I have moved...

...to tumblr. Like my friend Venkat, I wanted a change and tumblr has been refreshing.
Head over to http://mayankarya.com for Aryan Expedition. I have imported all the content from this blog since inception over there too.

Watchlist-cum-Portfolio Template

This is a watchlist-cum-portfolio template I created and modified from the web. It sources the stock codes from yahoo finance.
I have kept buy levels for stocks on the watchlist as BUY UNDER. The Buying Heatmap changes colours based on the current price of the scrip relative to the BUY UNDER price. Red means the CMP is farther away from the buy under price and green means its closer to the buy under price. Once the CMP falls below the buy under price, the scrip name cell changes to black background with green text.
The refresh button runs the macro query to get the latest prices from finance.yahoo.com

Disclaimer - I got the barebones template from the web and modified it to suit me and I think others should have access to it, so its here. Also, the stock names are arbitrary, so if the SEBI/ IT dept of India are watching this, these are not the stocks I hold :D
Any questions/ clarifications, please email me. This template is filed under the "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)" Creative Commons License. Please ensure if you share/ reuse or modify this template, the CC license remains in the Excel sheet.

You can get the file here.

Come on You Reds

There has been much vitriol about the Glazers family’s ownership of Man U and the huge debts they have saddled Man U with, not to mention the increasing interest payments. There has also been talk about an Asian consortium putting together a 1 billion dollar bid to buy out the ownership from the Glazers family. The jury is still out on the pros and cons of both the options, but I have a different take on the subject. While it’s not rocket science to comprehend how these spiralling debts can hasten the demise of a football club (look at Leeds, Newcastle and now Portsmouth) it becomes imperative for fans to get a grip. Man U definitely needs to get into new hands where the revenues from the Theatre of Dreams aren’t used to service the debts or personal loans of the owners. I propose the fans all over the world to take over the club through a trust/ association ala the MUST (Manchester United Supporters Trust). Here is my plan:

I assume Manchester United has 500 million fans worldwide. (Wiki Answers lists the number at 320 million, but let's assume). If each fan were to contribute one dollar’s equivalent, we could garner $ 500 million. This is neither enough, nor practical. Here is how/ why. Being a fan of Man U doesn’t mean one has to have money; what about children or people from third world countries and fans that’re actually trying to make ends meet or don’t have money to spare? A practical model for this would be equity. Fans buy shares of Man U according to their appetite, wealth and fancy. Assuming each share’s face value to be $1 and further assuming about 8.65 million fans do not buy any shares due to reasons mentioned above or otherwise, we can raise $ 1.10 Billion. Here is how:



Now, it is safe to further assume that there will be some wealthy/ affluent fans that will be willing to buy 1,000 shares each while there will be some fans too that would barely buy a single share for $1.

So, here is the deal: Buy out the Glazers by paying them $ 1 Billion. That leaves us with $ 100 million in cash. This can be used as the transfer kitty for the summer window. These shares bought will not be the actual Man U shares traded on the exchange. They will be the shares/ equity in the Trust – the MUST or other such investment vehicle. The shareholders of the trust will vote for the executive council – CEO and other officials through online voting or other such means so that it is purely democratic. The people elected as a result will run the club. Although I agree it’s a half baked idea and lots of fans would have thought about this idea or even worked on it, I though I should share it with you so maybe someone can fine tune this proposal. After all, fans know best(at least better than the Glazers)!

Up(to)Date

So yeah, after more than a year since my last post, I'm still hanging in there. A lot has happened to me personally and professionally over the last year and a half and most of you know about it. Letting bygones be bygones, I'm turning a fresh leaf on this blog. Hope to be more regular from now.

I've also hopped on to the personal domain bandwagon and most of my social networks and a short bio can be seen on http://mayankarya.info

As far as what's new, I'm working on an idea for the past 6 months and hope it will see the light of the day ASAP(go figure). I also have a couple of other ideas I'm fine tuning.

Over and out.

Airtel Delhi Half Marathon

It was a foggy start to the last day of the week. My body was coming to terms with the fact that there wasn't supposed to be the 12 hour marathon slumber like on every other Sunday. Instead, there was supposed to be another marathon on Sunday, the 9th November 2008 - The Airtel Delhi Half Marathon. I had registered for the Great Delhi Run (7Kms) at a spur one fine day. And I started making plans on my marathon conditioning and schedule of training a month before the start. Needless to add I never trained. I woke up at 6:30 on Sunday and brought my ass to the starting line straight from bed! But the experience was exciting, the body stimulated by the sights and the adrenalin of doing something like this for the first time spurred me on. I ran(walked intermittently) the 7 km track in 38 minutes. I was elated. Along the way, I would keep an eye on the official photographers and whenever I saw them from afar, I would make it a point to run with all the efforts showing on my face, to make a pretty marathon picture. And when I found out my photos from the marathon-photos site, there were only the photos from the finishing line, with my arms raised and an all-conquering smirk(yeah, not smile) on my face!

I'm a happy man though, at least I did what I set out to. I've set my eyes on the Half Marathon next year - the full 21 Kms race. And I guess one year is a decent enough time to train hard. Lets hope I can do it without breaking down.

Weird Dreams...

We all dream, we see nightmares. Some remember them, some don't. I usually have dream free sleep; dunno if I dream or not, I don't recollect anything when I wake up. But there are those so called "recurring dreams" or nightmares that, as the name suggests re-appear every once in a while. You may think I'm stupid, but I constantly dream that I've been asked (dunno by who) to count from 1 to a billion in order to proceed( dunno where!).It only gets weirder. Sometimes I dream that I'm asked to count from 1 to a billion between in one breath! It's as if the agent of death won't allow me to breathe unless I count!
It doesn't only sound suffocating, it feels suffocating as hell when I wake up. I mean how the hell can anyone count from 1 to a billion in between two breaths!??!

To be honest, I have never divulged this to anyone. But believe me, it is an overpowering feeling second only to the recurring dreams during my school going years. So, when I was in 10th grade, I used to dream I was walking somewhere and BANG! There is no more land to walk on. Instead, there is a wall like cliff in front and I had to scale this wall to get ahead. Quite metaphorical IMHO. With no ropes, no protective gear, I forge ahead... scaling the wall step by step. And finally, I emerge at the other side, don't ask how. I remember seeing this particular dream during the run-up to my Board Exams. And I remembered this dream when it was announced in school that I had topped!

This cliff dream has eluded me since then. There are times I urge myself to dream about this fantastic "overcoming the odds and emerging victorious" kinda dream only to wake up empty handed. I guess I'm not that ambitious anymore, and so life doesn't present challenges seemingly impossible at first that can be overcome in dreams - leading to reality.

This is what I'm working for...

...this is what I got as a raise this year!

Time to wipe the dust off my résumé...