Investing to Create Wealth

Tags

Personal Finance, Rules for Investing, stock market

The stock market has been the talk of the town for the last few months. The Sensex shot past the 20000 mark and every man and his neighbour wanted to make a killing in the stock market. In such a context, I found an article in the Economic Times very useful.

As they say, the first rule to investing is ‘Don’t lose money’. The second rule to investing is ‘Don’t forget rule no. 1’! It is essential to stick to these rules when it comes to investing, in order to avoid the possibility of capital erosion.

To apply these rules successfully and to create wealth through equity investing, Raamdeo Agrawal, Director & Co-founder, Motilal Oswal Financial Services identifies a 5-step guide to locating a ‘wealth creator’ , Here are the 5 parameters that you must evaluate:-

1. Assess the entry barriers created by a company
2. Management should be competent and passionate
3. Management should have integrity
4. Buy low
5. Have patience

Read the article to understand why these tips can make you a wise and successful investor.

Advertisement

Caroling or Silent Nights?

Tags

carol singing, Chritsmas

The world. She’s a changing! With Christmas around the corner, one has childhood memories of carol singing. Growing up in sunny Madras (now called Chennai) as kids we used to sing Christmas carols, in our neighborhood.  Doesn’t matter that the nearest snow was 1000 miles away or we were not even Christians. I must admit that this was some 45 years ago but even today our Bangalore Club has an evening of Christmas Carols, slated for December 21 !

But in the US of A of 2007, caroling is no longer so hot as it would appear from an article by Maria Puente, in USA Today.” Caroling or Silent Nights? A Holiday Traiditon Vanishes” she writes.

Writes Ms. Puente: “It’s an appealing notion: Spread cheer without leaving the warmth (and the giant-screen TV) of your own home. Must be why YouTube boasts more than 300 caroling videos. But has it come to this? Except for pockets of passion, traditional, in-person neighborhood caroling is practiced by a shrinking fraction of the population.

The reasons range from the paranoid (it’s a plot by secularists against Christians) to the prosaic (most people would rather stay home and watch football). Americans are too busy or too lazy or too intimidated to sing in public. People are afraid of offending neighbors or interrupting their privacy. Neighborhoods are less close-knit.

“Maybe there’s a need for communities like this, where people who come together are longing for a Norman Rockwell kind of America,” says Sandra Aresta, one of the organizers of the annual neighborhood caroling in Chevy Chase West, in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

But Rockwell’s America departed with Rockwell, and in any case, caroling wasn’t all that common in the USA to begin with. Polls conducted for the National Christmas Tree Association found that by 1996, only 22% of those surveyed said they planned to go caroling, and by 2005, that number had dropped to an anemic 6%.

Neighborhood caroling is so rare these days that some homeowners may be flummoxed if singers appear on their doorstep. The website eHow.com (How to Do Just About Everything) even posts instructions on How To Treat Christmas Carolers Who Come to Your Door. !

I don’t know about you, but we loved the neighborhood caroling and I, for one, miss the old world on occasions like this!

Motivating Factors

Tags

A Step A Day, Motivating Factors

People do not like to take orders. They like to feel their job goes beyond merely carrying out instructions given by the boss. Best results come from a team whose members are committed. Team members are motivated to achieve team objectives and perform to the best of their abilities.

To enable you as managers to motivate your teams, here is a list of some of the more common Motivation Factors with Suggested Actions :

• Achievement: Hitting your targets is very motivating to team members. Agree on targets that are challenging yet achieveable .
• Autonomy: A sense of being in-charge of and being responsible for your own work can be very motivating. Encourage team members to have ownership for what they do. Your job is to say what should be done. Allow them to plan how they will achieve the task objectives.
• Competence: Being good at your job. Having the knowledge and skills to do it well is itself a motivating factor. Train your team members to acquire the required knowledge and skills.
• Expertise: People like to have a sense of importance for what they know. Their expertise in their field. Encourage development of special knowledge which will not only help team members as individuals but your team as a whole.
• Membership: Simply stated, do your team members feel they are “In”‘or “Out”? Develop a sense of belongingness. Make them feel they are a vital part of your team.
• Peer respect: Since individuals don’t work in isolation, the respect of their peers means a lot to them. Make opportunities for team members to get peer respect through their competence. Publicize their contributions and ideas saying how they have helped the team.
• Recognition: A powerful driver of motivation is being recognized for their contributions. Not only tell team members how well they are doing but celebrate their success publicly.
• Self-confidence: My old Housemaster at school used to tell us ” Look like a million dollars and you will feel like a million dollars”. Self-confidence gives you the drive and energy to get things done. To achieve. Nurture the self-confidence of your team members. Allotting tasks that can be done well is a first step in building self-confidence.
• Self-Fulfillment: Every person likes to feel that he/she has contributed to the best of their capabilities. Enable team members to take on higher challenges, initially with your guidance and later more independently.
• Self-respect: All of us have an ego. Some are more touchy than others. Help team members build self-respect which makes them take feedback positively without feeling insecure or threatened.

Managing people is not rocket science. Effective managers understand Motivating Factors in their team members and use these factors to draw out superior performance.

You can subscribe to this series using RSS at https://bprao.wordpress.com/category/a-step-a-day/feed