Stocks Stocks Everywhere

After much contemplation and thought, I have finally made up my mind to take a peek into the world of bulls and bears(read as Stock trading). This new found interest has kept me busy these days which otherwise was pretty much not so exciting and uneventful.

Unfortunately, i have seen more of bearish market due to some US subprime woes. No..please don't ask me what it stands for :-) But i am optimistic that some or other day, there will be bull run and i would be a millionaire of sorts...i guess that's the exact reason why people invest in stocks....though very few admit it.

I have tried to list few of the learnings that i had within a short stint of 2 months in stock market.
They are:
1. Never procrastinate things..opportunity doesn't knock your door twice. Act fast.
2. Team up with right people who have had fair experience in this market for advice. I am fortunate enough to find these people as one my friends..
3. At the end of the day, this is bit like gambling..so forget about guaranteed returns and pray for your luck though you can upto a certain extent minimize the risks..
4. Patience is a virtue and helps if you believe in particular stocks/mf and can hold onto it even during the temporary bearish run in the market.

For all who are planning to invest in stocks n mutual funds, there is no better place to start than few interesting websites like :
http://www.moneycontrol.com
http://www.ndtvprofit.com/

I personally found icicidirect.com to be a cool website for all your online demat transactions with its stock analysis, impeccable service etc and realtime trading. Everything is so easy these days with complete online transactions(though online security frauds causes few goosebumps now and then).

From investment gyan perspective, there are few websites like http://www.investopedia.com.

Happy investing...signing off for now...

CiRcLe Of LiFe

No matter how advanced the science and technology today is, humans have failed miserably in understanding the mysteries of life. Everyday scientists try to give explanation of his/her own intrepretation of how life evolved using one or the other theories, well known among them being BigBang. The crux of the problem is to define the purpose of existence of life.

I am sure that every individual would have gone through this introspection in search of answers but have accepted their defeat of not being able to provide any convincible explanation, even if they do, they have failed by failing to prove their point of view.

Today the world is divided by people with different beliefs. Each individual is being groomed in different parts of the world with different thoughts fed into him which has resulted in the utter chaos in this universe. The humans spend their life in figuring out what is correct and what is not, from society perspective and end up being mere mortal showpiece with no real contribution towards seeking the truth of the nature. Different religions in this world contribute to this already chaotic world by spreading their prophecy. Life has remained mystery because of human wrapping themselves with so many social obligation and rules to mask the ultimate truth.

What is human reincarnation all about and if at all it is true, how do we prove it. Does a good deed or a sin committed by a human really carry over to his next life? Talking about the life on the present tense, what is the ulterior motive of a human being to lead a so called respectable life? What does human expect out of his life? And, being a mere mortal makes this motive look so pointless. Humans expect things to happen. They expect a lot from their life and the destiny has its final say with most of the expected things happening at really unexpected times. Humans still doesn't let this dampen their spirits of their soul to more expectations from their life. People in this world, i guess could be broadly categorized into three types, one who believes in reincarnation, the other who thinks this as a crap and the third group of people which I guess most of the people in this world belong to, are undecided on which group to join.

Coming back to the purpose of the existence of life, it is really difficult to come to grips with the fact that all humans believe that it is beyond their realm of thought to even define what is life and have surrendered themselves to a materialistic approach to this world, which is quiet understandable, as this world doesn't tolerate any human being trying to seek the truth of nature. Every individual's life has been put on the fast racing track, who go after seeking the success in his career, rather than stop n savour the beauty and bewilderness the life has to offer. The day will come when it will be too late for human being when he realises that his life odyssey was in vain. Human try to bring orderliness to their natural flow of life by bringing in rules and principles of life. In the process, the human restricts his imaginative flow of his intellect to the boundaries of society.

Life is calling you....Answer it..

Invincible Schumi

It was dream come true. I always wanted to watch Schumi in action. What better race than the Formula One US Grand Prix 2006 at Indianapolis with Schumi winning the race comfortably leaving others far behind.

It was Sunday July 2nd, two days before US Independence Day. It was race day at Speedway, Indianapolis, located at about 300 miles southeast to our place. Schumi had grabbed the pole position in the qualifiers with his teammate, Felipe Massa in 2nd and Renault's Fisichella in 3rd position. Speed maniacs, Shiva and myself slept for couple of hours on sat night and were all set to go to Indianapolis race. There were apprehensions that we might get stuck in traffic jam and parking problem as anyone would expect in such an international event. We were running two hours behind schedule(well intitially we thought that we would leave at 3am Sunday morning). But, we finally made a start from Milwaukee at exactly 5'0 clock before the sunrise. I was the only driver and Shiva, the only navigator in our car.

Blitzkrieg - Hail Indianapolis:

With clock ticking fast, and heart beat racing to watch the once in a lifetime dream event, my foot was firm set on the gas pedal to the limits...well there were no limits to our spirit but we had to limit our speed to how much our fourlegged vehicle could take before flying...wish i had a ferrari...
Sure, one would expect records to tumble with Schumi in pole position, but destiny had other thoughts in mind...the first record to be broken was my travel time to chicago which was under 1hr. Thanks to shiva who inspired me to drive at my will, indianapolis seemed just a place next door. Without missing any exits in chicago, we were on our way to Indianapolis. The roads were newly laid out and maximum allowed speed limit reaching 70, my will power to respect the rules had to make way for the wild wild driving instincts of me.. And with speedometer reluctant to come below 100, we were cruising along in our time machine.




Give me a break:
With gas burning out at faster pace, and tummy begging to be filled with stuff, we had to make our first pit stop. The pit stop was for 15mins unlike F1 pit stop. The pitstop could have been much faster, but thanks to Shiva who spilled Coffee on himself, the pitstop was bit prolonged one.. It was 7:15 in them morning and we were on some located on some gas station off I65.
With our appetite being satiated, gas filled to the brim, we were on the road again.....This break at gas station was well deserved as we set out with beautiful aroma of coffee invigorating our senses.,...

Final Corner:
It took us another close to 1:15 mins to reach Indianapolis, thanks to our disciplined driving we had beaten the traffic jam to death as were clearly well ahead of all traffic. As some of our friends had suggested, we safely parked our four legged beauty in front of house after paying 20 bucks..During these race time, local residents here turn there backyard into parking space to mint money..Capitalism at its best..We were six blocks away from our final destination and we headed our walk towards it. With the venue getting closer and closer, the decibel level was heading northwards...

Here we are:
Within no time, Shiva and myself were all dressed up in Ferrari red...thanks to Ferrari merchandise shop at the venue. We headed towards our seat which was in J Stand, supposedly the best stand to view all the interesting stuff for F1 maniacs. After few initial parade, musical show, speeches, the extreme machines in the pits were brought out to the starting grid with each engine showing its prowess with its amazing sound and speed.

Get set go:
After a initial practice lap, cars made their way back up to their appropriate position in starting grid formation. Schumi was of course leading the pack of extreme engines here. Well, race started with all the red lights going out, and.oh man! the amount of noise these machines make, can bring a weak hearted person to a dizzy state. As all the cars headed towards the first corner, where we were sitting, it was no way that all the cars escape unscathed. Massa lead the race, with Schumi close to massa and Fisichella fdangerous challenge to Schumi going in vain at the first corner. With Montoya intiating the crash, 8 cars were immediately eliminated from the race as soon as the first corner itself. With 14 cars in the race and later other cars losing its steam, there were only nine cars that finished the race. For the first half of the race, teammate Massa was the race leader with Schumi being close second. After first pit stop, it was all Schumi. Schumi was truly on fire , raising the gap by almost 2 seconds a lap with his teammate.

Worth the visit:
Schumi finally made it to the podium comfortably and his trademark podium histrionics treated his fans to make their each penny worth it. After a gruesome hot weather outing, Shiva and I decided to get back home. But there was a twist in the story. We lost our way and within minute we were searching for our fourlegged beauty all around in the blistering heat. With Ferrari's(synonymn for god) grace, we finally found our Chevy and after hibernating for few moments, we headed back towards Milwaukee.

Endless return journey:
With cars piling up, I was wondering if I really had such patience to drive car at less than 20mph with traffic crawling at snail's pace. The traffic was all screwed up throughout our journey back upto Chicago with me gettting a chance in between to repeat Schumi's feat. After picking up one of my other friend, Vinay and his wife in Chicago, we safely returned back home with our hearts treated to some awesome, truly a once in a lifetime event F1

Hail Schumi Hail Ferrari.......................................