Sinewave Securities

Insurance provides economic protection from identified risks occurring or discovered within a specified period. Insurance is a unique product in that the ultimate cost is often unknown until long after the coverage period, while the revenue—premium payments by policyholders—are received before or during the coverage period.

What is Life insurance? Life insurance is a contract between an insurer and a policy owner. A life insurance policy guarantees the insurer pays a sum of money to named beneficiaries when the insured dies in exchange for the premiums paid by the policyholders during their lifetime.

Stocks to Riches Parag Parikh was an ace equity investor and founder of PPFAS Mutual Fund (India's leading mutual fund house). His fund has outperformed broader markets for an extended period of time making it one of the most successful fund house of country. The book Stocks to Riches is beginner's guide to stock market, how markets work and how people perceive it to work, behavioral finance, mental models and investor psychology. Mr. Parikh wrote this book in 2005 after the dot com bubble, and Asian economic crisis when the Indian equity market was about to enter a bull run. It is divided into 11 chapters, starting from the basics and gradually moving towards an investor’s behavioral insights.

Stillness is the Key, the book that completes the trilogy that began with "The Obstacle is The Way" and "Ego is the Enemy", Ryan Holiday argues that stillness is the key to being better at anything you do. The book is divided into three parts Mind, Spirit and Body, a trinity in which each part depends on the other.

Deep work -Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively-demanding task. A deep task hard to replicate is essential in the age of information. Shallow Work – Low valued and easily replicable work.

The Healthcare delivery Industry - According to the Global Health Expenditure Database compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), India’s current expenditure on healthcare was 3.5% of GDP in 2018. India’s real GDP in fiscal 2019 was Rs 139.8 trillion (constant fiscal 2012 prices). Accordingly, India’ current healthcare expenditure during fiscal 2019 is estimated at approximately Rs 4.9 trillion. India trails not just developed countries such as the United States (the US) and the United Kingdom (the UK), but also developing countries such as Brazil, Nepal, Vietnam, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Thailand in terms of healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP as of 2018.

The real estate market in India has grown at a CAGR of approximately 10% from USD 50 billion in 2008 to USD 120 billion in 2017, and is expected to further grow at a CAGR of 17.7% to reach USD 1 trillion by 2030. The real estate market contributed approximately 6% to India’s GDP in 2017 and is likely to contribute approximately 13% to India’s GDP by 2025. Residential, commercial and retail are the three key asset classes that have primarily contributed to the growth of the real estate market in India. (Anarock Report)

The book as the title suggest Fooled by Randomness brings out the role of chance and luck over widely proclaimed qualities marketed more often in the world of randomness. It lays an alternative perspective to various aspects like luck, probability, theory etc. As Taleb proclaims in the preface “my motto is to tease those who take themselves and quality of their knowledge too seriously”. Being a mathematician and an long standing advocate of probability theory Taleb does not refrain from trolling the concept of “certain knowledge” and its practitioners. Qualities like perseverance, persistence and doggedness may be necessary but not enough  in order to win. The prologue gives brief outline regarding the flow of the book and what does it stand for. It lays down the “Table of confusion” covering the central distinctions used in the book.

This is part two of the series in which I have tried to combine and sort them topicwise. Black Sholes The Black-Scholes formula has approached the status of holy writ in finance, and is used when valuing equity put options for financial statement purposes. Key inputs to the calculation include a  contract’s maturity and strike price, as well as the analyst’s expectations for volatility, interest rates and dividends. If the formula is applied to extended time periods, however, it can produce absurd results. In fairness, Black and Scholes almost certainly understood this point well.

Few case studies and concepts by Buffett given through the newsletters are compiled topic wise. It combines Buffett’s magic and mind, simplicity and subtleness which results into extraordinary results overtime past 60 years has been provided in these newsletters year after year. The idea of ”praise specifically criticize generally” can be seen over the years in these letters over the years.