long list of crises that have preceded it. I doubt that it is as serious as the shrill voices on CNBC make it out to be.

As a person living in India, I would am sure about about one thing - the skill levels of the average American are so far above those of even the best Indians (living in India), that there can be no developing nation threat for the US in the forseeable future.

As for China, the Americans have tied them up effectively as cheap labour to power the US lifestyle. If US is over leveraged, imagine the overleveraged plight of China - its longterm infrastructure loans are enough to kill it with even a small hiccup in the Chinese economy. The US killed the Japanese economy by selling them overpriced real estate in the 80s. When South East Asia collapsed in the late 90s, the Americans (and British) picked up the bargain stocks cheap. Now they are killing the Chinese economy by selling them junk dollar bonds. Back in the nineteenth century, the British forced the Chinese to get addicted to opium and then forced them to buy opium from the British. The Chinese had no choice in the matter. Now the Americans have again left the Chinese with no option - they have to hold on to the falling dollar, or watch their economy perish. The people of China have been effectively addicted to a meteoric stock market - and when it falls, as it is bound to, there will be a Boxer rebellion against the communist government. And the Americans will be there to cherry pick the fallen stocks.

The US is the most powerful economic block in the world and is likely to remain so. The chaotic business channels may make a lot of noise, but life will go on, the people of USA will weather the storm, make a few adjustments and get back on top.

They have the competitive advantage.

As for a middle east crunch, I doubt that any Iranian military crisis is likely. More likely, oil will rise to $125, spark a mild and temporary recession, stock markets of USA and BRIC will fall like ninepins, oil will fall to a ridiculous level (maybe $20), Americans will make some life style adjustments, work hard (at something other than selling houses to each other) and by 2010 life will get back on track. Hedge funds will pick up great bargains from the BRIC markets, wealth will flow and the cycle would repeat itself ad-nauseum, as it always has.

(27 Jan 2009: Looking back, I was wrong about subprime crisis being unimportant (big wrong!), right about China (stock market index Shanghai composite went from over 5500 when I wrote to 2000 or so now; Boxer rebellions may emerge any time!), right about Iran (no war happened), right about oil price (went to 147 and then collapsed), wrong about oil price sparking recession because it was the subprime crisis itself which has sparked this recession (kind of right still, I think), right about stock prices of USA and BRIC (fell like ninepins), right about what choices Americans would make (suddenly people are scrambling to keep their jobs!). What happens in 2010 is still out there, but I might have been wrong to predict things getting back on track. Things look pessimistic now, as I have written in another recent post above.

Not a bad job of predictions, even if I say so myself. These predictions above were made when the Indian stock market was behaving like a rocket. I cashed out on my stock market investment in end November, missed 20% gain till Jan 7 of 2008, also missed the minus 50% move (much more in some stocks). Happy to have put my money where my mouth is, happy to not have been greedy for the last 20% and happy to be sitting on cash right now.

These predictions were posted by me on The Motley Fool. I pity the Fools who turned out to be fools and did not listen!)

Then and Now

Strange that the best sellers of long ago continue to be the bestsellers of today. The world of the thriller hasn’t changed much since the eighties when I was heavily into it.

Read Ed McBain’s “Fat Ollies Book”. Heavy handed humor but it succeeded rather well. Very entertaining and very uptodate with references to 9/11, terrorists and all. And we actually get to read the whole of Fat Ollies Book in the novel (all 36 pages of it). The Ed Mcbain I remember was mostly heavy handed police detective fiction, I don’t know when humor started intruding into his writing. Must go back and read his earlier work again. Its amazing that a writer from the fifties has been at it regularly for the last 50 years, producing a book every two or three years. Very different from Mickey Spillane, who wrote in the 50s and 60s too, stopped (except for a book a decade) then came out with “Something down there” in 2003, which flattered to deceive. I liked the beginning, even the name Mako Hooker for the main character (like the shark and Mike Hammer of long ago) – but the latter half and the ending were lifeless. And the book was nowhere near as violent as My Gun is Quick or I the Jury, which were amazing for their time and amazing even now, for the rawness of the violence. These were his first two books and on the recent re-read were stunning. But apart from the violence of his thought process, Spillane never had anything interesting to communicate and his plots were never entertaining. The Snake, One Lonely Night (which started well but degenerated into McCarthyish anticommunism), Survival Zero (total crap) and The death dealers (actually starring a hero called Tiger Mann!) were totally avoidable. The Twisted Thing was a good read for its plot and because the villain is a boy. Am yet to read The delta factor.

Mario Puzo’s Omerta was excellent – unputdownable. As good as his magnum opus The Godfather from the seventies, though written just a few years ago. It does glamorize Sicilian gansters, but that holds true for the Godfather too. Omerta was so good that I re-read and re-enjoyed Godfather. Puzo has written very few books, but whatever he has produced is brilliant. I would never have guessed that Godfather was written so long ago and that too based on events just after the second world war – it could have been written yesterday. A timeless book.

Spy vs. Spy

I have always had fond memories of Bernard Samson as the most likeable fictional spy I have ever read about. Fortunately the story line of almost all the Len Deightons I have read had completely slipped my memory, making the re-reads well worth it. Berlin Game is still brilliant after all these years – the best spy story I have ever read including the Le Carre trilogy as well. Mexico Set and London Match were more like unnecessary appendages, written just to let us get more of Samson than to have any meaningful story. Hadn’t read the Spy Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy before. Also superfluous as regards story – the same characters going around the mulberry bush again. Spy Sinker, written from Samson’s wife’s viewpoint, filled in the story gaps but was horrible, lacking the main reason one reads the stories – Samson’s first person narrative. I was able to get my hands on the first of the next trilogy – Faith. More going round the mulberry bush, but having more action. Very enjoyable, once again. Must read Hope and Charity, as well as Winter.

Frederich Forsyth’s Fourth Protocol had a brilliant first half, one of the best spy stories I have read. But the plot is totally over the top – toning down the hyperbole would have made it much more enjoyable. Why bring nuclear weapons into it at all when an ordinary bomb would have served equally well? The Negotiator, which I read next was worse – a million characters whom I didn’t bother to keep track, except the main protagonist. There were some good moments though. But when Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev are fictional characters in a book – I cant stomach that. Especially when the so called exposure of the villain occurs at the end. You have been wondering - Is it the Vice President? The Secretary of State? Director of FBI or CIA? And then it turns out to be some completely anticlimactic Deputy Director of FBI (or whatever his position was – I have already forgotten). Disastrous ending. Forsyth's latest book The Afghan was also excellent, but not for his story. Instead, it’s the re-telling of the riveting details of the 9/11 bombing, the Afghan war, the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood and the fight at Tora Bora which grip one. (Just as Odessa File is riveting just because of the details of Nazi genocide rather than the main story – I guessed the ending of Odessa File on the present re-read without difficulty, despite having forgotten the story completely) The actual fictional part of the Afghan was pathetic. Truth indeed has become stranger and more entertaining than fiction.

And shootout at Tora Bora seems to have replaced the shootout at OK Corral in the popular imagination.