Sunday, May 24, 2009

Jesse Livermore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Livermore


Please read about this guys life story. A multi millionaire during the great depression times. He made 100 million during the Great depression in 1929 which may be equal to some billions now and at the end of his life he lost most of it and committed suicide.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the book about his speculative techniques. I have not read any better stock analysis and mob psychology better than this book. Amazing book. This book has been an inspiration for many new generation investors.

Life is so weird. This guy had problems with personal life, with his marriages. That is one cause of his suicide. Even though one has money,there is no use of it if one does not how to spend it. All the time spent earning goes in vain. He has such great ability to analyse the market but he fell from his heights to emotional problems. He talks about human weaknesses and the how to guard oneself always from fallibility.

I believe money is like water. Either one can through it in the drain or use it to sustain life just like all life is sustained by water.
Just like water circulates in the environment, money also changes hands during transactions.

Let me mention another great investor George Soros who knew what to do in contrast to Livermore and used his great fortune for philanthropic purposes. I am greatly impressed by him. What a great vision these people have. It is just unbelievable. Most of us do not even know how these few influencial player change the direction of the world destiny. But they do.

Most of these people started from scratch. They believed in themselves and introspected on their mistakes and came out as winners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_soros

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

First 2 pages of X's Autobiography

I am X and I am a male. I feel that I am specially talented and gifted in some things. I got a good education in one of the finest schools of my country. When I was at school, I was fine at sports and competed sternly in everything. Even when I was a teenager and when I had to learn new tricks to impress friends and may be girl friends, I competed for the best looking women. I wanted all best things to happen to me because I worked hard and was intelligent. I felt I deserved the best things in life.

What is life about anyway? There is so much competition and one has to work hard to stand out. If hard work is not enough one has to be worldly wise and know what to do and how to achieve what one desires.

Winning is all that matters at the end of the day. Who cares about the losers? I got all the attention I needed from my parents and friends because I was better than others. Everyone encouraged me to do even better. To tell you the truth, things did not come to me easy. I had to work hard even study all night many days to achieve what I wanted. True, life is not that way for everyone. Some get lucky and can win a lottery. But people like me who do not have any predestined luck; there is no way to achieve success than through hard work.

As days went by and I graduated from college things changed. Now I had to get a job and may be get married to a beautiful women. I never gave any deeper thinking into these matters. All I thought about is the best job I can get with my college degree. I somehow made it in the interviews and got a high paying job. While at job I worked overtime and impressed my boss. And soon my parents got me married to an equally intelligent woman and we bore two children in a couple of years.

The point is that I do not regret anything I did. I suppose the goal of the game has been achieved by me. I have never thought about what I was supposed to do with my spare time. I started spending time with my family and started reading books and acquired new hobbies. Occasionally, I also did some adventures like going on a vacation to an island. I observed that I am in my thirties now and not as quick as I used to be as a child. My body has changed physiologically.

I had also been promoted to a management position in my company. I was good at taking care of my company. It gave me immense pleasure to see everybody salute me. Everybody respected me. But things were not the same forever. They changed. I felt, though I showed what a worldly wise person would say of a successful man, something was always missing in my life. I will confess something about my college life before I tell you the real problem I my life is now.

Though I had several friends, it was hard for me to believe in anybody. I would believe in a certain friend who would talk to me nicely but after several discussions I thought maybe that person in not worth trusting.

No one seems to understand my real problem. I felt that people were not as good as I am to them. I do a favor to them and they never return the way I did to them. I cannot understand why people are so selfish and thinking about their animal and immediate needs all the time. One day I gave a car ride to a friend of mine whom I though was getting into my inner circle of friends. I started to trust him. Let’s say his name is Y because I do not believe in real names; these real names are not worth mentioning. He had no car for himself. I worked all summer in my college canteen and avoided any parties or worthless spending and accumulated some money and got a car. Even my friend knows about how hard I worked to get the car. Rumor was that all my classmates know about how hard I worked to get the car. This ruthless friend I am talking about happily forgot about my help. He never mentioned about returning my favor in anyway. All his thoughts and actions proved that he happily forgot about my favor. But I could not avoid telling my secrets to him because I had no other friend close to me at that time. What could I do I had to talk to somebody. I also shared my deep emotions about the opposite sex and what really pricks me high in life.

He knew all my emotions and feeling. But later I felt that something was going wrong in our friendship. Sometimes he would take my car

without my permission. Although, I never showed my reluctance and behaved as if I had no bad thoughts about my friend, there was a surge of negativity in my emotions and thoughts. I felt that he never respected my hard work I expended on the car and he took me for granted. Why nice people get mistreated? Why? Thoughts like these killed me. I acted as if I bore no evil feeling towards my friend. There was a side in me who liked him, but the majority of my feeling revolted now. I had to do something. I felt he was reading my thoughts and emotions to use me. Unconsciously, I was also doing the same on him.

Then an opportune moment came to implement my negativity. For sometime now I felt that I needed no car and also questioned why I originally be fooled to own a car. I can walk to the classrooms and walk a little further to get the weekly groceries. I may waste sometime walking but now I felt better not using my car.

I probably would have used my car if my friend did not use it. Now I do not feel like touching the car. Sometimes I also felt like maybe my friend really owns the car because he uses it daily. The clever ideal I got was to deflate the tires so that no one can use it. Anyway I was not using it why should my friend use it.

I spent a lot of time on how and when to do it. If my friend thought he could read my thoughts he would have never guessed what I am for. That gave me a happy smirk. I choose a midnight and I finally immobilized my car. To my surprise my friend asked me why I deflated my tires and he was drinking alcohol with other ruthless friends of his when he saw me in that act. I was silent for a moment and did not speak. What could I say other than that I was doing the right thing? That was the end of our relationship. I felt insecure; He knew all my secrets, I hoped he does not spread them all to my classmates or black mail me. Luckily, my friend never spread my secrets outside. But sometimes when I looked at smiling junta of Y’s friends I felt they all knew about it.

I felt that marriage would end all questions of trust. But it did not turn out to be that way. I have to confess my married life was short lived and I was divorced after five years. What can you do when your spouse is not trustworthy? My children are grown up now and I feel they got greater share of their mothers genes then mine. Children are not worth a dime, I say now. My employees showed better trust than my children.

I loved them all the same. I mostly kept my feeling to myself. These are the first two pages of my autobiography. If you are interested I will send more pages. Let me know. Hope you get someone whom you can trust. It’s hard I know but do try. Remember when you fail blame others never yourself because you worked hard for it. You may sometimes feel why luck does not favor you. Life is not equal. Good people suffer and the wicked win. And it could be some other mysterious invisible had stopping your success. Also remember this world is there for your enjoyment. I know that there are always things that intervene our good intentions but what can anyone do when others do not understand us.

And finally thanks for reading. I feel I have purpose in life. And believe no one and think about yourself all the time. Our minds are programmed this way; do not try to change the iron law of the mind. All said, do not forget I love humanity. I do not show it in my actions lest others know my feelings and take advantage of me.

Timeless healing

I want to type a para from this book Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson, M.D from Harvard university. It is about how beliefs alter our body and mind states and how doctors can utilize them for patients recovery. Beautiful book for mind/body self healing.

A patient of mine, seven years old when I first met him, experienced a liberation of his own by evoking the relaxation response. Andy had been diagnosed with congenital migraine headaches. He had suffered from them since birth, crying almost constantly as a baby. Soon after he could talk he told his parents that his head hurt.

By the time I saw him, Andy was in the third grade, but he had fallen behind in school and had trouble making friends. In great part this was because Andy often spent full days in darkened rooms, his migraines exacerbated by exposure to bright light. Andy's parents were beside themselves, having pursued the most up and coming treatments, but none of the medications or treatments seemed to work.

Andy and his family were also Catholic and we decided on a prayer he could use to activate the relaxation response. Andy made pact with me to spend ten to twenty minutes silently focused on this prayer twice a day and to use the same approach for a moment or two at the first twinge of a headache. Within a few weeks, Andy could shorten the time the headaches lasted and lengthen the time between headaches. Several weeks later, the severity of the pain decreased. A few months later, Andy's headaches disappeared entirely. His grades and social skills soared, and soon he was playing on the school's hockey team.
When I last spoke to the family, Andy was taking no medication and considered the migraines a thing of the past.

No matter what method individuals use to elicit the response, the physiologic changes are the same. The human body is geared to react by providing this calming state- the opposite of the fight-or-flight response-whenever the mind is focused for some time and disregards intrusive, everyday thoughts. In other words, when the mind quiets down the body follows suit. pg 127