The Awakening

2005 has been a fairly eventful year for me. Its the year I received some academic recognition, its the year I got my first job and most importantly its the year I received some rude awakening.

I must admit here that I am not an avid book reader. But 4 books that I have read during the course of this year (4 is a huge number for me!) - Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin, Fooled by Randomness by Naseem Taleb, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman and Innumeracy - Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences by John Paulos have had a significant lasting impact.

What it has made me realise is that although I have spent the better part of first quarter of my life studying, I haven't really learnt that much. Some of the more fundamental learnings that ought to have happened fairly early on in my learning period have not happened. I get swayed by emotion all too often, I get easily carried away by bouts of optimism and pessimism. I find it difficult to take a dispassionate view of things, do the numbers/arguments and come to a cold yet reasonably correct conclusion. I am now trying to learn things which I should have learnt (at least exposed to) long back. Its a very somber feeling to have. Alas...

However the 4 books above and my learnings from 2 very good professors whom I had the privilege to study under have changed me. I am increasingly becoming more and more a skeptical person. Increasingly find very little to read about in newspapers and television very boring.

However the one thing I am very much interested in and it continues to interest me is financial markets. I just love them. They are a huge fun and a great source of learning.

So as I go along, I plan to use this forum to take the contrarian view (or the non-majority view) of many a contemproray topics. Maybe dismiss some pretty idiotic beliefs or opinions that some people have.

To end, here's a nice quote to sum up:

"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that" - G.H.Hardy

Thats it for today...