Investment blog for the Indian markets
Joined March 2012
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277 Photos and videos
alphaideas retweeted
Jun 14
On Niraj's Radar
What three signs tell @niraj_shah that a global market crash is likely?
Watch this video as he answers to India's most-asked question: How will a global market crash impact India?
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alphaideas retweeted
Operation Zalim Khanjar - Major Iqbal(Illyas Kashmiri) cut down the head of an Indian soldier Bhausaheb Talekar and hung it on Muridke pillar. To take revnege for it, a team of 19 Grenadiers, led by Major Gopal Singh Chundawat, entered LOC secretly and eliminated 13 terrorists.
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If you have ever walked out of the Sovabazar Metro station in North Kolkata and headed down the street, you might have noticed a striking 3 story red brick house guarded by a pair of stone elephants. That is 92B Sovabazar Street, the historic home of Butto Kristo Paul (BKP) & Co., a legendary institution serving the city since 1858.
On the death anniversary of its visionary founder, Butto Krishna Paul, it is worth looking back at a life that reads like a classic piece of old Calcutta lore, complete with lost treasure, a legendary medical cure, and a quiet, under the radar connection to India’s freedom struggle.
A thread 🧵
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Jun 13
Harrison Ford: "I’m very grateful I was an overnight success and the night was 15 years long."
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alphaideas retweeted
Jun 12
A Stanford Business School dropout took a call from a college friend in 1980 and walked into Microsoft as a $50,000-a-year business manager. He negotiated his way to 8% of the company. That 8% now pays $303 million every quarter. He hasn't worked there in 12 years.
That $303 million is Microsoft's quarterly dividend, a cash payment the company sends to everyone who owns its shares. Ballmer owns about 4.5% of the entire company. That stake is worth roughly $134 billion today and generates $1.2 billion a year, which works out to $3.3 million a day, just for sitting there.
When Ballmer joined in 1980, he didn't own a single share. His deal was a $50,000 salary plus 10% of whatever profit he helped bring in. Microsoft grew so fast that his cut became a financial problem. The company needed to fix it.
In 1981, when Microsoft officially became a corporation, Ballmer swapped the profit deal for actual ownership in the company. He asked for 8%. Paul Allen, one of Microsoft's two founders, refused to go above 5%. Gates stepped in, pulled 3% from his own stake, and gave it to Ballmer. When Microsoft went public in 1986, Gates owned 45%, Allen owned 25%, and Ballmer owned 8%, worth about $62 million on day one.
Ballmer's 8% shrank over the years to about 4.5% as Microsoft sold new shares to grow the business. But the company's total value went from $780 million in 1986 to roughly $3 trillion today, about 4,000 times bigger.
In 2014, Ballmer spent $2 billion to buy the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. He didn't sell a single Microsoft share to fund it. He still holds every share he had the day he walked out of the company.
Every other person worth over $100 billion on earth built their fortune by starting a company. Jeff Bezos built Amazon. Elon Musk built SpaceX. Ballmer answered a phone call from a college friend.
Gates gave up 3% of his own company to get Ballmer in the door. After decades of giving his money away to charity, Gates is now worth roughly $104 billion. Ballmer's Microsoft shares alone are worth about $134 billion. The man Gates hired to be his assistant now has more money than the man who hired him.
Jun 12
JUST IN: Steve Ballmer receives $303,261,807.94 quarterly dividend from Microsoft.
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alphaideas retweeted
Jun 12
JRD Tata loses a pen!
JRD Tata, then Chairman of the Tata group, and senior Tata Directors used to meet for lunch at Bombay House (the Tata Group's headquarters) every day. One day, JRD came to lunch, sad that he had lost his favourite pen. He used to always carry a Parker pen set - a fountain pen and a ball pen.
"Look", he said sadly, "I have lost the ball pen. I don't know where it has gone. I have looked all over...but it's gone."
One of the Directors in the lunch room that day was Dr. Jamshed (JJ) Irani of Tata Steel. He made note of JRD Tata's loss. A few weeks later, when he was visiting London, he went to a small shop near Selfridges specialising in pens, and found a ball pen identical to the one JRD had lost. He bought it immediately. The next time he met JRD Tata, he presented that pen to him.
JRD was delighted. "Yes, Jamshed, it is exactly like the one I lost." For the first one or two minutes, he used it and tried it out. Then, Dr. Irani saw JRD's expression change slowly.
After a couple of minutes, he gave the ball pen back to Dr. Irani, and said - "Thank you for the thought. This is exactly what I wanted, but I cannot accept it."
"Why?" asked Dr. Irani, "I thought you were looking for this."
JRD answered - "Yes, Jamshed. But it is a principle of mine not to accept any gifts from any of my colleagues at work. If I did, then I know my colleagues would try to outdo each other and give me exorbitant gifts."
Dr. Irani tried to persuade him. "But Sir, nobody would know that I have given you this pen. You can say that you found it in your room. I am not going to go around saying that I have given JRD an identical pen."
JRD responded - "Jamshed, I know you will not do any such thing. But I would know. I would know that I accepted this gift against my principles. I am sorry, but I cannot accept it."
Each of us decides the principles by which we lead our lives. The principles that we will stand by, even if no one is looking or speaking about them. The principles that define who we really are. This story of JRD Tata's lost ball pen can help us reflect on what our own life's principles are. #Tata #ethics
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