Seeking Alpha by Adding Beta

Our Trip to Paradise 2006 By, Yash Maniyar " Swimming clothes Sunscreen Candies Beach toys Excitement Camera ...," I read off the list I made while my mom packed the bags for tomorrow's Hawai'i trip. We were all so excited. My mom & dad were waiting to go to Hawai'i for 14 years. "Go to bed you guys. Tomorrow you have to wake up early," my mom said. So we went to sleep in our cozy beds. The only ones awake were me & Isha. We were talking about how much fun we were going to have in Hawai'i. "We're going to go snorkling!" I exclaimed. "Mamma said that we're going to have a swimming pool near our hotel room," Isha said as if she knew everything about our hotel already. I didn't know when we fell asleep but I had a feeling it was late. The next morning, I woke up by the call o

Based on my not so good track record of 2006 returns on my stock picks, I decided to design a portfolio with a mix of stocks, many mutual funds and for first time mix of bond and cash. (yesterday when we were playing bridge, one of our buddy mentioned that his portfolio returned 60% - congratulations to him on this excellent record. I would be interested if he can repeat and sustain similar results with large amounts - say 100K) On Friday when Yash had gone to singning class, I designed this model portfolio based on closing prices of Jan 5, 2007. My goal is to beat S&P by at least 2% by Jan5, 2008. I promise to update the blog with quarterly results on this portfolio. (Diclaimer: I personally don't have 100K to invest in such a portfolio. This is just to test application of some of the learnings I am getting in my MBA classes) Symbol Shrs Holdings Value Name - 5-Jan-07 28.47 527 15,003.69 $15,003.69 CSCO 527 15,003.69 $15,003.69 CISCO SYS INC - 5-Jan-07 27.7

I have been wanting to write blog for some time but life got busy with kids, MBA, work and Hawaii vacation. Finally taking the opportunity of new year 2007, I decided to write up my thoughts. Reader beware - it's just free-flow of my thoughts spanning from my recent reading, movies and some investment ideas. First of all, Happy new year to all folks who happen to come across this post ! Last week saw quite a few movies like "The Night At Musuem", "The Good Shephard" in theatres and saw "The Inconvinent Thruth: Global Warming" and "World Trade Center" on DVD. I liked all 4 movies - they were covering completely different topics but I happen to like all of them. I liked acting of Matt Daemon in Shephard, family friendly comedy of Museum and the presentation of global warming problem by Al Gore in Inconvenient Truth. This really opened my eyes and I am glad I saw it with my son Yash. Not only do we need to educate our generation and act on it bu