Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and onwards

Apologies for the tardiness in postings from the great beyond. Life has been a bit busier than usual, although I took just one Advanced Finance elective this Fall trimester in addition to a block week on Corporate Turnarounds. The courses had both highs and lows, but all in all I like the block week format – one week, one elective, done! In the meanwhile, I interviewed with Morgan Stanley and had an invite to speak with Credit Suisse, but they way things were going, I decided to sign with Nomura. Additionally, a fellow LBS'er and I will be doing our 2^nd year project with PE firm Warburg Pincus.

On the life front, I spent a few rejuvenating days in Boston for Thanksgiving, met up with old friends, walked my two favorite dogs, had roast duck instead of turkey for T'day dinner and went to a Celtics game. I'm almost through every past season of the Simpsons. On the books front, I'm reading Guns, Germs and Steel (which I should have read eons ago) – it's a fantastic treatise on why history evolved in the way it has. Most people point to the Renaissance and subsequent colonialization as being the root-causes for the way the world has turned out today, development-wise. They flippantly ascribe the ascendancy of the west to a suite of reasons that are easy to rationalize. But the truth is more complex than this.

Tomorrow, I leave for Tanzania with eight other LBS'ers – we're climbing Kilimanjaro – a 7-day semi-ordeal along the Machame Trail and then going on Safari in the Serengeti for a few days. Then onwards to Mumbai for me, where I'll see the extended fam. I will blog more about the climb on return. In the meanwhile, here is what's on my reading list (courtesy of James Montier). I doubt I'll get through all the books on the list by July.

Investment 101 -The classics

‘Security Analysis’ by Ben Graham and David Dodd (The sixth edition)

Chapter 12 of ‘The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money’ by John Maynard Keynes

‘Theory of Investment Value’ by John Burr Williams

‘Manias, Panics and Crashes’ by Charles Kindelbeger

‘Reminiscences of a Stock Operator’ by Edwin Lefevre

Investment 201

‘Fooling some of the People, All of the Time’ by David Einhorn

‘The Fundamental Index’ by Rob Arnott et al

‘The Investor's Dilemma’ by Louis Lowenstein

‘Financial Shenanigans’ by Howard Schilit

‘Creative Cash Flow Reporting’ by Charles Mulford and Eugene Comiskey

Modern wonders

‘The Little Book That Beats the Market’ by Joel Greenblatt

‘The Little Book of Value Investing’ by Chris Browne

‘Fooled by Randomness’ by Nassim Taleb

‘Contrarian Investment Strategies’ by David Dreman

‘Speculative Contagion’ by Frank Martin

Psychological

‘Robots Rebellion’ by Keith Stanovich

‘Strangers to Ourselves’ by Tim Wilson

How We Know What Isn't So’ by Tom Gilovich

‘The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis’ by Richard Heuer Jnr

‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely

‘Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me’ by Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson

‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck

Hidden gems

‘Halo Effect’ by Phil Rosenzweig

‘Mindless Eating’ by Brian Wansink

‘The Inefficient Stock Market’ by Robert Haugen

‘The Margin of Safety’ by Seth Klarman

‘Your Money and Your Brain’ by Jason Zweig

‘Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance’ by Atul Gawande

‘Why Smart Executives Fail’ by Sydney Finkelstein

Back in the Saddle -- Part Deux

This is a do-over of sorts....phoenix rising from the ashes and other such metaphors....

I'm considering having a go at resurrecting my blog........I've cleaned out most of my previous posts.....they were shockingly mediocre......The most important update is that I (re)applied to B-schools this year and had admits from LBS and NYU Stern.... and as The Clash say, its London Calling....I'm leaving behind a great big contingent of friends and family Stateside in moving to London...although it'll be fun to hang out with my cousin and his wife who live there....

I'm superexcited about LBS and doubly so because of the 2008 FT rankings. Other things I am currently superexcited about include -

using this blog to communicate with family and friends
facebook (which is an evolutionary upgrade from myspace)
not waking up and then having to figure out which city I am in (consulting does that to you!)
Simian Mobile Disco
learning a new language (french or chinese?)
tennis weather
new friends
m&a/private equity
emerging markets
secular parties
youtube actually hitting its stride and being a useful app (leave britney alone! wtf was that?)
by the time I'm done with LBS the dollar may actually gain against the pound (faster b-school loan repayment)
europe (the continent, not the band)
the genre of books that includes midnight in the garden of good and evil, city of falling angels, the monster of florence, the mistress of the art of death

I will be experimenting a bit --- I think B-school blogs are old hat and I'm not much for sharing details about my excursions to the cornershop.....so most likely this blog will be about specific events and ideas and the meaning of 'is'.....and about the people I meet......and an opportunity for me to vacillate between being a wiseacre and a smartmouth....and a place to post pics that I don't post to Facebook......once in a while I plan on posting a scintillating story from my adventures......other times I'll try to coax my trenchant wit from under the dry humor that blankets it.....we'll see, shall we!

Cheers!