Basab Pradhan's blog
Over my winter vacation trip to India we visited Chilka Lake. It’s India’s largest salt water lake and home to many migratory birds. Beautiful place. Unfortunately not very well developed for tourism (or fortunately, depending upon your perspective). Some photos follow. If anyone knows what that beautiful moth is called please leave a comment.
What does Gridstone Research do? If an Equity Analyst asks this question, the answer we give is what our home page says,
Using cutting-edge technology, Gridstone assembles, analyzes and structures unstructured company information into financial data, guidance, operational data and structured text. Information that could take hours to assemble is available at your fingertips, at our website or directly in Excel.
This describes the end-user benefit. But for those who are interested in such matters, it still doesn’t answer the question of what we actually do.
One of the few old world habits that I stubbornly stick with is writing with a fountain pen. I don’t write nearly as much as I type, but when I do, l like the feel of a good ink nib against paper. It helps me think better, or so it seems.
A very happy new year to all my readers. May you and your loved ones have a joyful 2008.
Wish lists are neat things. Unlike new year resolutions, they involve no effort on your part. And unlike predictions for the new year, you can’t be wrong about them. So I thought I would draw up a wish list and share it with my readers. Perhaps they could then add their own candidates for the wish list and then we could have a reality TV show where people from around India SMS (at premium rates) their wish list candidates and a panel of distinguished judges help us short list ten WLCs (Wish List Candidates) which we then take to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who tells us that he can do nothing about them unless Prakash Karat and Sonia Gandhi agree on each one of them.
Seemed like an exercise in futility so I decided not to do a wish list. Instead here is a “Wish Less”. It is based upon the premise that we already have too much of everything.
I read an article about something interesting that I now can’t seem to find on the internet. The article was about a study conducted by some Indian doctors that indicated that wheat grass juice can reduce transfusion requirements in Thalassemia patients. A paper on the subject in Indian Pediatrics from 2004 is what I was able to google.
One of the (many) problems with modern day drug discovery system is that it is driven completely by a template that provides no incentives to discover naturally found active ingredients with therapeutic properties. Discovering new drugs is an expensive process requiring tens of millions as investment before the drug can be commercially exploited. Most drug candidates don’t make it. If you amortize the cost of these failed drugs over the few successful ones, the costs multiply rapidly. The entire edifice of the pharma industry rests upon the ability of companies to successfully exploit a successful drug through patent protected pharmaceuticals. The problem with naturally found active ingredients is that a patient can get the cure without buying the pill.
Last week Thomas Weisel Partners announced that it is shutting down its small cap research offering, Discovery Research. The 8-K filing says
Thomas Weisel Partners Group, Inc. (“Registrant”) announced today that it would discontinue its Discovery Research coverage of U.S. equities. That coverage is being discontinued as a result of the recruitment of key Discovery Research personnel to BNP Paribas Securities (Asia) Limited, a BNP Paribas affiliate. Thomas Weisel Partners is pursuing its legal remedies in connection with these departures. Discovery Research, a subscription-based research product, was produced out of Thomas Weisel Partners’ office in Mumbai, India. Thomas Weisel Partners intends to continue to conduct other business and operations through its Mumbai, India office.
There are two different reasons why I find this news interesting.
Most commentators put a high probability on the US going into a recession. What began with a problem of imprudent housing loans in the US has snow balled into a crisis for the Financial Services industry and an almost certain slowdown in consumer spending. How this impacts the Indian IT Services industry requires some analysis.
We just released a very important product – an Excel Add-in that allows Analysts to pull in our rich data directly into their spreadsheets. Excel is very central to the work flow of our users. We think that this is probably the easiest-to-use Excel Add-in in the Financial Information business.
I whipped up a Slidecast about it. Even if you are not connected to the Financial world, take a look at it. I think it is effective and I spent about a day on it and that too because I tried many different approaches until I hit my stride. Feedback is welcome. If you’re interested in the tools I used, leave a comment.
The English word company means “A group of persons”. I would surmise then that the business entity “company” got its name because it comprised of a group of persons engaged in a common business purpose.
An individual can start and run a company all by herself. There is nothing new about that. What is however changing is just how much that company can achieve with a small team. A few individuals can create a company with millions of dollars in revenues and tens of millions of dollars of value.
After last week’s post, here’s another one based upon a gem from Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness. It’s called the bias against self-contradiction and it goes like this – if you make a bet that the market will go a certain way and it doesn’t, you tend to stick with your bet and your viewpoint a good bit longer than you would have, had you been a perfectly rational person. Over time, this will likely lower your performance as an investor. According to Taleb, some investors that he has great respect for – people like George Soros – change their minds often.
6 am pacific 