Believe in your heart that something
wonderful is about to happen.
Love your life.
Believe in your own power,
and in your own potential,
and your own innate goodness.
Wake every morning with the awe
of just being alive.
Discover each day the magnificent,
awesome beauty in the world.
Explore and embrace life
in yourself and in everyone
you see each day.
Reach within to find your own specialness.
Amaze yourself and rouse those
around you to the potential
of each new day.
Don't be afraid to admit
you're less than perfect;
this is the essence of our humanity.
Let those who love you help you;
Trust enough to be able to take.
Look with hope to the horizon of today,
for today is all we truly have.
Live this day well.
Let a little sun out as well as in.
Create your own rainbows.
Be open to all your possibilities,
and all miracles.
Always believe in miracles.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Positive Thoughts...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
POSITIVE THOUGHTS...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thinking aloud helps solve problems faster: Study
Thinking aloud helps solve problems faster: Study
Having difficulty in solving a mathematical problem? Just think out loud, as scientists have claimed talking aloud helps one solve complex problems faster and more accurately.
According to the study by Spains University of Granada, people who talk out loud to think through their maths problems are able to solve them faster and have more chance of getting the right answer.
"Those students who think aloud while solving a mathematical problem can solve it faster and have more possibilities of finding the right solution that those who do not do it," said lead researcher Prof Jose Luis Villegas Castellanos of the University of the Andes, Venezuela.
"Likewise, drawing or making a pictorial representation relating to the also contributed to its solution," he said.
The research is contrary to the old-fashioned theory of studying in silence, classrooms should be full of the noise of students tackling their problems out loud, the Telegraph reported.
The study, published in the Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, focussed on university maths students trying to answer complex mathematics problems.
Those who detailed their thinking process aloud had more chance of answering the same question correctly as those who did not talk about their problem solving plan, the researchers found.
"The ability in the management of representations such as talking aloud or drawing the problems is closely related to the success in problems solution," Castellanos said.
Having difficulty in solving a mathematical problem? Just think out loud, as scientists have claimed talking aloud helps one solve complex problems faster and more accurately.
According to the study by Spains University of Granada, people who talk out loud to think through their maths problems are able to solve them faster and have more chance of getting the right answer.
"Those students who think aloud while solving a mathematical problem can solve it faster and have more possibilities of finding the right solution that those who do not do it," said lead researcher Prof Jose Luis Villegas Castellanos of the University of the Andes, Venezuela.
"Likewise, drawing or making a pictorial representation relating to the also contributed to its solution," he said.
The research is contrary to the old-fashioned theory of studying in silence, classrooms should be full of the noise of students tackling their problems out loud, the Telegraph reported.
The study, published in the Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, focussed on university maths students trying to answer complex mathematics problems.
Those who detailed their thinking process aloud had more chance of answering the same question correctly as those who did not talk about their problem solving plan, the researchers found.
"The ability in the management of representations such as talking aloud or drawing the problems is closely related to the success in problems solution," Castellanos said.
2010 set to be year of indices trading
2010 set to be year of indices trading
A fixed-income index, a volatility index and indices of commodities and weather (rainfall, temperature and moisture) will be available for trading from 2010.
An index is an indicator of market movement and a hedging tool. Currently, trading happens only in equity indices. The National Stock Exchange, which is the world's third-largest derivatives trading platform, is developing an index of fixed-income securities in a joint venture with Standard & Poor's.
Market participants say trading in a fixed income index will be successful once interest rate futures, an illiquid instrument, gains momentum. A fixed-income index reflects movement in interest rates.
"We are developing some more indices through our JV with NSE, called IISL," Deven Sharma, chairman, Crisil, said.
NSE is working on launching VIX, developed under licence from S&P. S&P developed VIX for the Chicago exchange, too.
Volatility is decided based on trading in options contracts. "Volatility is inversely related to the market. In a range-bound market, chances are that volatility will come down if the market is at the lower end of the range and a trader can short VIX once the market moves up," said Sidharth Bhamre, head (derivatives), Angel Broking. The volatility index could also be used as a hedging instrument by index traders, he added.
Trading in commodity and weather indices would be a reality once amendments to the Forwards Contract Regulations (FCR) are passed in Parliament in the coming months. If an investors/trader wants to invest in commodities, but doesn't know which commodity would go up, he could buy into an index. For example, in case of drought, agro commodity prices tend to move up and, hence, one can buy into the agri index.
"Existing commodity exchanges like MCX and NCDEX are prepared to launch trading in indices. If all go well, commodity index trading will start in the early second half of 2010," P K Singhal, deputy managing director of MCX, said.
"It will help in diversification of portfolio and offer a broader basket to hedge, using a single product. Globally, institutional participants such as banks and asset management companies hedge their risk in commodities using indices, as they can select the structure and composition of the index," he added.
A weather index is useful for various industries, apart from farmers and traders. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has several weather indices like rainfall index, temperature index and even moisture index.
Commodities and industries can hedge on such products. For example, cement sales come down if rainfall is high, so cement manufacturers can go bullish on the rainfall index (expecting more rain) and make money there, which will compensate for lower sales in cement due to slower construction.
If the monsoon turns deficient, they will lose money on the rainfall index, but will get compensated by higher cement sales, as construction work will be on fast track. Fertiliser companies take a reverse call, as their sales go up if rainfall is higher. In many cases, quantum of rainfall or temperature is important and, therefore, trading in such indices helps.
Ice cream sales can fall if temperature is low. The wheat crop benefits if winter is cooler. In case of traders, they can simply go long in such indices if they feel the monsoon will be better.
Indices also provide investment opportunities in commodities, as actual buying and selling commodities require investors to go through various formalities like tax and deliveries.
A fixed-income index, a volatility index and indices of commodities and weather (rainfall, temperature and moisture) will be available for trading from 2010.
An index is an indicator of market movement and a hedging tool. Currently, trading happens only in equity indices. The National Stock Exchange, which is the world's third-largest derivatives trading platform, is developing an index of fixed-income securities in a joint venture with Standard & Poor's.
Market participants say trading in a fixed income index will be successful once interest rate futures, an illiquid instrument, gains momentum. A fixed-income index reflects movement in interest rates.
"We are developing some more indices through our JV with NSE, called IISL," Deven Sharma, chairman, Crisil, said.
NSE is working on launching VIX, developed under licence from S&P. S&P developed VIX for the Chicago exchange, too.
Volatility is decided based on trading in options contracts. "Volatility is inversely related to the market. In a range-bound market, chances are that volatility will come down if the market is at the lower end of the range and a trader can short VIX once the market moves up," said Sidharth Bhamre, head (derivatives), Angel Broking. The volatility index could also be used as a hedging instrument by index traders, he added.
Trading in commodity and weather indices would be a reality once amendments to the Forwards Contract Regulations (FCR) are passed in Parliament in the coming months. If an investors/trader wants to invest in commodities, but doesn't know which commodity would go up, he could buy into an index. For example, in case of drought, agro commodity prices tend to move up and, hence, one can buy into the agri index.
"Existing commodity exchanges like MCX and NCDEX are prepared to launch trading in indices. If all go well, commodity index trading will start in the early second half of 2010," P K Singhal, deputy managing director of MCX, said.
"It will help in diversification of portfolio and offer a broader basket to hedge, using a single product. Globally, institutional participants such as banks and asset management companies hedge their risk in commodities using indices, as they can select the structure and composition of the index," he added.
A weather index is useful for various industries, apart from farmers and traders. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has several weather indices like rainfall index, temperature index and even moisture index.
Commodities and industries can hedge on such products. For example, cement sales come down if rainfall is high, so cement manufacturers can go bullish on the rainfall index (expecting more rain) and make money there, which will compensate for lower sales in cement due to slower construction.
If the monsoon turns deficient, they will lose money on the rainfall index, but will get compensated by higher cement sales, as construction work will be on fast track. Fertiliser companies take a reverse call, as their sales go up if rainfall is higher. In many cases, quantum of rainfall or temperature is important and, therefore, trading in such indices helps.
Ice cream sales can fall if temperature is low. The wheat crop benefits if winter is cooler. In case of traders, they can simply go long in such indices if they feel the monsoon will be better.
Indices also provide investment opportunities in commodities, as actual buying and selling commodities require investors to go through various formalities like tax and deliveries.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Java for Quant Development?
Java is an all-purpose language. Check out jQuantlib and Marketcetera to get started.
All quant code in banks is in C++ , you will have better chances of a getting a
job if you do. Why software technicians keep asking the same question and always the answering the same things.
Quant job = C++ mastered. Most quants use Python for tools development & C++ for core apps don't kid yourself. Primary focus on performance is applicable to high frequency trading and market making systems.C++ is not always the fastest, in fact its predecessor C wins almost always hands down. Even there the bottle neck is networking and messaging not computation.
C++ code tends to be harder to understand and to express a mathematical problem in. Quants will find it that functional languages such as Haskell let them think about the problem rather than about language syntax.
Not that Java is that much better in this department as it yields verbose code. Java however has a huge advantage existing libraries and of a very robust software development toolbox for unit testing, continuous integration, refactoring and build process. The last one in my particular issue with C/C++. Fighting linker errors and dealing with messy makefiles create so much noise that performance gains pale in comparison.
If anyone here has a proven "system" for working with large code base of C/C++ code including third party libraries please post.
I must be in a bad dream? Or many of you are just confused in general about how things work on Wall St. Many sophisticated quantitative and computational finance work done today by the top buy side firms who are trading proprietary capital use C++ for core systems development. C++ will usually make up a bulk of the code base at these shops. Think stat/arb desks and market making firms. I can't think of any arb desk or MM firms today who has built their core systems on Java that is actually profitable.
Many algos developed at many firms for client facing order flow like DMA, dark pools, smart order routing etc.. Are usually developed in Java, C#, .NET etc.. and many of the tools and GUi around these systems. There are many reasons for this like better interoperability between GUI and back-end systems, larger pool of lower quality developers, client facing tools usually require much more customizations and rapid changes for client needs speed usually isn't the #1 priority compared to feature set.
Many firms today employ the same people an everyone is using very similar models in the end it's all about speed.
Plain and simple C++ allows a skilled programmer to squeeze much more optomizations out of his code than he could if using Java or C#.
Rodrick what you say is correct but is biased toward electronic markets like equities, futures etc. If you venture a little bit out of there into OTC traded fixed income and fixed income derivatives speed does not matter nearly as much. Sweet dreams.
Definition (wiki): "A quantitative analyst is a person who works in finance using numerical or quantitative techniques."
There is life outside Wall St(US) ;-). Also, there is front end, back end, trading, risk management, quants working for hedge funds, for trader, for rating agencies, for insurance companies, from high frequency to macro-economics, from research to day-to-day business and so on.
I don't understand this quant == trading (front end) + C++
Besides, all the statements without facts make discussion complicated. (E.g. Java is faster than C++, ok but the actual questions is how much).
Rodrick, again, if performance is the 'Key' for making money why you don't use assembler ? why C++ ?
In reality, JAVA or C# has capable to substitute C/C++, but since on Wall St. many sophisticated quantitative and computational finance application were written by C/C++(as Rodrick mentioned as well), therefore, it isn't necessary to spend money to convert all codes into JAVA or C#. JAVA is essential designed for web-application, C# inherited lots of new feature both of C++ and JAVA have(Initially for MSFT want to give a capability for all other type code converted into) . Look into JAVA & C#, they are just similar as C/C++ but adding some more features only.
If you pay attention to today's financial application, you might be able to find out certain new financial application's baseline code is done through C#.
Answering various questions:
David, you are right to ask the % difference, and as someone who used to review programming language implementations for PC Magazine, I can tell you with some authority that you cant get a good simple number.
The problem is that it's a differential equation with boundary conditions, and subjective.
In almost all cases, Java could be faster than C++
It isn't because the people who build the compilers and JVMs don't really take performance all that seriously.
This is unintuitive I believe ?
Fact is that C++ compilers waste a lot of clock cycles because they cannot know the nature of the machine they will run on. In fact you have to tell it what processor at compilation, and subtleties down to various numbers and cores / CPU cache can only be expressed by unpleasant code.
JVMs *could* do this because they know the machine they are running on.
But they don't.
The maths comes in because we have two time terms here.
Time to develop the code and time to run it.
Most code is simply irrelevant to the execution time, so if you free up the programmer from certain tasks which consume his effort, he has time to write faster code.
That I think answers the assembler vs C++ question, I believe the CQF is the only finance course that covers x86 assembler at all, and even we don't do al that much.
But.of course I can stick bits of assembler into my C++, which is something I do very sparingly, and if you find that a headhunter is writing code that goes several times faster than yours, consider despair or more education :)
So to test Java vs C++ properly you'd have to apply a time constraint to the development teams. Also you'd need to have equivalent skill in the teams.
Although Java has some features that some feel make it easier to develop, there is a surprising lack of objective evidence.
Partly I think this is because most of Java's "easier" features can seriously get in the way when you really care about speed. When I delete an object, I want the fucker dead *now*. At the limit I want to be able to tell the compiler how to translate my code, and if necessary I want to access useful operating system features.
Another factor is of course that hardware is typically cheaper than programmer time, meaning that a few cores can do more for you than changing language.
Back when I had the chance to get input into the new version of Excel, I fumbled the case for making VBA multi threaded, sorry. The reason I cared is that VBA is the 2nd most important quant language after C++, and although Excel >= 2007 is threaded, you only have one VBA instance :(
I believe the fact that VBA is #2 supports my case rather well. One can quickly knock together some code that mostly does what you want in an acceptable time. It interfaces nicely with spreadsheets (something Java doesn't), and can talk to every data source on the planet.
But Java programmers are cheaper, hard to quantify this is precisely, since on average they are less skilled and experienced, but a three year experienced Java programmer may easily be on 1/4 that of the C++ guy.
If anything, that ratio is increasing
This alters the economics. Tasks that do not require advanced techniques or high performance can be done as well in Java / C# as in C++, but more cheaply.
This is why banks use packs of cheap Indian programmers for housekeeping IT.
I didn't mention I used to be a CIO did I ?
I mention this because there is a clear division in the advice I give here.
Firstly, if you are a CIO, using Java allows you to buy cheap, medium quality programming time overseas. It also provides a good blame sink for the inevitable screw ups.
As a CIO you have no interest whatever in providing efficient reliable systems, indeed the techniques necessary to do so will hurt your political position.
But if you are writing code, Java is your enemy.
The function (supply, demand, substitability) = bad.price
All quant code in banks is in C++ , you will have better chances of a getting a
job if you do. Why software technicians keep asking the same question and always the answering the same things.
Quant job = C++ mastered. Most quants use Python for tools development & C++ for core apps don't kid yourself. Primary focus on performance is applicable to high frequency trading and market making systems.C++ is not always the fastest, in fact its predecessor C wins almost always hands down. Even there the bottle neck is networking and messaging not computation.
C++ code tends to be harder to understand and to express a mathematical problem in. Quants will find it that functional languages such as Haskell let them think about the problem rather than about language syntax.
Not that Java is that much better in this department as it yields verbose code. Java however has a huge advantage existing libraries and of a very robust software development toolbox for unit testing, continuous integration, refactoring and build process. The last one in my particular issue with C/C++. Fighting linker errors and dealing with messy makefiles create so much noise that performance gains pale in comparison.
If anyone here has a proven "system" for working with large code base of C/C++ code including third party libraries please post.
I must be in a bad dream? Or many of you are just confused in general about how things work on Wall St. Many sophisticated quantitative and computational finance work done today by the top buy side firms who are trading proprietary capital use C++ for core systems development. C++ will usually make up a bulk of the code base at these shops. Think stat/arb desks and market making firms. I can't think of any arb desk or MM firms today who has built their core systems on Java that is actually profitable.
Many algos developed at many firms for client facing order flow like DMA, dark pools, smart order routing etc.. Are usually developed in Java, C#, .NET etc.. and many of the tools and GUi around these systems. There are many reasons for this like better interoperability between GUI and back-end systems, larger pool of lower quality developers, client facing tools usually require much more customizations and rapid changes for client needs speed usually isn't the #1 priority compared to feature set.
Many firms today employ the same people an everyone is using very similar models in the end it's all about speed.
Plain and simple C++ allows a skilled programmer to squeeze much more optomizations out of his code than he could if using Java or C#.
Rodrick what you say is correct but is biased toward electronic markets like equities, futures etc. If you venture a little bit out of there into OTC traded fixed income and fixed income derivatives speed does not matter nearly as much. Sweet dreams.
Definition (wiki): "A quantitative analyst is a person who works in finance using numerical or quantitative techniques."
There is life outside Wall St(US) ;-). Also, there is front end, back end, trading, risk management, quants working for hedge funds, for trader, for rating agencies, for insurance companies, from high frequency to macro-economics, from research to day-to-day business and so on.
I don't understand this quant == trading (front end) + C++
Besides, all the statements without facts make discussion complicated. (E.g. Java is faster than C++, ok but the actual questions is how much).
Rodrick, again, if performance is the 'Key' for making money why you don't use assembler ? why C++ ?
In reality, JAVA or C# has capable to substitute C/C++, but since on Wall St. many sophisticated quantitative and computational finance application were written by C/C++(as Rodrick mentioned as well), therefore, it isn't necessary to spend money to convert all codes into JAVA or C#. JAVA is essential designed for web-application, C# inherited lots of new feature both of C++ and JAVA have(Initially for MSFT want to give a capability for all other type code converted into) . Look into JAVA & C#, they are just similar as C/C++ but adding some more features only.
If you pay attention to today's financial application, you might be able to find out certain new financial application's baseline code is done through C#.
Answering various questions:
David, you are right to ask the % difference, and as someone who used to review programming language implementations for PC Magazine, I can tell you with some authority that you cant get a good simple number.
The problem is that it's a differential equation with boundary conditions, and subjective.
In almost all cases, Java could be faster than C++
It isn't because the people who build the compilers and JVMs don't really take performance all that seriously.
This is unintuitive I believe ?
Fact is that C++ compilers waste a lot of clock cycles because they cannot know the nature of the machine they will run on. In fact you have to tell it what processor at compilation, and subtleties down to various numbers and cores / CPU cache can only be expressed by unpleasant code.
JVMs *could* do this because they know the machine they are running on.
But they don't.
The maths comes in because we have two time terms here.
Time to develop the code and time to run it.
Most code is simply irrelevant to the execution time, so if you free up the programmer from certain tasks which consume his effort, he has time to write faster code.
That I think answers the assembler vs C++ question, I believe the CQF is the only finance course that covers x86 assembler at all, and even we don't do al that much.
But.of course I can stick bits of assembler into my C++, which is something I do very sparingly, and if you find that a headhunter is writing code that goes several times faster than yours, consider despair or more education :)
So to test Java vs C++ properly you'd have to apply a time constraint to the development teams. Also you'd need to have equivalent skill in the teams.
Although Java has some features that some feel make it easier to develop, there is a surprising lack of objective evidence.
Partly I think this is because most of Java's "easier" features can seriously get in the way when you really care about speed. When I delete an object, I want the fucker dead *now*. At the limit I want to be able to tell the compiler how to translate my code, and if necessary I want to access useful operating system features.
Another factor is of course that hardware is typically cheaper than programmer time, meaning that a few cores can do more for you than changing language.
Back when I had the chance to get input into the new version of Excel, I fumbled the case for making VBA multi threaded, sorry. The reason I cared is that VBA is the 2nd most important quant language after C++, and although Excel >= 2007 is threaded, you only have one VBA instance :(
I believe the fact that VBA is #2 supports my case rather well. One can quickly knock together some code that mostly does what you want in an acceptable time. It interfaces nicely with spreadsheets (something Java doesn't), and can talk to every data source on the planet.
But Java programmers are cheaper, hard to quantify this is precisely, since on average they are less skilled and experienced, but a three year experienced Java programmer may easily be on 1/4 that of the C++ guy.
If anything, that ratio is increasing
This alters the economics. Tasks that do not require advanced techniques or high performance can be done as well in Java / C# as in C++, but more cheaply.
This is why banks use packs of cheap Indian programmers for housekeeping IT.
I didn't mention I used to be a CIO did I ?
I mention this because there is a clear division in the advice I give here.
Firstly, if you are a CIO, using Java allows you to buy cheap, medium quality programming time overseas. It also provides a good blame sink for the inevitable screw ups.
As a CIO you have no interest whatever in providing efficient reliable systems, indeed the techniques necessary to do so will hurt your political position.
But if you are writing code, Java is your enemy.
The function (supply, demand, substitability) = bad.price
Indians are determined to pursue the CFA charter
'Indians are determined to pursue the CFA charter'
How many Indian students apply for the CFA Programme every year? Has it increased/ decreased over the past few years?
In fiscal year 2009, India ranked fourth with the number of registrations for the CFA exam rising to nearly 14,500 (including those who gave level I exams in December and level I, II and III students in June 2009). A record 5500 students are registered for the level I CFA exam to be held in Mumbai on December 6, 2009. Despite the uncertainty for Indian candidates seeking the CFA designation over the last few years, the number of registrations from India has increased steadily. This growth shows how determined Indian candidates are to pursue the CFA charter.
What are the CFA Institute's plans in India?
Currently, the CFA Institute has 108 CFA Programme partners worldwide, with 25 in the APAC Region. Once the legal situation in India is resolved, we look forward to partnering with strong Indian finance programmes. We have signed a MoU with the Securities and Exchange Board of India's National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM) in June 2009 to jointly organise financial and investment educational training programs and research in India. We have already held a journalist training, exam development training, and a workshop on derivatives. We also hope that, barring legal constraint, we can establish an office in India to support our candidates and members on the ground in the future.
How do you see the role of the CFA evolving in today's dynamic world?
While the skill and knowledge base of CFA charterholders, the investment tools and applications they use, may be evolving according to the changing market needs and new financial innovations, their primary role has not and will not change. It is essentially to act at all times in the best interest of investors, placing investors' interests before their firms', and before their own.
Broadly speaking, CFA charterholders study markets, trends and stocks, and analyse them to provide insightful opinions on buying or selling companies/stocks and even make investment decisions. Sameer Bakhru, Managing Partner, Pan Venture Consultants gives us more insight. "Essentially they can work on the buy side or sell side, valuing, selling or creating investments for companies or investors," he says.
Buy side refers to a group of people who buy into investments. They include mutual funds (such as Fidelity, Franklin Templeton), which buy into listed companies and private equity funds (such as Chrys Capital, Baring) that buy into unlisted companies.
Sell side refers to companies that sell investments to other companies or individuals, or manage client accounts. These may typically be investment management companies or brokerage outfits (that sell stocks to investors) such as HDFC Securities, ICICI Securities or India Bulls.
Core finance division/ treasury departments of MNCs also hire CFAs who would manage the company's existing cash assets via short and medium-term investments in the treasury. In the M&A division, he/she would evaluate acquisition/takeover targets, and manage them during the M&A process.
One could be working as an analyst researching companies in a particular sector (say telecoms), valuing them and zeroing in on the target share price of the companies. An analyst's role revolves around valuation of the companies he targets -- the higher the expected share price viz the current price, the greater are the returns expected out of investing in that company, Bakhru adds.
Investment managers study listed companies (if they work in a mutual fund) or unlisted companies (if they work in a PE fund). They manage a certain sum of money on a regular basis and take buy and sell decisions in the stock market. Wealth managers/relationship managers guide investors on what investments to make and operate independently or work with large private banks such as Citibank or HSBC.
There are only about 400-500 CFA (USA) charterholders in India. The number looks set to rise with 5,500 students registered for the December level I exam. The qualification is being increasingly sought for its credibility, specialisation and the global recognition that comes with it, though it is tough to attain it. With the global economic downturn receding, market sentiments picking up and the financial sector set to regain its momentum, the future surely looks bright for CFAs in India.
How many Indian students apply for the CFA Programme every year? Has it increased/ decreased over the past few years?
In fiscal year 2009, India ranked fourth with the number of registrations for the CFA exam rising to nearly 14,500 (including those who gave level I exams in December and level I, II and III students in June 2009). A record 5500 students are registered for the level I CFA exam to be held in Mumbai on December 6, 2009. Despite the uncertainty for Indian candidates seeking the CFA designation over the last few years, the number of registrations from India has increased steadily. This growth shows how determined Indian candidates are to pursue the CFA charter.
What are the CFA Institute's plans in India?
Currently, the CFA Institute has 108 CFA Programme partners worldwide, with 25 in the APAC Region. Once the legal situation in India is resolved, we look forward to partnering with strong Indian finance programmes. We have signed a MoU with the Securities and Exchange Board of India's National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM) in June 2009 to jointly organise financial and investment educational training programs and research in India. We have already held a journalist training, exam development training, and a workshop on derivatives. We also hope that, barring legal constraint, we can establish an office in India to support our candidates and members on the ground in the future.
How do you see the role of the CFA evolving in today's dynamic world?
While the skill and knowledge base of CFA charterholders, the investment tools and applications they use, may be evolving according to the changing market needs and new financial innovations, their primary role has not and will not change. It is essentially to act at all times in the best interest of investors, placing investors' interests before their firms', and before their own.
Broadly speaking, CFA charterholders study markets, trends and stocks, and analyse them to provide insightful opinions on buying or selling companies/stocks and even make investment decisions. Sameer Bakhru, Managing Partner, Pan Venture Consultants gives us more insight. "Essentially they can work on the buy side or sell side, valuing, selling or creating investments for companies or investors," he says.
Buy side refers to a group of people who buy into investments. They include mutual funds (such as Fidelity, Franklin Templeton), which buy into listed companies and private equity funds (such as Chrys Capital, Baring) that buy into unlisted companies.
Sell side refers to companies that sell investments to other companies or individuals, or manage client accounts. These may typically be investment management companies or brokerage outfits (that sell stocks to investors) such as HDFC Securities, ICICI Securities or India Bulls.
Core finance division/ treasury departments of MNCs also hire CFAs who would manage the company's existing cash assets via short and medium-term investments in the treasury. In the M&A division, he/she would evaluate acquisition/takeover targets, and manage them during the M&A process.
One could be working as an analyst researching companies in a particular sector (say telecoms), valuing them and zeroing in on the target share price of the companies. An analyst's role revolves around valuation of the companies he targets -- the higher the expected share price viz the current price, the greater are the returns expected out of investing in that company, Bakhru adds.
Investment managers study listed companies (if they work in a mutual fund) or unlisted companies (if they work in a PE fund). They manage a certain sum of money on a regular basis and take buy and sell decisions in the stock market. Wealth managers/relationship managers guide investors on what investments to make and operate independently or work with large private banks such as Citibank or HSBC.
There are only about 400-500 CFA (USA) charterholders in India. The number looks set to rise with 5,500 students registered for the December level I exam. The qualification is being increasingly sought for its credibility, specialisation and the global recognition that comes with it, though it is tough to attain it. With the global economic downturn receding, market sentiments picking up and the financial sector set to regain its momentum, the future surely looks bright for CFAs in India.
This student's charitable work spans 26 countries
This student's charitable work spans 26 countries
Omprakash, a resident in a home for the destitute run by Mother Teresa's [ Images ] Missionaries of Charity in New Delhi [ Images ], had a number of health problems, many of them due to a stroke he had suffered 30 years ago. Yet he looked forward to each day since the stroke, he told an 18-year-old American student, William J Oppenheim III.
"He said he felt he was in paradise each day because the nuns took such good care of him," William recalled last week, soon after he was named among 32 United States Rhodes scholars, about how he came to name a foundation after Omprakash.
The visit to the charity home over five years ago had a profound impact on William and a few friends who were volunteering in India. He had taken a year off after graduating from high school to teach English in a small school in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh [ Images ], India, for three months.
"On our last day in India, we volunteered at the Mother Teresa Home for the Dying and Destitute in Delhi, and that's how I came to know Omprakash," he recalled. "There were just about six nuns there, caring for 300 physically and mentally disabled people. The living conditions at the home were far from what most people -- at least in America -- would call ideal, but the nuns and doctors cared for the residents deeply. Suddenly, my friends and I could feel that money and bureaucracy were not any more the most ingredients in the recipe for positive social change. It also became apparent to us the human-to-human interaction was crucial for the success of any kind of volunteer work."
They also felt that "by letting the voices of people like Omprakash resonate amongst our friends and families in America and elsewhere, we could share the sense of humility and gratitude that this man inspired in us," he said.
The foundation he would start with a handful of friends would eliminate middlemen who charged a fee to find volunteer opportunities.
"Some of these agencies that send volunteers abroad charge as much as $5,000 per person," he said. "Just imagine where that money would go."
Today, The Omprakash Foundation (www.omprakash.org) links for-free volunteer teachers with more than 100 grassroots educational projects in 26 countries including India, Vietnam, Peru, Nigeria and Ghana. One project is run by the M Venkatarangaiya Foundation (www.mvfindia.in), an eight-year-old organisation started in Andhra Pradesh that helps children in more than 10 Indian states. It fights child labour, offering the children residential 'bridge camps' where they receive free education until they are ready to enter government schools.
The Future Leaders and Women's Development programmes run by Health Inc in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir [ Images ] recently received $17,230 from the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, through the Foundation.
Also in Ladakh, the Springdales School received last year $700 to build a library to store the books it received, as part of the Foundation's book distribution project.
William, an alumni of Bowdoin College, Maine, who will study international education at Oxford, said he does not take any money to run the website or for anything else connected with his volunteer work.
"If you write a check, we transfer 100 percent of that money to Peru. Or India," he said. "We offer an ever-expanding database of grassroots educational projects with which we have established personal relationships. Our content is user-generated: As people young and old travel the world to volunteer. They build relationships with non-government agencies, schools and charity foundations. We invite them to bring these educational projects into the Omprakash network."
The model the New Canaan, Connecticut-based Foundation uses is largely the result of the encounters William had in India.
"We learned soon after starting this foundation that volunteers did not have to go through organisations that charge high fees for admission into structured, pre-arranged 'volunteer trips'," he said. "We worked hard to connect with organisations where we could volunteer directly. During our subsequent trips, we were becoming more aware of another problem: Many educational organisations in India were eager to receive volunteers and other resources, but did not know how to seek that help."
The third problem the foundation faced stemmed from the discovery that many potential volunteers and donors did not know the specific needs of the educational projects. Thus, humanitarian efforts were often doomed to be thoroughly de-humanised by the bureaucratic mechanics of macro-level development.
The Omprakash Foundation, which apart from connecting volunteers also facilitates donations over $250,000 a year, he said, does not offer any guide service to escort volunteers or donors to any countries. The website says: 'But we offer our advice and encouragement to young Americans looking to broaden their perspectives by entering a foreign community and forging relationships without the filter of an organised travel group. We strongly believe that this effort of ours will be eye-opening and intensely educational for both American volunteers and the foreign communities that they will serve.'
Omprakash, a resident in a home for the destitute run by Mother Teresa's [ Images ] Missionaries of Charity in New Delhi [ Images ], had a number of health problems, many of them due to a stroke he had suffered 30 years ago. Yet he looked forward to each day since the stroke, he told an 18-year-old American student, William J Oppenheim III.
"He said he felt he was in paradise each day because the nuns took such good care of him," William recalled last week, soon after he was named among 32 United States Rhodes scholars, about how he came to name a foundation after Omprakash.
The visit to the charity home over five years ago had a profound impact on William and a few friends who were volunteering in India. He had taken a year off after graduating from high school to teach English in a small school in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh [ Images ], India, for three months.
"On our last day in India, we volunteered at the Mother Teresa Home for the Dying and Destitute in Delhi, and that's how I came to know Omprakash," he recalled. "There were just about six nuns there, caring for 300 physically and mentally disabled people. The living conditions at the home were far from what most people -- at least in America -- would call ideal, but the nuns and doctors cared for the residents deeply. Suddenly, my friends and I could feel that money and bureaucracy were not any more the most ingredients in the recipe for positive social change. It also became apparent to us the human-to-human interaction was crucial for the success of any kind of volunteer work."
They also felt that "by letting the voices of people like Omprakash resonate amongst our friends and families in America and elsewhere, we could share the sense of humility and gratitude that this man inspired in us," he said.
The foundation he would start with a handful of friends would eliminate middlemen who charged a fee to find volunteer opportunities.
"Some of these agencies that send volunteers abroad charge as much as $5,000 per person," he said. "Just imagine where that money would go."
Today, The Omprakash Foundation (www.omprakash.org) links for-free volunteer teachers with more than 100 grassroots educational projects in 26 countries including India, Vietnam, Peru, Nigeria and Ghana. One project is run by the M Venkatarangaiya Foundation (www.mvfindia.in), an eight-year-old organisation started in Andhra Pradesh that helps children in more than 10 Indian states. It fights child labour, offering the children residential 'bridge camps' where they receive free education until they are ready to enter government schools.
The Future Leaders and Women's Development programmes run by Health Inc in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir [ Images ] recently received $17,230 from the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, through the Foundation.
Also in Ladakh, the Springdales School received last year $700 to build a library to store the books it received, as part of the Foundation's book distribution project.
William, an alumni of Bowdoin College, Maine, who will study international education at Oxford, said he does not take any money to run the website or for anything else connected with his volunteer work.
"If you write a check, we transfer 100 percent of that money to Peru. Or India," he said. "We offer an ever-expanding database of grassroots educational projects with which we have established personal relationships. Our content is user-generated: As people young and old travel the world to volunteer. They build relationships with non-government agencies, schools and charity foundations. We invite them to bring these educational projects into the Omprakash network."
The model the New Canaan, Connecticut-based Foundation uses is largely the result of the encounters William had in India.
"We learned soon after starting this foundation that volunteers did not have to go through organisations that charge high fees for admission into structured, pre-arranged 'volunteer trips'," he said. "We worked hard to connect with organisations where we could volunteer directly. During our subsequent trips, we were becoming more aware of another problem: Many educational organisations in India were eager to receive volunteers and other resources, but did not know how to seek that help."
The third problem the foundation faced stemmed from the discovery that many potential volunteers and donors did not know the specific needs of the educational projects. Thus, humanitarian efforts were often doomed to be thoroughly de-humanised by the bureaucratic mechanics of macro-level development.
The Omprakash Foundation, which apart from connecting volunteers also facilitates donations over $250,000 a year, he said, does not offer any guide service to escort volunteers or donors to any countries. The website says: 'But we offer our advice and encouragement to young Americans looking to broaden their perspectives by entering a foreign community and forging relationships without the filter of an organised travel group. We strongly believe that this effort of ours will be eye-opening and intensely educational for both American volunteers and the foreign communities that they will serve.'
They sell trash to save lives
They sell trash to save lives
Shail Shah is a 23-year-old IT engineer. He works with Adani Wilmar, a leading edible oil company, but there's something else that keeps this young go-getter busy.
In his free time, Shail along with 65 other young people from Ahmedabad [ Images ], come together to raise money for deserving, needy families, distribute food and supplies to slum-dwellers and spend time with orphans and old-aged.
While the social activities of this group are varied, one of the more commendable efforts is Shail's initiative to raise money for dialysis patients. He along with 25-year-old Palakh Jain have been raising money by visiting homes, and picking up and selling old newspaper and other recyclable material for the last four years.
People who hear of them through word of mouth or recent news reports call them up and they arrange for the paper or other trash to be picked up. This is then sold at the recyclers', who give them a slightly higher rate than the normal. And this money is channeled into the fund -- a fund provides patients suffering from kidney failure with dialysis. "It is not a one-time expense," explains Shail. These patients need dialyses on a weekly basis and, costing about Rs 12,000-15,000 per month, it is out of reach for many.
But why have they chosen such an unconventional route to raising money? "Well, when you just ask people for money whatever the cause may be, they are reluctant. They are not sure of whether the funds will be utilised for the right purpose, whether the funds will reach the people who need it. This way they can contribute without actually having to give us their money."
The first patient he reached out to was a lady who suffered renal failure during childbirth. Being from an impoverished background she needed help and approached Shail. He extended his assistance from his own pocket but as he learnt of the many others who were suffering just for lack of money, he decided to mobilise funds through his network of friends.
"Another patient, a rickshaw driver, approached me saying that if I could just help him with one week's dialysis, he would live for a week longer enabling him to earn enough money for the next week's session," says Palakh.
So far they have raised Rs 1.72 lakhs but Shail is looking to the future with caution. "While we do want to help more people, we don't want to risk neglecting our older patients. Since dialysis is a recurrent expense we need to ensure that all our patients are taken care of."
The duo has tied up with the Gujarat Kidney Foundation and a panel of six nephrologists. It is from here that deserving patients are identified and assisted. They also collaborate with the Thackershy Trust, where dialysis is administered at a nominal rate. Candidates are screened to make sure that they are truly in need of assistance. The nephrologists charge a marginal amount, which is then covered by the fund.
Apart from this they are also involved in other social activities. They visit old-age homes every fortnight, a school for mentally challenged children every week where they interact with the children and organise dance parties, distribute khichdi and blankets to slum dwellers. A friend's parents have donated two vehicles to the cause, which are used to transport volunteers and supplies every week.
It all began with a drive home from a party. It was winter and this group of youngsters saw people shivering in the cold. This sight prompted them to rustle up some funds to buy them blankets. Since then the group has grown, as has their scope of activity.
And what does the future hold? "Five years down the line, no Indian should die for lack of funds that is our goal, and we are working towards it," says Shail, brimming with hope and confidence.
Shail Shah is a 23-year-old IT engineer. He works with Adani Wilmar, a leading edible oil company, but there's something else that keeps this young go-getter busy.
In his free time, Shail along with 65 other young people from Ahmedabad [ Images ], come together to raise money for deserving, needy families, distribute food and supplies to slum-dwellers and spend time with orphans and old-aged.
While the social activities of this group are varied, one of the more commendable efforts is Shail's initiative to raise money for dialysis patients. He along with 25-year-old Palakh Jain have been raising money by visiting homes, and picking up and selling old newspaper and other recyclable material for the last four years.
People who hear of them through word of mouth or recent news reports call them up and they arrange for the paper or other trash to be picked up. This is then sold at the recyclers', who give them a slightly higher rate than the normal. And this money is channeled into the fund -- a fund provides patients suffering from kidney failure with dialysis. "It is not a one-time expense," explains Shail. These patients need dialyses on a weekly basis and, costing about Rs 12,000-15,000 per month, it is out of reach for many.
But why have they chosen such an unconventional route to raising money? "Well, when you just ask people for money whatever the cause may be, they are reluctant. They are not sure of whether the funds will be utilised for the right purpose, whether the funds will reach the people who need it. This way they can contribute without actually having to give us their money."
The first patient he reached out to was a lady who suffered renal failure during childbirth. Being from an impoverished background she needed help and approached Shail. He extended his assistance from his own pocket but as he learnt of the many others who were suffering just for lack of money, he decided to mobilise funds through his network of friends.
"Another patient, a rickshaw driver, approached me saying that if I could just help him with one week's dialysis, he would live for a week longer enabling him to earn enough money for the next week's session," says Palakh.
So far they have raised Rs 1.72 lakhs but Shail is looking to the future with caution. "While we do want to help more people, we don't want to risk neglecting our older patients. Since dialysis is a recurrent expense we need to ensure that all our patients are taken care of."
The duo has tied up with the Gujarat Kidney Foundation and a panel of six nephrologists. It is from here that deserving patients are identified and assisted. They also collaborate with the Thackershy Trust, where dialysis is administered at a nominal rate. Candidates are screened to make sure that they are truly in need of assistance. The nephrologists charge a marginal amount, which is then covered by the fund.
Apart from this they are also involved in other social activities. They visit old-age homes every fortnight, a school for mentally challenged children every week where they interact with the children and organise dance parties, distribute khichdi and blankets to slum dwellers. A friend's parents have donated two vehicles to the cause, which are used to transport volunteers and supplies every week.
It all began with a drive home from a party. It was winter and this group of youngsters saw people shivering in the cold. This sight prompted them to rustle up some funds to buy them blankets. Since then the group has grown, as has their scope of activity.
And what does the future hold? "Five years down the line, no Indian should die for lack of funds that is our goal, and we are working towards it," says Shail, brimming with hope and confidence.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future is a book by Daniel H. Pink, author of Free Agent Nation. A Whole New Mind posits that the future of global business belongs to the right-brainers.
A historical narrative starts the book outlining four major 'ages':
1. Agricultural Age (farmers)
2. Industrial Age (factory workers)
3. Information Age (knowledge workers)
4. Conceptual Age (creators and empathizers)
The fourth stage is where Pink focuses and how businesses can be successful.
Pink references three prevailing trends pointing towards the future of business and the economy: Abundance (consumers have too many choices, nothing is scarce), Asia (everything that can be outsourced, is) and Automation (computerization, robots, technology, processes). This brings up three crucial questions for the success of any business:
1. Can a computer do it faster?
2. Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?
3. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
When these questions are present, creativity becomes the competitive difference that can differentiate commodities. Pink outlines six essential senses:
1. Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense.
2. Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument. Best of the six senses.
3. Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).
4. Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
5. Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.
6. Meaning - the purpose is the journey, give meaning to life from inside yourself.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future is a book by Daniel H. Pink, author of Free Agent Nation. A Whole New Mind posits that the future of global business belongs to the right-brainers.
A historical narrative starts the book outlining four major 'ages':
1. Agricultural Age (farmers)
2. Industrial Age (factory workers)
3. Information Age (knowledge workers)
4. Conceptual Age (creators and empathizers)
The fourth stage is where Pink focuses and how businesses can be successful.
Pink references three prevailing trends pointing towards the future of business and the economy: Abundance (consumers have too many choices, nothing is scarce), Asia (everything that can be outsourced, is) and Automation (computerization, robots, technology, processes). This brings up three crucial questions for the success of any business:
1. Can a computer do it faster?
2. Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?
3. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
When these questions are present, creativity becomes the competitive difference that can differentiate commodities. Pink outlines six essential senses:
1. Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense.
2. Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument. Best of the six senses.
3. Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).
4. Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
5. Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.
6. Meaning - the purpose is the journey, give meaning to life from inside yourself.
My Inspiration for future plans.......
"G" - The Wiz Kid
At 17, Gurbaksh Singh Chahal was clueless about kissing girls and holding hands, but he was savvy enough to make $300,000 a month with an Internet advertising company he founded in his bedroom at his family's home in San Jose, California, U.S.A.
When he flew to Los Angeles on business, the young Sikh with a turban and a beard looked mature, but he was too young to rent a car to drive to his appointments, so he concealed his age by taking cabs to meet his clients.
When he sought venture capital from investors, he skirted questions about his experience (none!) and tried to avoid revealing that he'd dropped out: not from college, but from high school.
Now all of 26, he sits on top of two astounding achievements: He sold his first company, Click Agent, for $40 million in an all-stock merger in 2000, and his second, Blue Lithium, to Yahoo last year for $300 million.
This week, his autobiography, The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions (Palgrave MacMillan, 236 pages, $24.95) hit bookstores.
He appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Thursday. On December 3, he'll be on Fox TV's "Secret Millionaire" series, in which wealthy participants live undercover among the poor, and then bestow $100,000 of their own money on deserving recipients. He lived in the Tenderloin, and his segment features two San Francisco charities: St. Anthony's and Raphael House.
Gurbaksh has yet another TV show in the works, and a new Internet company that should launch in the coming weeks.
While success like his is often attributed to luck, Gurbaksh's story, like that of many immigrants, is more one of sacrifice. He wrote the book, he said, to show that it was years of hard work, persistence and faith, along with the support of his family, that brought his financial rewards - not chance.
"I did not want to write a Donald Trump book - 'Think big, kick ass'," Gurbaksh said in an interview last week in his sleek, white, modern penthouse in the Infinity Tower overlooking the Embarcadero and San Francisco Bay. "It's not easy to make money. It's a struggle, a journey. There's no 'Ten ways to success', no pyramid scheme," he said. "I thought if I could write about my life and my journey and people could connect it with their own life, their own path, they could realize, 'If he can do it, so can I.'"
Gurbaksh, who has soap-opera-star good looks, is one of four children in a family that immigrated from Punjab, India, in 1986 to escape political instability arising from political upheaval in Punjab, the Sikh homeland.
In San Jose, his father worked as a postal employee and his mother was a nurse. Gurbaksh had an older brother, two older sisters and a grandmother who came along. They lived in East San Jose, one of the city's lower-income neighborhoods.
In India, his father had graduated college with an engineering degree and worked at the police academy, while his mother had run the nursing program at a city hospital.
Here, they worked double shifts, shopped at the Dollar Store and McFrugal's and clipped coupons. But they encouraged their children to go to college to become doctors or engineers.
But Gurbaksh, who was nicknamed "G" for Gurbakshi-Ji ("Ji" is a term of endearment) took an independent path. He was influenced by his father's pluck, his grandmother's optimistic spirit and an innate stubborn streak.
He was teased as a child by neighborhood kids about his Sikh religion, questioned by a schoolteacher about his colorful clothing, and was once forced at knifepoint on a schoolyard basketball court to take his turban off.
"I can't. It's part of my religion," Chahal told them.
"You don't listen too good, do you?" (the boy) said, taking a knife out of his pocket. "Take that s- off right now!"
"I wanted to tell them, just as I'd wanted to tell everyone who had ever taunted me, that I was proud of my family, proud of my heritage and proud to be a Sikh - but I was just a kid, and I didn't know where to begin," he says. "Instead, I began to long for another kind of existence, where I was in charge."
His dream became a reality not long afterward.
Gurbaksh's father had started a side job, day trading on the computer, and was soon making more money than at his day job. Gurbaksh, the youngest son, helped him research stocks, and together they watched business reports on TV and read the business pages every morning before work and school.
Gurbaksh came across Double Click, an Internet advertising business. They didn't invest, but it planted a seed in his mind.
When the stock market crashed in 1997 and his father lost nearly everything, Gurbaksh decided he would try to help his family recover - and created his own company, Click Agent. It was a performance-based advertising company.
Software could track when someone viewing a Web page clicked on an ad; an advertiser was charged each time that happened. The company that delivered the most clicks most consistently, he writes in his book, was going to get the most business.
Gurbaksh doesn't write code, but he knew what he wanted the program to do, and hired a programmer who flew to San Jose from London to meet with him. He promised to pay the man $10,000 a month, even though he didn't have any startup cash. After the meeting, he went home and began cold-calling companies to find clients to place orders.
"Two days into it, I struck gold," Gurbaksh says. "I found myself on the phone with a gentleman at the Left Field Advertising Agency in San Francisco. Left Field had a client, Infoseek, a search engine like Google, that was looking to increase traffic to its website.
'If you put up a $30,000 order, I can deliver traffic at a dollar a click,' I told the agency. In plain English, I was telling him that I could deliver at least 30,000 clicks.
'We'll get back to you,' I was told. The following morning, they contacted me with an insertion order. Suddenly I was in business. That's how fast things moved."
Gurbaksh hadn't told his parents, but soon he had to. He was making serious money. He couldn't open a bank account on his own because he was too young, and had enlisted his older brother, Taj, to open one and join him in the business venture.
Nirmal, the family's eldest daughter, recalled the night that Gurbaksh told his father.
Dad freaks out
"He brought the bank statement and showed my father he was making money," she said by phone from Utah, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. "My dad's reaction was that he literally screamed. My mom came rushing from the kitchen, her hands still wet. My dad said, 'G is going to jail! He did something illegal!' They'd been working twenty years, double shifts, and had not had that kind of savings."
Once the family understood that it was a legitimate business, tempers calmed.
"Initially, it was tough to believe," his father, Avtar Singh, said. "But because Gurbaksh believed in himself, I believed in him. I'm the proudest father in the world."
Gurbaksh persuaded his father to let him drop out of high school. He opened an office in Santa Clara and hired staff, including two of his siblings. He sold the company to a competitor, Value Click, and a few years later started Blue Lithium.
At Value Click, he met Troy Baloca, who worked as director of sales. Baloca, now chief executive at eMediaVC Inc., says Gurbaksh has been an inspiration to him since the day they met. Their brainstorming sessions often run past 2 a.m.
"Ever since I've known him, he's been a mentor for me - the way he carries himself, the way he talks to people," Baloca said. "It's not about age, because we'd go into board meetings together and he had a presence. I would call him a genius. He's a thinker. The word 'motivated' is not the word. The best word to describe him is 'determined'. Everything he does has rubbed off tenfold, not just on me but on others around him, too."
With his success, Gurbaksh paid off the mortgage on the new home his parents had moved into in a better neighborhood. He bought cars for his brothers and sisters and took the family on vacations. He also went through a car phase, buying a Lamborghini, a Mercedes, a Ferrari, another Lamborghini and finally a small white Bentley, which he drives today.
He also started dating, something he'd never learned to do in high school. Money, he has found, has brought him a more ornamented life - bigger homes, designer clothes, better toys - but also complexity. He recently vacationed in St. Tropez, where he found that the good life wasn't so good.
Down to earth
"Too superficial - in restaurants, it was all about who could have the bigger tab," said Gurbaksh, a down-to-earth type who flies economy class and whose parents fed the kids Little Caesar's pizza on Monday nights because it was only $5 per pie. "Waiters at Nikki Beach would clap for you, if you bought Champagne at 3,100 euros a bottle. I could do that, but it would put me through mental shock."
He's also finding it hard to form friendships and find girlfriends because it's difficult to know whether people like him for himself - or his money.
"He still gets nervous on the first date," said Baloca, who enlisted Gurbaksh to be best man at his wedding five years ago. "He'll call and say, 'I met this girl,' and we'll start talking. I'll ask, 'Where are you going to take her?' It's nice to know I can help him, too."
Gurbaksh likes to go to Las Vegas because there nobody knows him as the millionaire wunderkind. He's just a guy from the Bay Area.
"When it comes to making friends, what it comes down to is finding people who don't need anything from me," Gurbaksh said. "That's the test."
He's working on a new company called gWallet that he says will help people shop for bargains on the Internet, and hopes to launch it in the next few weeks. In the meantime, he believes that his book can serve as a self-help primer for just about anyone.
Not bad for a guy who spent his teen years skipping proms and movies in favor of toiling in front of a computer, munching on Twinkies.
"I've had an incredible eleven years," Gurbaksh said. "I thought, if I had an opportunity to share it and if I could inspire people, why not?"
At 17, Gurbaksh Singh Chahal was clueless about kissing girls and holding hands, but he was savvy enough to make $300,000 a month with an Internet advertising company he founded in his bedroom at his family's home in San Jose, California, U.S.A.
When he flew to Los Angeles on business, the young Sikh with a turban and a beard looked mature, but he was too young to rent a car to drive to his appointments, so he concealed his age by taking cabs to meet his clients.
When he sought venture capital from investors, he skirted questions about his experience (none!) and tried to avoid revealing that he'd dropped out: not from college, but from high school.
Now all of 26, he sits on top of two astounding achievements: He sold his first company, Click Agent, for $40 million in an all-stock merger in 2000, and his second, Blue Lithium, to Yahoo last year for $300 million.
This week, his autobiography, The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions (Palgrave MacMillan, 236 pages, $24.95) hit bookstores.
He appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Thursday. On December 3, he'll be on Fox TV's "Secret Millionaire" series, in which wealthy participants live undercover among the poor, and then bestow $100,000 of their own money on deserving recipients. He lived in the Tenderloin, and his segment features two San Francisco charities: St. Anthony's and Raphael House.
Gurbaksh has yet another TV show in the works, and a new Internet company that should launch in the coming weeks.
While success like his is often attributed to luck, Gurbaksh's story, like that of many immigrants, is more one of sacrifice. He wrote the book, he said, to show that it was years of hard work, persistence and faith, along with the support of his family, that brought his financial rewards - not chance.
"I did not want to write a Donald Trump book - 'Think big, kick ass'," Gurbaksh said in an interview last week in his sleek, white, modern penthouse in the Infinity Tower overlooking the Embarcadero and San Francisco Bay. "It's not easy to make money. It's a struggle, a journey. There's no 'Ten ways to success', no pyramid scheme," he said. "I thought if I could write about my life and my journey and people could connect it with their own life, their own path, they could realize, 'If he can do it, so can I.'"
Gurbaksh, who has soap-opera-star good looks, is one of four children in a family that immigrated from Punjab, India, in 1986 to escape political instability arising from political upheaval in Punjab, the Sikh homeland.
In San Jose, his father worked as a postal employee and his mother was a nurse. Gurbaksh had an older brother, two older sisters and a grandmother who came along. They lived in East San Jose, one of the city's lower-income neighborhoods.
In India, his father had graduated college with an engineering degree and worked at the police academy, while his mother had run the nursing program at a city hospital.
Here, they worked double shifts, shopped at the Dollar Store and McFrugal's and clipped coupons. But they encouraged their children to go to college to become doctors or engineers.
But Gurbaksh, who was nicknamed "G" for Gurbakshi-Ji ("Ji" is a term of endearment) took an independent path. He was influenced by his father's pluck, his grandmother's optimistic spirit and an innate stubborn streak.
He was teased as a child by neighborhood kids about his Sikh religion, questioned by a schoolteacher about his colorful clothing, and was once forced at knifepoint on a schoolyard basketball court to take his turban off.
"I can't. It's part of my religion," Chahal told them.
"You don't listen too good, do you?" (the boy) said, taking a knife out of his pocket. "Take that s- off right now!"
"I wanted to tell them, just as I'd wanted to tell everyone who had ever taunted me, that I was proud of my family, proud of my heritage and proud to be a Sikh - but I was just a kid, and I didn't know where to begin," he says. "Instead, I began to long for another kind of existence, where I was in charge."
His dream became a reality not long afterward.
Gurbaksh's father had started a side job, day trading on the computer, and was soon making more money than at his day job. Gurbaksh, the youngest son, helped him research stocks, and together they watched business reports on TV and read the business pages every morning before work and school.
Gurbaksh came across Double Click, an Internet advertising business. They didn't invest, but it planted a seed in his mind.
When the stock market crashed in 1997 and his father lost nearly everything, Gurbaksh decided he would try to help his family recover - and created his own company, Click Agent. It was a performance-based advertising company.
Software could track when someone viewing a Web page clicked on an ad; an advertiser was charged each time that happened. The company that delivered the most clicks most consistently, he writes in his book, was going to get the most business.
Gurbaksh doesn't write code, but he knew what he wanted the program to do, and hired a programmer who flew to San Jose from London to meet with him. He promised to pay the man $10,000 a month, even though he didn't have any startup cash. After the meeting, he went home and began cold-calling companies to find clients to place orders.
"Two days into it, I struck gold," Gurbaksh says. "I found myself on the phone with a gentleman at the Left Field Advertising Agency in San Francisco. Left Field had a client, Infoseek, a search engine like Google, that was looking to increase traffic to its website.
'If you put up a $30,000 order, I can deliver traffic at a dollar a click,' I told the agency. In plain English, I was telling him that I could deliver at least 30,000 clicks.
'We'll get back to you,' I was told. The following morning, they contacted me with an insertion order. Suddenly I was in business. That's how fast things moved."
Gurbaksh hadn't told his parents, but soon he had to. He was making serious money. He couldn't open a bank account on his own because he was too young, and had enlisted his older brother, Taj, to open one and join him in the business venture.
Nirmal, the family's eldest daughter, recalled the night that Gurbaksh told his father.
Dad freaks out
"He brought the bank statement and showed my father he was making money," she said by phone from Utah, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. "My dad's reaction was that he literally screamed. My mom came rushing from the kitchen, her hands still wet. My dad said, 'G is going to jail! He did something illegal!' They'd been working twenty years, double shifts, and had not had that kind of savings."
Once the family understood that it was a legitimate business, tempers calmed.
"Initially, it was tough to believe," his father, Avtar Singh, said. "But because Gurbaksh believed in himself, I believed in him. I'm the proudest father in the world."
Gurbaksh persuaded his father to let him drop out of high school. He opened an office in Santa Clara and hired staff, including two of his siblings. He sold the company to a competitor, Value Click, and a few years later started Blue Lithium.
At Value Click, he met Troy Baloca, who worked as director of sales. Baloca, now chief executive at eMediaVC Inc., says Gurbaksh has been an inspiration to him since the day they met. Their brainstorming sessions often run past 2 a.m.
"Ever since I've known him, he's been a mentor for me - the way he carries himself, the way he talks to people," Baloca said. "It's not about age, because we'd go into board meetings together and he had a presence. I would call him a genius. He's a thinker. The word 'motivated' is not the word. The best word to describe him is 'determined'. Everything he does has rubbed off tenfold, not just on me but on others around him, too."
With his success, Gurbaksh paid off the mortgage on the new home his parents had moved into in a better neighborhood. He bought cars for his brothers and sisters and took the family on vacations. He also went through a car phase, buying a Lamborghini, a Mercedes, a Ferrari, another Lamborghini and finally a small white Bentley, which he drives today.
He also started dating, something he'd never learned to do in high school. Money, he has found, has brought him a more ornamented life - bigger homes, designer clothes, better toys - but also complexity. He recently vacationed in St. Tropez, where he found that the good life wasn't so good.
Down to earth
"Too superficial - in restaurants, it was all about who could have the bigger tab," said Gurbaksh, a down-to-earth type who flies economy class and whose parents fed the kids Little Caesar's pizza on Monday nights because it was only $5 per pie. "Waiters at Nikki Beach would clap for you, if you bought Champagne at 3,100 euros a bottle. I could do that, but it would put me through mental shock."
He's also finding it hard to form friendships and find girlfriends because it's difficult to know whether people like him for himself - or his money.
"He still gets nervous on the first date," said Baloca, who enlisted Gurbaksh to be best man at his wedding five years ago. "He'll call and say, 'I met this girl,' and we'll start talking. I'll ask, 'Where are you going to take her?' It's nice to know I can help him, too."
Gurbaksh likes to go to Las Vegas because there nobody knows him as the millionaire wunderkind. He's just a guy from the Bay Area.
"When it comes to making friends, what it comes down to is finding people who don't need anything from me," Gurbaksh said. "That's the test."
He's working on a new company called gWallet that he says will help people shop for bargains on the Internet, and hopes to launch it in the next few weeks. In the meantime, he believes that his book can serve as a self-help primer for just about anyone.
Not bad for a guy who spent his teen years skipping proms and movies in favor of toiling in front of a computer, munching on Twinkies.
"I've had an incredible eleven years," Gurbaksh said. "I thought, if I had an opportunity to share it and if I could inspire people, why not?"
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