#100ThingsIlearnt- Lesson: 2- What is all this stocks and shares?- The basics.

 Hello, I have had some overwhelming views, on the blog and  it feels amazing. Knowing at least one person must have learnt something through me. Remember I told you, you would most definitely only learn things you can apply? Well, I am not sure you will apply this lesson, but I would advice you to. Being a proud daughter of an ex-serviceman and a current bank manger, I will tell you what my dad has told us always " Saving is a necessity". SOUNDS BORING, doesn't it? And I am telling you it really, really is, if you dont love economics and don't like your head wrapped around inflows,emerging markets, risk management yada yada. This is not for you. But the good news is, when you have some money and can throw it around someone does these things for you and you just sit there watch money come your way. 
But for my dad, it is not how it is done. Not in our household. So what if he has two daughters in a stereotypical world that looks down upon only men that dont know squat about investing? He wants us to take control and learn. I am not saying I know all about it, but I know my bit and learning has improved it. So I am going to tell you the little I know, and try not to bore ( Because, It really really can be. ) Stay awake till the end,okay? This knowledge is worth it. 


So, somethings you should know before you read further, are these things : 

1. Do not blindly invest. Don't go by he said,she said. EVER. Unless the he or she knows everything under the sun there is to know about investing and does it himself.
2. Do not spend what you dont have. For heaven's sake if you are on like a tight budget (and no, partying today and expensive brunch tomorrow is not included),if you are hands to mouth dont do it, but if you still want to, invest in small amounts (You are not Mohandas Pai, you dont know everything. You dont know him either, do you? Sigh. This is tough road then, but stay on! )
3. READ. Papers, books,blogs. Keep doing that unless you reach out to someone who you connect and understand well. You wont understand anything at first but you will ease into it, these are my top five picks, PICK AT LEAST ONE, At least download or buy them to make yourself feel better that you are trying.      

•  Abnormal Returns: Winning Strategies from the Frontlines of the Investment Blogosphere 
•   Rich Dad, Poor Dad" (2000) by Robert Kiyosaki 
• Think and Grow Rich" (1937) by Napoleon Hill
•   The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing (RevisedEdition) by Jason Kelly 
• Peter Lynch - One up on wallstreet.  

But you should really read more, if you're wanting to do this for real, if you are not into reading just go to your dad. All dad's know this stuff. It is like their own kind of magic.

      4.  Think. And Think long term. This is not money for your new limited edition shoes, it is for the dream house you have been going at in your head since forever.

      5.  Play around. There are so many virtual stock games out there,  do them and when you are confident go ahead. I liked these

•  Wallstreet survivor
• Teach me to trade

  Okay I think you know enough, of these tips will overpower everything I have to say!

Let's exploreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Okay one last thing, I have to tell you. I am going to make this about Indian stock market, because it is what I learnt about. But there is no one saying you can't invest in India or that making this about the US markets would be better, because you know what? I read this, and I think we should change it.

Indians are hugely equity averse.  Only 1.2% of the Indian household financial savings is directly invested in shares (2010-2011).  This amounts to a laughable figure of 2.5 Billion dollars for the entire Indian household population 

So Indian market is divided into 2 stock exchanges, BSE and NSE. BSE has close to 4700 odd companies listed while NSE has 1200 odd. 

Now if you know people who are into stock exchange, you will see the constantly following NDTV & CNBC, if you bothered to look, you will see something like this. 

What is this you ask? they are called index. You need someone to tell you if your share prices are high or not,right? These tell you that. We have two here SENSEX and NIFTY. But have you noticed these things don't have 4500 or even 1200 companies shown? Are you womdering, if these are all listed why dont they show them? It is not a stupid question at all. But there is lot of explaining to it, I will keep it simple though. So imagine your mom earns 50 bucks and your dad earns 100 a day and you do some chores around and earn 20, will how you guys survive today depend on your 20 or the 150 that your parents bring to the table? The latter right? Just like that, our economic stand in each sector can be determined by looking at the top few companies. So SENSEX has 30 core companies that tell us if we are doing well or not. Then you map these and decide if you should invest in them or not. And NIFTY has 50 companies(NIFTY FIFTY, that's how I remember it )

So you know this, but where is all this mysterious work done?

 

I mean there has to be some market right? IF you watch enough movies you will see people rushing to one place, yelling out things like " Take 100 of TCS give 4000 SBI" . Huh,what? Well, there are two ways to do it, you go to the exchange floor, (NYSE works this way), or

Electronically(NASDAQ,comes into picture here)

If you think you do the work here, you dont. You have a broker that makes sure when you have 100 shares of TCS to sell someone is willing to give you 4000 SBI's share for it. You get the drift?

Now, all this said and done someone has to put the ground rules and say what to do and what not to right? SEBI does exactly that ( Securities & Exchange Board of India) . So when you look into  brokers, you have to make sure they are registered with SEBI. 

So you want to make sure your trade is placed, how do you do that? Well your broker maintains every transaction and you have Unique code for each of them. The payment for the shares purchased is required to be done prior to the pay in date for the relevant settlement or as otherwise provided in the Rules and Regulations of the Exchange.In case of sales, you get your money within 24 hours give or take. 

So now you know the basics, but there is so much more to this story. That being said, it is exhausting all this information thrown at your face. So I decided, I will post it in three parts,  next two being intermediate and expert(well, not expert trader, but knowledge wise, yeah much more to come) 

I think I kept it interesting, at least I know I will come back and read this if my mind loses sight about this. That is good enough. I sincerely hope, I  piqued your interest too. Until next time we talk economics, bye bye :). And you know what? Warren Buffet first traded at 11. So unless you're 9, dont tell me, this is all too early information for you. GET ON IT.

Keep learning. 

Let's meet the co-blogger :D

Okay, If you read my first post I told you why I am doing this,if you missed it read it here. I mentioned these two friends I pitched the blog idea to, one of them has finally woken up and written something. IT is dead funny, I think his sense of humor is the only reason I am friends with him, hehe. Okay while we are at it, I wanted to tell you guys, that the idea of #100thingsIlearnt came a little while ago, September I think, so we picked up 10-11 things and just stopped, that is why you will find us blabbering about the things, then dont point at me and say, heyyyy. I thought we were in this together? WHY DID YOU LEARN THINGS WITHOUT ME. ( I know no one is really going to say that, but you know if I were my audience I would most definitely feel that, hence.) Anyway, we will still take you step by step to how we learnt something new and creative, and constantly pinch your brain to learn with us :D.
So that is that. Introducing to you the most charming friend I have. All yours,mate!

Hi there.

I’m the new guy here. And in the next , god knows how long, I along with vindhya are going to take you along a magical journey on how to make pretty cool DIY projects (I feel like a tour guide to some  cheap, fake Hogwarts),primarily. But you know we are all about learning new things, So you will end up seeing a lot of things you can pick up, even if you are the whole, UGH, I am too cool for this DIY crap.

Cause I have no idea what my first post should be about, and Vindhya has been riding me pretty hard (not the way you’re thinking, all you dirty minded people!) to come up with an article soon, I’m going to use this post to give you guys a brief description about myself.

So. My name is Eapen (Stephen) Ittiyera. Yes, my name is a bit of a tongue twister. Don’t worry you’ll get used to it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, that parenthesis is a part of my name. My parents couldn’t decide on whether they should call me Eapen or Stephen, so they just kept both. Its like I was born to be a confused child. The confusion called, ‘my life’ still continues. The only difference is now I’m a confused man-child. Anyway, for those who think Stephen is too mainstream, and want to be all hipster like, and are wondering how do you pronounce that other shit, its pronounced as E-pen. Don’t worry, you’re not the first one to pronounce it wrong.

If you’re trying to pronounce Ittiyera, you can just about forget it. Not happening, bro!

Damn. I can’t believe I wrote an entire para on just my name. And that ladies and gentlemen is how I bullshit in all my answer papers. Don’t worry, we’ll cover the art of bullshitting in one of the posts of this blog too. It is a very vital skill you’ll require in life.

Anyway, coming to who I am and what I do, I’m a super cool, daredevil, rockstar engineer who’s living the life and partying with prettiest chicks in Bangalore city! Woot Woot! Okay, no I was kidding. My life SUCKS! I study in a college situated a little after this remote village called Kanmanike (you can just give up trying to pronounce all these south indian names, no one’s gonna judge you ) which is far from the outskirts of Bangalore. I do live in the city, and hence I spend most of my time travelling to college and back. If you’re wondering, ‘Hey! Why doesn’t this guy just bunk college and have a good time?’ It’s because my college is situated in the middle of NOWHERE! Courage the cowardly dog is my neighbour. There is nothing outside my college! And my college has this rule of maintaining 85% attendance. So yeah, bunking is out of the question. But I do play the guitar and I’m not too bad if I do say so myself. And as far as the dare-devilry is concerned, I got suspended from college for a week this one time for bringing a pack of cards to college. Apparently I was promoting gambling (yes, I know, watchout! We have a badass over here!)

As far as the girls go, I’m a hopeless romantic. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and so here’s a couple of things Vindhya and I made for my ex-girlfriend.

Made this using a some of the letters she wrote me. Yes, we actually wrote each other.

Made this using blowpaint. Don’t worry, we’ll teach you how to do all these things, amongst other things, in our blog.

The one last thing you probably need to know about me is that I have the attention span of that a monkey playing cymbals. I tend to digress from the topic at hand a lot. If you were to take a CAT scan of brain, this is probably what it would look like

So that’s just about who I am and if you’re still not clear on what my motivation was for getting into this blog,  I have no life and feel like a complete waste of space, and hence this project so that I feel more productive. Also cause this is a refreshing break from my otherwise hectic, monotonous life.  So hopefully this blog inspires you in some way to do something or make something and be productive in some way.

#100ThingsIlearnt- Lesson:1 - HOW DO YOU GOOGLE?

 I'm not a feminist, but honestly who in the world told you girls Google like this? Stop sterotyping. No one is good at it, but honestly no one is that bad either (Well, atleast not the majority). 

Well this meme got me thinking though, do we really Google effectively? Then a girl came up to me and asked "Do you get free website stuff online? because I found none. Can you help me google that?" My results though turned  up About 11,10,00,000 results (.39 secs). It got me thinking why her search results were not as effective as mine. Besides, this happens quite a bit with me, my google-digging(sorta like gold digging , hehe.) is not as effective as it should be, but I get my results faster, this being said, I finish my assignments a lot faster than most people around. WHY? because I am good at it. because I thought I was good at it. But I googled it and I found so many tricks that has made me use google effectively, as of the two days I learnt my first lesson. So if you think you're real good at it, read no further, if you are just pretentious good like yours truly, read ahead.

1) Talk less: Noone likes a blabber-mouth. Not even google. So take a lesson from that meme, do not type " hp pavillon g-series is overheating solution?" . Instead keep it simple "pc overheat issues"

you dont really need "overheated " or "overheating" (take that,you meme). Google gets your problem. 

2) Know what you want:
So you are studying for a test, and say it is on "World War" and you want a:

•  a site: you do this  - site:edu World war
• a pdf file: this - in pdf:world war
• a ppt this - in ppt:world war

This has saved me a lot of hassles. Try it next time!!

3) OR AND
Avoid this "miley cyrus and wrecking ball" (Actually,avoid this search completely. Its tormenting) instead try this " miley cyrus wrecking ball". Avoid AND, google sure does.
What if you're in the mood for cooking potato or baking them? FIND THE RECIPE IN ONE SEARCH. (Yep, that happens) You do this -

cooking potato recipe OR baking potato recipe , 

the alternate is  cooking 

potato recipe|baking potato recipe.

You simply pipe the query. USE OR. We love options, so does google.

4) Exact words:
Well you know you want christmas DIYS and not just DIY. So you put them in quotes, and the result will be websites that have the exact words in that exact order. So you search - "christmas Diys"
actually you dont even have to close that quote, google does that.

5) Add,Delete:
So you know you want to buy christmas gifts but you dont want it to be diy, so you might as well avoid it,right? Then YOU CAN. So you search this: 

 christmas gifts -diys
But what if you need them to give you diy options too? and not just shop online? THEN YOU DO THIS- 

chirstmas gift +diys.
Not that theres is no space after the (+) or (-) signs. Or google will ignore it.

6) You remember the title:

You read something a while ago and want to read that again and you remember the title, So say it was about feeding iguana, then you type this - 

intitle:feeding iguana. 

What if you are not really sure if it had both of those words together? well then you search for both like this - 

intitle:feeding intitle:iguana. 

But what if you are pretty darn sure this was the title and it had these exact words ? you do this -allintitle:iguana feeding.

7)Last few oldies but goodies
When you want to know 

 weather : weather,bangalore.
movies near you: avengers seattle, wa
calculations: 463*73653625 (yep,enter it directly. They can handle it)
Need a meaning : add the word define , like - define schadenfreude
Unit conversions: Enter any conversion, like 3 dollars in euros.
Sports: Search for the name of your team to see a schedule, game scores and more. 

There are few things you would have known, or probably you knew all of them ( you lil' know-it-all, you) but have not been using as effectively as before. SO use them, either way, my first #100thingsIlearnt was a pretty sweet deal :D

Google away!! :D

My 8pm brain said GO AHEAD!!

 My initial post was a test drive for me. If you didn't read it, it is okay.  All it really said was, well will I make it far enough for a second post. And yay, I have. 

I am brave enough to understand that nobody might find this interesting, and somehow I do not crave for acceptance. I dont know why that is,because usually I care about how I am perceived all the time. This is therapeutic suddenly. 

Anyway, I'm here to tell you everything I learn and if by mistake you ended up here, I hope the build up to the story persuades you :). So, my previous post said I might rant here, and I still stand by it. But it is not what you will primarily find. Remember #100happydays? Well, I actually did 200 of them and it was oddly satisfying. I realized meeting a goal, makes me the happiest. So here is my new goal, #100thingsIlearnt. 

Why?

 Because I realise, I will start working soon and I can never do this. Also, I find that I have to keep myself occupied or I'm a pain in the ass. I decided if I am going to learn something, why not document it? 

I then decided, I am not into emotional things AT ALL. So my posts will never tell you stuff like- "HOW I FOUND LOOKING AT THE TREE AT 6 am WAS WHAT LIFE WAS ABOUT" or something similar like " WHAT I LEARNT ABOUT MYSELF WHILE PLAYING CATCH WITH MY NEPHEW". I see that, people have their own perception on life and it is purpose and enough people out there share opinions on the same. I do not want to add to it. Besides I dont want to 30 and say, " WHO THE BLOODY HELL CARED ABOUT WHAT YOU THOUGHT ABOUT MEDITATION ANYWAY." So I will not share any skill that you cannot pick up, or cannot be physically done. (Although, I will rant, if I feel like it, that wont come under a tag of say,What  I learnt today was-" How to let go off my anger. ")I hope you get my drift. Also, this:

I hope I do learn 100 things and my laziness doesn't get better of me. I hope someone, someday picks up a thing or two from all of these too.

So, here is to humble beginnings :D