Seeking Alpha by Adding Beta

Much awaited part II of Munnabhai movie came in this weekend. We went to see the movie w/ Milind and Prashant's families. We went for 7 pm show to Naz theatres but it was sold out and we got tickets for 9 pm show. Overall the movie was excellent - after long time some good Hindi movie worth writing has come up. The dialogues, script was funny and it also achieved delivering some social message - basically the values about Gandiji's techings which all of us Indians have forgotten. The duo of Sanjay Dutt and Warsi had a great chemistry. I would definately recommend seeing this movie even if you are not a fan of Hindi Movies like me. Labor day weekend is good break for me before I fully get into my MBA studies...Yash had a Bhajan singing program in cultural activities in Ganeshotsav program. Yash's singning has been improving. He has started singning Mitwa song pretty well. Read about Coke+Mentos fountain. Yash wanted to try it out. The concept works but fountain was not a g

Everyone is talking about YouTube and within few months it has become "the" company - similar to Myspace. I thought let me check out it - especially when "OK GO" song video which was uploaded on YouTube few days back came on VH1 Top 20 Countdown Myself and Yash decided to give it a try by creating our own video and upload it on YouTube. Check it out and please rate it: Yash's Boom Chika Boom

We were discussing on how to get steady income from stocks which one is owning for long-term and do not plan to sell anytime soon. Basically lot of us own stocks through ESPP or boughts stocks which we are not planning to sell due to company's long-term prospects. e.g. I have bought some EBAY when in was in mid thirties and not plan to sell anytime soon - one because it is in mid-20's and other reason is that I believe it will go back to low 40's in 18 month. However just holding the stock is not doing any good to my return. Basically here is how it works in layman's term: If you have 100 shares of of a stock say EBAY (which is selling at $ 27.15). If you are willing to sell the stock in one month if it goes to say 30 (about 10 % return in one month). Just sell a covered call option for Sept 30 which would net you about $ 30 before commission (about $ 21 after commission). If stock goes about 30, you may have to sell stock at 30 giving you 10 % return in one month. If s

Over the weekend, I just completed a nice read of "Five point someone" written by Chetan Bhagat, 1995 IIT graduate from IIT Delhi. It is nice read about student life in IIT which is applicable to student life in any engg college in India. Some folks take it as 4 years of mugging and some folks go to extreme of just getting by enough grades to get a degree. The book was more about "what not do in IIT". It reminded me of my days at IIT Kanpur even though they were much different than what is mentioned in the book. It's nice read on sunny afternoon@beach. My next read is more serious: The end of faith by Sam Harris. So relavent to current events around the world with Israel/Hezbollah conflict, bombings in Mumbai, US war in Iraq and nuclear standoff with Iran. I have my own opinions but that's for later writing. Myspace has selected Google as ad provider. Great win for Google considering MySpace traffic is going gang-buster and that's more sticky than anyth

Finally the rumors of Sandisk buying M-flash became real - it's good that I did not sold few shares I had in M-flash. I think it makes a great deal since Sandisk buys a good company (except some stock options enquiry) with excellent technology in a growing market and at the same time gets access to critical patents and royalty income stream. Looks like the pace of consolidation in technology industry is gaining quite a bit of momentum. The article in WSJ on technology industry matruing was really good. Basically it says that technology industry has become matured and has already grown as much it can. Extending this logic, I beleive that market valuations in technology industry is not going to grow to 1999-2000 levels ever (tech industy accounted for 34% of S&P 500 valuation in 2000 - now it's 14-15 %). Maarket would move the valuations from one tech company to another company. e.g. Most of networking industry valuation is concentrating in Cisco whereas some of the internet

After a long break I am writing on my blog - I was off to India for my vacation and before that was too busy in finishing first year of MBA. Now that I have off from MBA@Berkeley, I can spend some time in writing up some stuff. Today AMD bought ATI technologies and that brought me to think - should Intel buy Nvidia. I think it will fit very nicely. First of all, Intel, unlike AMD can digest acquisition like Nvidia even if they paid about $8B (for about $ 23 per share). It would get Intel into graphics chip market which is grwoing faster than Intel's own business and fits well with it's focus on PC business (unlike its communication business). After AMD/ATI deal, Nvidia is also last pure playin this space. All other parameters like P/E, P/S ratios are comparable and even lower than Intel. Last but not least, it's right across the road from Intel head-quarters in Silicon Valley. Continuing on the theme of in-organic grwoth, I do believe that SanDisk should buy M-systems to ex

I am not sure if I am qualified to write what title suggests but let me wtite few lines anyway. Reading the annoucements coming out of CES at Las Vegas and reactions various internet companies were getting from Stock Market, it was almost feeling like 2000. Google going up by 20 bucks, EBAY and Yahoo making their own movements. So what are the main significant annoceuments and how it may change the landscape: 1) Skype going everywhere: This is one of the most significant development happening. I did not think it would happen so quickly. Now you can get a skype-enabled phone which you can use in wi-fi hotspots to make free calls. So technically when cities like SFO becomes wi-fi cities, you don't need regula phones at all ! This is far fetched but still reality is very close. In my opinion, all telcos need to watch out this fast changing development very carefully and move aggresively to play a role in that. EBAY made a very smart move by getting Skype even though it was completely

As continuation of my predictions for 2006, I thought let me create a sample tracking portfolio with timeline of 1 year and see how it performs. Since I do not have spare $50K to invest, best way to test my analysis of some of these stocks is to actual create paper portfolio and track it for its performance. I created this on Jan 3 morning so I assumed Dec 30 closing prices for buy. Symbol Shares Price Comm Amount Notes RIGL 200 8.10 10.00 1,630.00 Fallen Pharma company SIFY 500 10.76 10.00 5,390.00 India + Internet, what else you need ? PALM 200 31.75 10.00 6,360.00 Treo700 + RIMM woes EBAY 200 43.43 10.00 8,696.00 Auction growth + Skype CKCM 500 21.00 10.00 10,510.00 RFID play BBI 1,000 3.75 10.00 3,760.00 This is not going BK so it would recover ELN 1,000 13.90 10.00 13,910.00 Tyasbari returning to market in Apr06 Total paper money invested: $ 50256 My target for this paper portfolio is to return 15%. Let's see how it does in 2006 ! /Shyam