the "F" in my life.. part 1

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Finance...How it all began??

Well, I have literally lived with this term during my time at NITR. The love for the subject came to me as a young kid, when I used to hear my family (esp. Papa) talking about it all the time. My first impression of the whole thing was why to worry and discuss something so much ? Later, as time passed, I also came under its influence, or rather "sucked in"..

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"Bulls" Vs. the "Bears"

I always took the subject very lightly and used to poke fun at people who lost money at the markets, saying that they could have held on to their investments. I was of the belief that nobody having a little patience could have ever lost money on the markets. This was proved wrong one fine day, rather a very "thought provoking" day for me. My whole view about the markets was changed that day. The day as many of you might be aware was the "Black Friday", when the stock index fell to its single biggest loss on a single day. This unfortunate day for the markets also happened to be the day when I had to "step in" and prove pa wrong that all this market hoopla is shit.

The stock was HZL which saw its biggest dip on that day. Also, my long standing view about the "regaining markets" and stuff was shattered completely as that stock took nearly a year to recover. The money in question was Rs. 70,000, my whole tution fees for four years at the institute.

From that day, I pledged never too take this subject lightly. Also, I had a greater respect for the markets and it was not all childs play after all. A sad day but a day that was going to teach me a lot in the longer run.


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" The son matures"

As years passed my "brain grew" [ :) , literally] and so did my understanding. I read a lot of finance material and read about the biographies of the seven greatest business men of India ( a book gifted to me by Nani).

I cannot recall the name of the book now, but it was a green colored book, and the cover work had the authors photograph. It detailed the lives of the great business leaders and the small nitty gritties of their lives. The reasons for all those decisions they took, the way they looked at things, their perception etc. I finished that big fat green book in two days, I had no idea how those two days passed.

My first year in the insti as a junior was a year where we had limited scope to organise business events, as there was no major funding and for the primary reason that such an event had not been organised before. Anyways, as a fresher, I participated in the media campaigning game called " Market Share" whereby we had to advertise a product "Head and Shoulders Pink". The other teams had "H n S Blue" and "H n S green". I was really disappointed at first with the color which we had got as part of a draw. Pink was "feminine", representing "fairer sex" ( in our insti though, it was the guys who were the fairer sex - based on findings by your truly and now available as a research paper) . How to convince the audience to go for "Pink " was the big question???

Pink is a color that irks male respect. Wearing pink is also treated as a crime and in a place like our "insti", you might get raped (literally) for endorsing the color.So, in a place like NITR where the majority of the public were guys (around 90 p.c., the reservation for girls was lifted the previous year by the orissa govt. after the college was converted from REC to NIT), how to sell such a pinky??

<< Contd in the next post , too much of typing !!!!!

rohit