marginally subversive

Why Be Modest? Yahoo Finance Blows Away the Competition

Picked this up from the Yahoo! news RSS - and as a user of Yahoo finance, I will have to agree that yes - it is indeed a great resource.  Significantly better than Google's Finance Pages, Yahoo Finance's pages (US-based, I think, but accessible to SG-users) are a great way to learn about investing - and well, invest.  The real-time prices and the technical graphing capabilities are awesome.

Time Magazine is out with its list of "10 Essential Sites" and we're front and center: "A haven for armchair investors and money junkies, Yahoo! Finance has everything you need to keep up with business — news, stock-specific research,

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Tags: Yahoo, Finance, Internet, Web2.0

"You're downgraded!"

A few months ago, I was in a quandary - with all the questions converging on only one theme:  Do I want to be a big fish in a small pond or be a small fish in a big, big ocean?

Egged on by something - perhaps, pride and the want to experiment - I tried to be a small fish in a big, vast ocean.  Faced with prospects of growth - financially, personally, and intellectually - I dove in.

Then I realized - 6 months on - that I wasn't ready.

The big ocean is filled with currents - waves that cause boats to move and sway, and sometimes capsize - and strong undercurrents that are far stronger than the waves on the surface of the stormy sea.

I decided that I was a small fish - I had no control over my destiny and that I was transformed from a manager of managers to a mere support player whose main remit was well, change colors in a PowerPoint presentation and extract numbers and calculate percentage growth rates from a simple spreadsheet.

The day ended with me feeling not having accomplished anything - and not having grown an inch.  And that is in spite of having crossed out all the things that are listed on my so-called "treadmill". 

True, I had the chance - for the first time in my life - to come home at 6pm and see the sunset from my apartment (perched on top of a hill, overlooking the skyline of Singapore).  I had - for the first time in my life - the luxury of walking leisurely towards my gym appointments - instead of getting warmed up whilst running to catch the train and avoid being penalized by my gym trainer.

I know a lot of people would want to trade places with me - and yes, that there are a million people - girls and boys - who would kill for this kind of job.

But I needed a reason.

I needed to be imbued with passion - with the feeling that when I lay myself at the end of the day on my bed, I had something done.  Something that is far bigger than me.  Something that could potentially change the world.  Something that could have expanded my mind - a little bit.

I am passionate - but what I have learned is that it takes a little bit to 'light my fire'.  Once lit and kindled, it gives off such warmth, such glow...  Hoping that others, too, could be inspired and be lit and their fires kindled.

And that was it: that was why I threw in the towel and surrendered.

Because I wanted to be a part of something bigger - something that could potentially change the world - something that could change how people see things and relate to others and other things - something that could potentially be bigger and great and well, hope-filled.

BusinessWeek's latest issue had described this as a variation of the "phantom limb syndrome".  Dr. Jerry Sulkowicz says this in his latest column:

Your experience sounds like a variation on "phantom limb syndrome," in which a person receives signals from a limb that's no longer there. Clinging to the phantom executive inside you, I suspect, is your way of dealing with the loss of ... your authority. The best cure, of course, is a new and better position, but that may take a while.

He offers this advice:

How to cope in the interim? The strong emotions you're feeling now will fade in time, but only if you don't make matters worse by punishing yourself. You've suffered a blow, but that doesn't mean you have to lose your self-respect or your sense of who you are. In my experience advising CEOs who have lost their jobs, such feelings (including a sense of humiliation) are frequently self-imposed.

And he further adds that:

Satisfying work, like a satisfying life, is rarely achieved through a straight, upward climb.

True.

But to satisfy one's life, one must satisfy the inner voice - that voice that is calling from within when silence surrounds and the world is quiet.

One of my former bosses - KT - taught me a very valuable lesson that until now I carry with me: "Leaders are not defined by their position or their titles; they are defined by the way they serve other people.  Christ-like leadership - service-based leadership.  Making other people shine by shining your own light."

Photo Credits:  From JML at this site.  Photo is governed by a Creative Commons License.

And yes.  That's what I want to do.

Serving leaders.  Leaders who lead in spite of who they are in the organizational chart ("Employee Number XXX156 from Cost Center XXX123").  Leaders who let their light shine and inspire others to also shine that others around them may also shine.  Leaders who deserve respect - from others who she/he also respects.  Leaders who inspire others - who in turn inspire her/him.

But never a slave.  Never.

I guess - in spite of my being a part of the capitalistic, dog-eat-dog world that characterizes the world that I live in - I still am an idealist.  And that I have never let go of the ideals that my family, my schools, my university and philosophy professors have taught me:  Be men and women for others - by living simply that others may simply live.

Interesting...

Is it indeed the time to buy?  Hmmm.  My thoughts?  Any time is a good time as long as you've got time on your side - and some luck.

"Fooled by Randomness"

With all the ruckus that's happening in the US economy and the repercussions that are being felt across the globe, I thought it would be timely to revisit the things that Fooled by Randomness,written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, are talking about.

Every single day, I see explanations of why certain things are happening - and grim prognostications of financial analysts and economists.  Just today, I was amused by the news on how Bear Stearns was acquired by JP Morgan - and how Bear Stearns, an institution in the finance industry, was bought at a very, very, very low price.

As the market opens, I am sure that traders and investors are all rushing to "unload" and sell, sell, sell.  (I can imagine one of my colleagues now tracking his investments online... I expect that he's going to be up all night tracking the movement of Wall Street.  And that tomorrow may not be a good time to catch up with him.  Maybe, next week.  Post Easter.)

Now how does this tie back to Taleb's book?

Significantly.

If you have not read it, read it.

Well... let me take that back:  If you're used to romance novels and fiction and other light reading, be prepared.  Taleb discusses interesting - but deep - stuff in his book.  You need to exercise those neurons a little bit. 

If you were asleep during your basic stats and probability class, you'd probably have a hard time catching his drift.  But a little patience will do you good.

Fooled By Randomness is a good read.  And a good reminder.

That this - all these ruckus about the economy in the US and its effects on the stock market of different countries - will happen again.  We never learn.  We are not conditioned to learn from our mistakes.  Unfortunately.

With all the stock market talk...

With all the stock market talk that's now dominating the water-cooler banter in the office, I can't help but think: The stock market is all about expectations of humans.

We look at P/E - which shows what our expectations are of the stocks' future earnings and whether it is "undervalued" or "overvalued".  We look at PEG - which also points to an almost similar idea - though it extends it to the future growth prospects of the company.

But at it score, the stock market is where the best - and the worst - of human decision-making comes out.  It is based on fear - of the unknown, of failure, of losing money.

Remember the Citigroup downgrade by one analyst?  She was right about it, I guess, considering that Citigroup's stocks did suffer a beating.  BUT the beating was not just about a single person downgrading or airing her opinions about the stock.  It's the reaction of people towards that.

The stock market assumes that we are rational beings when we trade and invest - and that all we want is to get ahead and earn some cash.   The last part, they got right.  But that we are rational beings?  I don't think so.

Perhaps, the best way to play the market is to understand how the crowd reacts to the news that are given them.  When some news breaks - the assumption of rationality and completeness of information - seems to get out of the window.

And investors react violently - or vigorously - to those news.

I think psychology, sociology, and social networks have got more to do about stock market movements than the reports that we get from the business papers.

The Devil Wears Prada and the Stock Market

My friends are probably going to sigh yet again because for some reason, I am writing about  The Devil Wears Prada yet again.  Well, I honestly think that there is some "wisdom" (OK, wisdom is too big a word) in the movie that could potentially be applied to the changing sentiments of Wall Street.

These are lines from the movie's 'devil' played by Meryl Streep:

You can see beyond what people want, and what they need and you can choose for yourself.

Guess what I think:  I think that those who are going to survive the downtrends in the global markets are those who will be able to see what people want, what they need, what their short-term and long-term fears are, what their aspirations are, what drives them and what disappoints them.

And choose.

The market is supposedly rational.  The movements of Wall Street and of other exchanges around the world are supposedly rational.  We are supposedly trading in a rational world.

But we're not trading in a rational world.

A rational world would be one that allowed everyone - every stakeholder - access to perfect and full information.

One could argue that the internet has allowed access to more information - and that is true.  As I type this, I can the ticker of the NYSE go up and down on my screen.  I also see a stream of news coming in.

Surely, there is more information available - timely information.

But perfect and 'full' information?  I don't think they are.

Now more than ever, corporate people - being people - are more wary about what they say and do because it could spread like wildfire thanks to the internet.

 

So who will profit from this mess?

Those who can see into the fears, dreams, aspirations, motivations, drivers, dampeners, souls, and hearts of investors - and choose and play.

Nostalgia: As I finish my last days in Universal McCann

Eight years which started in October 1999 and started with my boarding a Vietnam Airlines flight to Ho Chi Minh City from Manila:  That was the length of time that I spent in the Universal McCann.  I was proud of what I have achieved in those eight years - but somehow, I cannot help ask myself if I did the right things always.

• When I left Vietnam in September 2001, was I too selfish and scared of the things that could unfold further in the market?
• When I left the network in September 2002 to join another company, did I make the right decision?  Obviously not... since a mere 8 months later, I was back in Vietnam to officially launch the office.
• When I left Vietnam - again - in 2004, did I leave before I could have done the best that I could?  Did I make myself heard enough?

And as I leave now to pursue a new track in my career and start a new chapter in my life, I am bugged by the questions:  Could I have done more?  Could I have made my voice heard more?  Could I have been more aggressive and more intelligent and wiser and better in how I did my job?  Have I been remarkable?  Have I been better?  Could I have done more and more to raise the profile of the company?  Could I have been better?

I guess I won't know.

I wonder if when all is done anyone heard my voice...
But from the start, we have no choice. Our journeys just begin
I'll never know if I was right.  Did I fight hard enough?
Or when the battles grew too rough, should I have given in?
But here I stand and swear to you: I did the best that I could do
I know my voice was just a whisper.  But someone may have heard
There were nights the moon above me stirred. And let me grab ahold
My hands have touched the gold.

Gold
Music: Frank Wildhorn
Lyrics: Nan Knighton

Are these insecurities?  I don't think so. 

Perhaps, it is my commitment to being remarkable, to being the best that I could be, to be able to deliver only the thing that can only be delivered by me - perhaps it is that part of me talking and thinking all these thoughts.

I bring with me memories - and a lot of things that I have learned along the way:  good and bad.

Most of all, I learned that people are people wherever you go.  I discovered, lost, and re-discovered the good in people - whilst I also caught glimpse of the devious nature of the human and how cunning, wily, and manipulative the human can be.

The journey's just begun.

Filipino Doctors, Professionals, Racism and Bigotry

In an episode of "Desperate Housewives", one of the characters asks her doctor "OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren't, like, from some med school in the Philippines?"

Excuse me. 

But as a pre-medicine student myself and someone who wanted to be a medical doctor and in fact, got accepted to attend - yes - one of the major medical universities in the Philippines, this is an insult.

In fact, it is not just an insult to doctors from the Philippines - it is an insult to all Filipino professionals who have graduated from any university in the Philippines.

I graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University - and just for the information of the writers of Desperate Housewives, Ateneo is one of the best-run universities in the world.  So are the rest - the University of the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas (one of the oldest universities in the world), De La Salle University, University of the East, San Beda College - and a whole lot more other tertiary, academic institutions.

In order for me to get my degree from the Ateneo, I need not only be knowledgeable in my chosen specialization - I also had to be good in Philosophy, in Theology, in English, in Filipino, in Literature, in a "foreign, non-English" language.  We had to take all of these whilst we maintain our scholastic standing in 'specialization subjects'.  And our GPAs - which we call Quality Point Indices (QPIs) - are monitored year on year.

True, there might be - and there are - some who simply want to get by and whose simple objective is to pass their subjects and get out of "university hell" with a diploma. 

But there are some of us - in fact, I would believe, a lot of us - who strive to be excellent in whatever field that we decided to pursue.  There are some of us who never stop learning.  There are some of us who proceed to Harvard, to Stanford, to the University of Chicago, to the London School of Economics, to other research centers that make a difference in the world.  There are some of us who go on and climb the corporate ladder - inside and outside our home country.

And there are some of us who dedicate our lives to service - raising kids that are not our own, cleaning and managing households that are not ours, nursing patients back to health in spite of them not being a part of our immediate family, constructing buildings that we will never live in.  They are perhaps even more deserving of respect because they give themselves wholeheartedly to serve people who are not at all related to them by blood - "service by choice".

We deserve respect.  Filipino professionals deserve respect.

And we deserve more than an apology.

Saying "there was no intent to disparage the integrity of any aspect of the medical community in the Philippines," the producers of a television show that insulted health workers here offered their "sincere apologies" to Filipinos on Wednesday.

In an episode aired Sept. 30, "Desperate Housewives" character Susan asks her doctor: "OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren't, like, from some med school in the Philippines?"

"Sorry" just don't cut it, ABC.

 

Technorati tags: Filipinos, Racism, Bigotry, ABC, Advertising planning, Activism, Beliefs

del.icio.us tags: Filipinos, Racism, Bigotry, ABC, Advertising planning, Activism, Beliefs

Going through The Dip

The Dip is probably one of the best books that I have read so far this year.  I liked Seth Godin's way of writing - very readable.  And there's something about the way he wrote this book that every time I read it (I read it again over the weekend, by the pool, whilst recovering from a hangover) I find something new about it.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this entry from Seth Godin's entry about the winner of the BGT/Britain's Got Talent program - and how the winner overcame his own dip and pushed on to be the best.  It reminded me of Kurt Nilsen, the "World Idol" winner from sometime ago - who was criticized for his "unappealing look" but went on to become, well, the winner, besting even Kelly Clarkson from the US.

In this entry, Mr. Godin writes:

The market is a harsh critic. It's not always fair and it can be demoralizing. Fortunately for us, Paul ignored all of them until he had pushed through the Dip.

I couldn't agree more.  The market - whatever that market is [the office, the world, the 'experts', the executives, the bosses, the human resource department, the supposedly 'talent managers' in each office] - is a harsh critic.  Heck, even shareholders of a company are a harsh critic - encaging CEO to play the "results by quarter" game rather than really looking forward into the future.

But the winner just went on.  As we all should when we encounter the dip.

I have encountered my dip - and realized it was a cul-de-sac.  And that made all the difference in my career.  As I set out to carve a new niche in my life, a new path as someone beyond communications planning and consultancy, I am excited and fearful - and well, still determined and committed to do my best. 

Regardless.

 

Technorati tags: Seth Godin, Marketing, Communications, Strategies, The Dip

Bitchy Question of the Day: If you are that smart, why are you not with McKinsey and the like?

Somebody bitchy sent me this email last night:  If you are that smart, why are you not with McKinsey and the like?

Well, put it this way:  When I graduated from University, one of the big four consulting companies approached and wanted me to be a part of their team.  It was a company that everybody - from Management Engineering, Business Management, Economics, Psychology, and Organizational Development graduates - wanted to get into because "it looks good on the resume".

I refused.

Me and one of my best friends - who now holds a Ph D in Mathematics and Marketing Science - were smirking:  The measure of your being good is getting into the big four; the measure of your being great is being invited to get into the big four, having the option of saying no, and exercising that option.

So...  what was the question again?

 

 

Technorati tags: McKinsey, Accenture, Andersen, Andersen Consultnig, Deloitte, BCG, Working Life, Consulting, Career shifts, Career management, Insights on Human Behavior

del.icio.us tags: McKinsey, Accenture, Andersen, Andersen Consultnig, Deloitte, BCG, Working Life, Consulting, Career shifts, Career management, Insights on Human Behavior

The Irrationality of the Human Mind

A lot of disciplines think of the human mind as a rational creature. That the human being is rational at her core.  But are we, really?

The irrationality of the human mind is interesting: it contorts our views and our human behavior models. It distorts schemas and other things that we have in our minds of human behavior.  Yet this irrationality is also that which is perhaps at the cornerstone of our being human.

The complexity of our being human is perhaps found in our seeming irrationality.  How and why we believe in a God and in religion, in ideals that are nonetheless beyond logic and science, in goals that are beyond reason.

We try to distill this complexity by assuming rationality - an assumption that is easily questioned by the things that we observe in our daily lives. 

A good friend - on Saturday night, however, asked me via email:  Could it be that underneath our seeming irrationality is a 'pure rationality' that unfortunately, we cannot define at the moment?  Could it be that underneath the seeming drives of fulfilling desires and pleasures - which is sometimes assumed as part of the rationality of humans - is more than just that?  Could it be possible that even in the "evil of greed" lies a kernel of good - and in the "altruism" of humans lies a kernel of evil?

I have no answer.

I can only try to be rational - but in so doing, be irrational.

Is advertising, media, communications planning still a business of ideas?

Is that even the question that should be asked?  Are ideas still at the core of the businesses of advertising, media, and communications planning?

These are questions that floated in my mind as I read about Seth Godin's Blog in response to a question that was posted to him as to why he 'shares' ideas freely.  His response was classic-Seth-Godin: Simple and profound. Here was his response:

I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard.

My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create, at least it does for me.

I particularly liked his last two paragraphs in his post - and to a certain extent, I am guilty of having ideas but have too cowardly, scared, or perhaps, too concerned about being liked, respected, and keeping the peace that I have let them stay on in my notebook of ideas.

History is littered with inventors who had "great" ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen. In fact, just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed.

So, if you've got ideas, let them go. They're probably holding you back from the hard work of actually executing.

The last paragraph, though, I would insert one word - I would add in "exciting" after the word "hard" and before the word "work". 

Seth's Blog

Technorati tags: Marketing Communications, Ideas, Insights on Human Behavior, Management, Seth Godin, Simplicity, Ideation, Excellence, Implementation

The New Yahoo! Finance Pages: My new online toy!

I just discovered a new online toy tonight - and I spent more than four hours just trying it all out:  Yahoo!'s new finance pages.  (Well, at least they're new to me - and it says "new" on the website, so I guess it must be new. Hah!)

Anyway, I really like the way they have made the Finance pages more helpful.  For the last several weeks, I have been using Google's version - where the stock price movements were plotted against news.  It was, well, helpful - I thought it was sufficient.

Until I got to the Yahoo! finance pages.

I am into numbers - so I dove immediately into their charts and the "key statistics" summary sheets.  And was I surprised what I have been missing all along!  Google's version just simply pales in comparison to what Yahoo! has done with its finance pages.  I am in awe - simply in awe - of what I could do.

OK, granted that I won't probably use most of the technical indicators (such as the Fast and Slow Stochastics), but at least they are covering MACDs [that's Moving Average Convergence Divergence], Trailing and Forward P/E Ratios, analysts' 5year estimates (so I can calculate my PEGs), and whole lot more.  I am missing the beta, but then I guess I can check out Google for that.

Somehow, the news are still there - then again, there is more to stock movements that just the news, right?

I have tested it out on one of the stocks that I have recently been researching: Landec, which is into plastics.  It did help me feel better about what I decided to do with the stocks (buy).

Anyway, I am pretty sure that I will be using the finance pages of Yahoo! more and more. 

Now if only they could do the same with their Yahoo.Com.Sg site - can someone tell them that not everyone wants to see movies and kiddie stuff on their website?