I have a few die hard fans who may have read all the posts that I have written, and I am really thankful to them. It is not easy to read such thoughts which appear from time to time and which is not really well indexed and tagged.

Some of the outcomes of the discussion that I had with 2 of them, and my own thoughts too!

• it is really difficult to think of new ways to write about old things!
• writing (and getting readership) on current topics is easier – because people seek it
• people want to CONSUME ‘current news’ before it becomes stale
• the real good stuff about investing, etc. lies in books, not in websites (arguable)
• I am really proud that people still read posts written in 2008 and 2009 – a cool decade later
• If I had done result analysis, those posts would be dead by now
• Sadly, we love (and therefore seek) current stuff and ignore REAL, VITAL investment knowledge
• Benjamin Graham’s Intelligent Investor still sells 100,000 copies a year. Awesome piece of information.

Luckily I have written things which are far more philosophical in nature and basics of investing rather than about ‘this month what happened in Infosys’ – which would have had an expiry date. I was told by a few professors that they recommend my site to their students and they do read it diligently. I am happy that the average age of my readers is GOING DOWN in a country of youngsters!

Long term knowledge can grow and compound. Short term cannot be used beyond its expiry date. What will you do with results of last year? or last decade? Morgan Housel calls this ‘expiring knowledge’ – you cannot use it for a long time. However the long term knowledge (which may be little, but worth reading and understanding) can grow and EXPLAIN the short term knowledge. Long term knowledge is the philosophical base for you to understand the data of today. You need to know about sales, margins, market share, industry classification, etc.

This general ‘gyan’ is also about what YOU decide to read. Will you need that after 2 weeks? 2 years? I gave up reading novels long ago – the James Hadley Chase types at least. I read Ludlum, and a few others..but soon realized that it was not helping me. Reading good novels surely makes sense, but it also takes away from reading ‘enduring stuff’ that stays and grows. I can still read the Mahabharata and Ramayana! What better than to read the dialog between Karna and Kunti while thinking of conflict of interest and loyalty?

To me writing investment philosophy is easy. I cannot write “why invest in Franklin India Prima fund” and not in “Franklin India BlueChip”. Sadly, I do not think it is useful or irrelevant beyond the day when it mattered. However an article saying why a midcap fund will outperform a large cap fund is likely to be far more useful and have a longer shelf life!