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Super-Pi Day: 3/14/15 9:26:53

Let's celebrate Super-pi day with 10 digits in famous "pi" aligning today with 3/14/15 @ 9:26:53. Some math and science geeks are planning to wed exactly on that time to show their love for each other and for mathematics. Today also happens to be Albert Einstein's Birthday!
So I am happy that my son Yash is going to spend his morning volunteering at Tech Museum and Isha would be spending her day participating in three events at Science Olympiad. Well done kids with your pursuit of science and math!
Now coming to my events in finance world. March always have been quite interesting (2nd to months of Sept/Oct). 15 years back Nasdaq reached its peak (above 5000) in March and it touched 5000 just few days back just to fall back. In 2009 markets reached it's bottom on Mar 9 and this year oil markets are reaching it's multi-year lows in March. Even in currency markets, Euro and Yen are reaching multi-year lows. Euro is racing towards parity with US dollar and should reach by end of March. With so many multi-year events happening in span of few days, how should we interpret these macro and micro events to make investment decisions?
Here are my simple recommendations:
  • Markets would do what normally they do - they go up and down in short term. So don't pay too much attention to these daily gyrations
  • Select industry (to invest) which you understand and could form some educated opinions
  • Invest for long-term in companies with solid fundamentals in those industries
  • Invest small amounts in some speculative stocks which could potentially return "Apple" type of returns (Apple would have considered speculative stock in late 90's)
  • If you can deal with so much complexity, just invest in index funds (S&P500, mid-cap and small-cap)
  • And above all, just enjoy life one day at a time with days like "pi" day, Cricket world-cup matches, walk on sunny day or nice movie!
Happy pi day to all!

/Shyam

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