Life itself is simple. Especially if you are not over ambitious and want to conquer the world. Rahul Gandhi can easily lead a simple life in any part of the world with all the ill gotten wealth of his family, right?

Well bowling is simple. All you have to do is to take a red color ball and hurl it across 22 yards at 150kmph for about 20 years of your life without any injury.

Batting too is very simple. Take a piece of wood and make sure that the ball that comes to you at 150 is dispatched to the boundary for about 20 years of your life.

Exactly what websites, groups of investing intellectuals continue to tell you. They tell you that you should then compare how your friends, peers, colleagues, the market on an average is doing and that will make you rich. Seriously rich if you just sit tight on brainless dumb investing left uninterrupted (hey that’s easy, I did it). Right?

Well if life was so simple why is it that we have 1000 Ajit Agarkars and 1 McGrath? or 10000 Vinod Kamblis / Gautam Gambhirs and 1 Sachin or 1 Virat Kohli? There is something else right? and different too?

Well the best Indian IPOs came in 1977 – when George Fernandez FORCED MNC companies to do an IPO. If you bought ITC, PnG (then called Richardson Hindustan!), Colgate, Hul, Siemens, Cummins, Cadbury,…just about 1000 shares each, you would be rivalling Sachin Tendulkar today, if not Uday Kotak. Well, life is not so simple. In fact if reading was the only thing necessary for investing librarians would be rich. Very few professors of finance have a networth north of Rs. 10 crores, leave alone Rs. 100 crores.

What you need to do are the following:

1. Read, understand and control human behavior. No, not easy at all. Right from Yudhishtir’s times man has not been able to control fear, greed, hope, regret, – and those emotions control your behavior while investing.
2. Know that good management does not exist while investing: With 30 years experience of meeting investors, research guys, company management I can assure you that ‘good management’ just means those animals who will leave ENOUGH on the dining table after they have finished. Like a lion leaving enough food for the Pride. I am not the head of the pride. I am a reasonable hunter and a fantastic scavenger. I love juicy meat left on the table.
3. The questions I ask are NOT : is it a good business, is there a moat, is it profitable.
4. The questions I ask are : can the management keep creating moats?
5. The question I ask in a family managed business is: is the next generation as hungry and foolish as the previous generation?
6. I realize that living with Gujjus and not with Madrasis was an amazing piece of luck in my life. No clue whom to thank.
7. Realizing that success is more by luck than by design.
8. I know that one person who has a net worth of Rs. 19000 crores now was BANKRUPT in one deal and was saved by another person. Today this man will not even admit in private what happened on that fateful day when he had ‘shorted’ a blue chip. The promoter agreed to cancel the transactions.
9. To be there ‘first’ you have to ‘first’ be there. Surviving is the most imp skill in investing.
10. If you have a meal to eat, a nice warm bed to sleep and a good family whose goals you have met, you have done well.
11. ‘Relative’ and ‘Comparative’ investing is almost the enemy of common sense investing.
12. The world population is chasing alpha. The amount of money spent in US on buying Technical magazines is US $ 1 billion!
13. Transaction costs have fallen while investing, Investing wisdom is far, far more expensive.
14. Some of my richest friends have the MOST EXPENSIVE advisers.
15. The best advisers I know are not taking on new business.

ha.