Steve Blank: Launching a start-up and having a family life

It is a hard balance that many of us need to struggle with. Working in a start-up and having a good family life seem to be poles apart. One of my favorite business school professors, Steve Blank published this piece today on VentureBeat. The permalink seems to be broken so I am repeating some of the key points that Steve mentioned.

This is what he writes –

My wife and I agreed to a few rules upfront and made up the rest as went along. We agreed I was still going to do startups, and probably more than most spouses she knew what that meant.  To her credit she also understood that meant that child raising wasn’t going to be a 50/50 split; I simply wasn’t going to be home at 5 pm every night.

In hindsight this list looks pretty organized but in reality we made it up as we went along, accompanied with all the husband and wife struggles of being married and trying to raise a family in Silicon Valley.  Here are the some of the rules that evolved that seemed to work for our family.

• We would have a family dinner at home most nights of the week.  Regardless of what I was doing I had to be home by 7pm.  (My kids still remember mom secretly feeding them when they were hungry at 5pm, but eating again with dad at 7pm.)  But we would use dinnertime to talk about what they did at school, have family meetings etc.
• Put the kids to bed. Since I was already home for dinner it was fun to help give them their baths, read them stories and put them to bed.  I never understood how important the continuity of time between dinner through bedtime was until my kids mentioned it as teenagers.
• Act and be engaged. My kids and wife had better antenna than I thought.  If I was home but my head was elsewhere and not mentally engaged they would call me on it.  So I figured out how to spit the flow of the day in half.  I would work 10 hours a day in the office, come home and then…
• Back to work after the kids were in bed. What my kids never saw is that as soon as they were in bed I was back on the computer and back at work for another 4 or 5 hours until the wee hours of the morning.
• Weekends were with and for my kids. There was always some adventure on the weekends. I think we must have gone to the zoo, beach, museum, picnic, amusement, etc. a 100 times.
• Half a day work on Saturday.  While weekends were for my kids I did go to work on Saturday morning.  But my kids would come with me.  This had two unexpected consequences; my kids still remember that work was very cool.  They liked going in with me and they said it helped them understand what dad did at “work.”  Second, it set a cultural norm at my startups, first at Supermac as the VP of Marketing, then at Rocket Science as the CEO and at E.piphany as President. (Most Silicon Valley startups have great policies for having your dog at work but not your kids.)
• Long vacations. We would take at least a 3-week vacation every summer.  Since my wife and I liked to hike we’d explore national parks around the U.S. (Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Maine.) When the kids got older our adventures took us to Mexico, Ecuador, India, Africa and Europe. The trips gave them a sense that the rest of the country and the world was not Silicon Valley and that their lives were not the norm.
• Never miss an event. As my kids got older there were class plays, soccer games, piano and dance performances, birthdays, etc.  I never missed one if I was in town, sometimes even if it was in the middle of the day. (And I made sure I was in town for the major events.)
• Engage your spouse. I asked my wife to read and critique every major presentation and document I wrote. Everything she touched was much better for it.  What my investors never knew is that they were getting two of us for the price of one.  (And one of us actually went to business school.)  It helped her understand what I was working on and what I was trying to accomplish.
• Have a Date-Night. We tried hard to set aside one evening a week when just the two of us went out to dinner and/or a movie.
• Get your spouse help. Early on in our marriage we didn’t have much money but we invested in childcare to help my wife.  While it didn’t make up for my absences it offloaded a lot.
• Traditions matter. Holidays, religious and secular, weekly and yearly, were important to us.  The kids looked forward to them and we made them special.
• Travel only if it needed me. As an executive it was easy to think I had to get on a plane for every deal. But after I had kids I definitely thought long and hard before I would jump on a plane.  When I ran Rocket Science our corporate partners were in Japan (Sega), Germany (Bertelsmann) and Italy (Mondadori) and some travel was unavoidable.  But I probably traveled 20% of what I did when I was single.
• Document every step. Like most dads I took thousands of photos.  But I also filmed the girls once a week on the same couch, sitting in the same spot, for a few minutes – for 16 years.  When my oldest graduated high school I gave her a time-lapse movie of her life.

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Get to know yourself

What a moment for America! Obama is the 44th president of the USA. A great inaugural speech by Obama which touches everyone on this planet.

One of the readers of Andrew Sullivan’s blog writes about the difficulty that the comedians have in mocking Obama. Interesting read particularly this line – “Obama has the realness that comes from the hard psychological work that it takes to really get to know yourself and come out on the other side unafraid of whatever might come your way. “

But what Obama seems to have is the ability not to appear as if he is acting, faking it.  That is why comedians were able to mock Clinton’s lower lip biting and other such gestures meant to show how much he cared. Why do comedians have such a hard time mocking Obama?  Some say it is because he is black, and they don’t want to be seen as racist; no, that’s not it.  They mock Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all the time.

They can’t mock Obama because he is not a faker, not a schmoozer,  not a dolt, not a skirt-chaser, not a charlatan, etc. etc.  Obama has the realness that comes from the hard psychological work that it takes to really get to know yourself and come out on the other side unafraid of whatever might come your way.  That is decidedly not funny.

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Spreading Smiles at Stanford

Amidst the financial crisis that this world is going through, it was a great feeling to go out and spread some smiles at Stanford. Here are some stories from this exercise that we carried out at Stanford as a part of the 3rd Annual Giving Marketplace conference. It was a lot of fun and in the true spirit of CharityFocus, we created quite a stir at Stanford that evening. ☺

17 different organizations from all over the world (China, Spain, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, Colombia, India and the US) got together for four days to share and learn from each other and hear from the experts in the field of giving marketplaces, micro-investment and micro-finance. The organizations represented are the likes of Kiva, Wokai, GiveMeaning, HelpArgentina, GlobalGiving, GiveIndia, Rang De and DonorsChoose.

Pawan and Lloyd suggested a fun exercise, which would help this group bond with each other and also kick off this conference with the spirit of giving and service. They wanted me to organize this exercise CharityFocus style.

We carried out this “Kindness Challenge” during the first orientation evening where people just landed jet-lagged and tired. This was a spirited group of around 30 entrepreneurs – founders and key players working with these Giving Marketplaces. We divided them into random groups of 3 each. These people most likely did not know each other and some of them were new to the Stanford Campus. We gave them Smile Cards and a map of the Stanford campus. We then challenged them to go out, roam around in the campus and do small and anonymous acts of kindness.

They spent a couple of hours tagging people all around the campus with Smile Cards. At the end of the evening we sat together for a 2-minute silence. We then shared our experiences with each other. There were many interesting stories and deep realizations with this simple exercise. Here are some of them:

•    One of the participants ended up singing a song to a newly wed couple and made their day in an unexpected way.

•    Stanford was looking much cleaner last evening because a majority of the groups decided to pick trash and clean the campus.

•    There was a formal dinner happening at the lawn of the Old Union building. A couple of the groups decided to help the waiters and served the people dining over there – KarmaKitchen style.

•    One homeless person at the campus was so moved after talking to a participant that he proposed to marry her ☺.

•    One participant from Spain said – “I did not know what to do with my 2 minutes of silence. It was the first time that I got 2 minutes to reflect on an exercise like this.”

•    A group got some flowers and started searching for loving couples to share these flowers with. After a couple of false tries they finally found a couple that was very happy receiving those flowers.

•    Some participants just decided to buy coffee for Stanford students.

They all shared the challenge that they faced with a deadline of a couple of hours and when they are “on a mission” to do good deeds with an awareness and consciousness.  They mentioned the difficulty in finding “people in need” and not be intrusive in this seemingly all-happy part of the world. Some groups also shared how some people start looking at the act of kindness as something weird and strange but they quickly open up after getting a hang of what’s happening to them.

We then gave them a plenty of Smile Cards so they could keep this spirit alive during this conference. Also, the incentive at the end of this contest was a bunch of smile cards that these organizations could take with them to their respective countries and spread smiles wherever they go.

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We Win or We Perish

This is an interesting short-story that gives a perspective for entrepreneurs’ risk taking abilities. 

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, “You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice – we win – or we perish!“

They won. [From Napolean Hill’s classic book]

 

Exceptional leaders (from the book “WHAT MAKES jack welch JACK WELCH”) had experienced exceptional personal growth in the following five critical areas:

1. Appetite to lead

2. Character

3. The confidence to seek challenges

4. Ability to engage and inspire others

5. and most importantly CONFRONT RISK.

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Interview with Bill George (Author of “True North”)

I interviewed Bill George, author of best-seller books “Authentic Leadership” and “True North”. Bill is not just a great author and a leader himself, he is a wonderful coach and a teacher too. Here are the excerpts of this brief interview –

Hitesh: What is “True North” and how does it apply in the context of a business student or a budding entrepreneur who is just starting on a leadership journey?

Bill George: “True North” refers to the deeply held beliefs, values and passions. It is how you see yourself as a human being at a fundamental level. As a business student, it is easy to get lured to the seductions of the job search. It is easy to follow the herd and live the expectations of someone else. At this stage it becomes all the more important for you to discover your real self and find your sweet spot.

The book “True North” provides a framework because that allows you to create your own direction. Instead of other cook-books on leadership that provide the “10 qualities that make a great leader”, “True North” provides an individual approach and a framework with exercises. YOU have to figure out yourself your own values and point of differentiation.

Hitesh: How does one “frame” or “reframe” one’s life story? Is framing not by definition twisting the truth and thus not authentic? How can you have flexible leadership styles and still be authentic? Please help explain these contradictions.

Bill George: Good questions and I wrestle with these myself all the time. If you start taking these recommendations from the book to an extreme, that could be a problem.

We all see this world through a certain lens. e.g. If one grew up in a fundamentalist religious family and later on got exposed to multi-religious or atheist view points, then that opens up the mind at a much deeper level. Oprah Winfrey came to a realization at the age of 36 that she is not a “bad girl” as she always viewed herself as. She reframed her childhood abuse experiences by tracing her actions there and came out a much stronger person.

The flexibility referred in the book is the tradeoffs in your values that sometimes you have to make. These are tough decision moments where you have to make decisions like layoffs and sometimes have to reprioritize your values. The leadership “style” is a different thing than your authentic self. e.g. If the situation demands quick decisions then a consensus leadership style will not fit and you will have to adapt.

Hitesh: Any words of wisdom for the younger budding leaders?

Bill George: Get into the game. Do not watch it from the sidelines. Don’t hold back. Take the risk of failing to learn a lot.

[Please note that Bill’s comments are not verbatim and are based on the notes that I took. This was not a recorded interview]

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The MONK and the MONKey

I read Randy Komisar’s “The Monk and the Riddle“. I just could not stop when I started reading it. By the time I finished reading it, the clock struck 4 AM. I think it was a night well spent.

Randy Komisar is a Venture Capitalist with Kleiner Perkins. This book tells Randy’s evolution (thus the word Monkey in this post’s title) and search for his passion. Autobiographies are generally boring but Randy does a great job by weaving his life nuggets with a great story of an entrepreneur, Lenny.

“We will put the Fun back in FUNerals”, says Lenny. He is trying to sell an internet business called funerals.com to Randy. This story is set in year 2000, when the whole world was going online – from pets and groceries to well funerals and caskets. I could relate to this story since a number of my friends were pitching get-rich-quick-internet-business-plans those days (and with Web 2.0 they are doing it all over again).

Lenny is a vulnerable soul like many of us who go through life in two phases. In the first phase we do what we HAVE to do so that in the second phase we can do what we LOVE to do. Randy’s point is to start doing what we LOVE to do NOW. He asks us to not live a life plan which is always deferred till we pay our dues. How practical is it?

Randy does a good job explaining the importance of following our passion, but he lacks concrete steps and examples to find out what that passion is. That search for passion is a very individual matter and requires a lot of personal effort. Bill George’s “True North” does a great job providing a framework to search for that passion. “True North” picks up where “The Monk and the Riddle” ends.

This book is a must read for anybody who thinks business is all about the bottom-line and chasing money. It will convince you to look at business and your professional life through a new lens.

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Gates and Jobs: Great Show

Gates and Jobs shared a stage and it was quite a show (better than a Bollywood thriller).

One thing that is quickly evident from this – Jobs comes across as a person who still has a lot to prove while Gates looks deeply satisfied like a Sadhu. While Gates looks like entering Sanyas , Jobs is still in the prime of his Grahastha Ashram. Again, there are a number of personal reasons (I won’t go there – Read iCon) that one could highlight why Jobs is still so thirsty. 

Jobs’ thirst is doing a lot of good for customers. Jobs has this beautiful left-brain-right-brain conflict going on that creates these stellar products. Go Jobs Go!

Another thing that came out from this was something that Jobs joked about: both of them being dinosaurs in this new Googly age. These guys will not be extinct anytime soon but their era is not what will define the next 20 years. iPhone is great but is that all? Surface Computing might not be the next killer device. This “Post-PC devices” era might not be dominated by Google either. Where is that next Google, Microsoft and Apple?

I think this picture says it all –

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My Creative Journey: Part 3

Here is the third post in my series of sketches. The first one was the view from my patio and the second one was Baby Hanuman. This one is a flower vase that I sketched just before it was broken by accident. It was good that I captured it in some form before we lost it.

I really like this quote about giving – “Smell remains on the hands of someone who gives a rose”. It is in line with what Karma Kitchen is doing in Berkeley. I will write a separate detailed post about Karma Kitchen. I went there with my family last Saturday. It was an amazing experience and a great feast. The check total at the end of a tasty meal was $0.00. Amazing, isn’t it?

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My Evolution As A Sketcher – Part 2

Here is the next sketch that I tried. This is the second one in my series of posted sketches – first one was a view from my patio. This one is a Baby Hauman sketch based on Indian animation film Hanuman. Pardon some of the shade which is because of scanner issues. More sketches to follow.

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Happiness: How To Find It?

HAPPINESS – It is the single most important goal of human life. All our actions could be traced to “seeking happiness”. While happiness is so important and sought after, it is not properly understood. There is a huge element of subjectivity involved and that makes it hard to define, measure, monitor and fix.

 Uncertain Future: Our brains have a number of issues that make it hard for us to predict “what would make us happy”. The most significant shortcoming is the lack of details in our imagination. When we think about a future event we tend to just imagine a few important aspects of it. Our brain misses on a number of details.

What differentiates human beings from other animals – our ability to imagine and “plan” for future. This long-term thinking is also responsible for our misery. Our super ancestors’ brains did not have a faculty to “worry” about future. Just like cows, cats and dogs they just had sufficient brain power to handle the immediate future. Our frontal-lobe in the brain is responsible for future long-term thinking and it was developed in the middle of our evolution cycle. This lobe is a part of brain which is non-essential for the basic functions of human body. We would still live if we don’t have this worrisome frontal lobe with our brain.

Unclear Past: Second shortcoming for our brain is related to our past memories. Contrary to common belief our brain is actually not a good storage device. The way it stores past events is by leaving out a lot of details and compressing what it stores. The problem that it manifests itself in is the fact that we are not able to do a good job of “looking back” and deciding what makes us happy. E.g. the only thing our brain might remember about our family reunion is the great panaromic view from the hotel balcony. It does not remember the details of pickerings with our cousins. Because of this we make irrational decision of going to our reunion every year.

What To Do?

Two things one could do to work around these limitations –

1. Consciously try to “Be Happy NOW”, instead of putting it off for a future event, sale or possession – enjoy the moment.
2. Talk to somebody who “IS” in that situation before making these decisions. That is the best proxy for finding our future happiness. This way we do not rely completely on our own faulty imagination. E.g. if you are thinking of moving to Raleigh from San Francisco for your next job – talk to somebody who has done it and is currently in North Carolina.

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Harmony in Decision Making and Happiness

We make so many decisions everyday, ranging from as simple as which brand of coffee to drink to as significant decisions as whether to use nuclear weapons against Japan.

How do we make these decisions? What is our personal compass that we use to navigate through this web of decisions? And, Is that compass directing us to our best estimate of “happiness” in future?

Happiness is so subjective and all of us have so different definitions. This subjectivity and variety in how we interpret our own compass of happiness results in this magnificent variety of life experiences that we go through. It results in so many different life stories.

What is important in all these journeys is the “seeking” part of happiness. We strive to be happy and thus we do all those things that we “think” will make us happy.

Three important decisions that one makes in one’s life are –

1. Place where we live our lives
2. People we choose to spend our lives with
3. Work that we choose to do

In the last couple of decades the possibilities in these choices have exploded exponentially. In this global world the way we decide where and how to live our lives is very different than how it used to be. A number of us end up being nomads or “global citizens” as we call ourselves. The happiness comes from the eclectic experiences that one gets by moving to different locations, meeting different people and doing different things.

The HARMONY that we can build around our three choices is important. The dissonance that arises is responsible for unhappiness.

Just follow the high-level personal compass instead of going into the detailed analysis and planning for future. There are so many variables anyway on your way – focus on the most important ones.

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Khosla’s Pursuit of HappYness

I met and listened to Vinod Khosla, a renowned Venture Capitalist, at a US-India Venture Capital Association meeting. His speech gave a glimpse inside his mind. It was a very personal speech unlike his previous speeches. Khosla talked about some of the decisions he made in life and why he made those decisions.

Move to India – Remember 1993 – Technology world was eclipsed by Microsoft, the King. There were others like Nortel but mostly big things were happening in Redmond. Khosla lived in Northern California at that time with his family. At that time he observed a lot of action happening in Asia. To go to where the action is – he moved with his family to India.

Disillusionment – When in India he tried to find out about the non-profits that he could help and work with to make a difference. He could not find any good organizations. He was shuttling between India and the US – spending six weeks in India and six weeks in the US, alternatively. He was trying hard to help solve some of India’s biggest problems like poverty and rural development. He gave up – thinking that these are big issues and he is not even able to make a dent in these huge problems.

Khosla Version 2.0 – After spending three years in India he came back to the US again. The current run is his second attempt at solving world’s problems. This time he is more successful.

Positive Future – His prediction for future is that entrepreneurship and innovation will thrive with great opportunities ahead. He also predicts that with the growing complexity of the world, people would move to the more relevant (for happiness) things like relationships, family and enjoyment.

Responsible Capitalism – One of his core beliefs is that capitalist solutions work best for the global problems. According to him a sustainable solution is to have someone make money while solving these problems. Subsidies would take you only so far. His rule of thumb – For a long-lasting solution you need the venture to be in black within five years.

Open Source – He believes in the power of open source. One of his pet projects (where his wife is working full time now) is the open source text-books project. The goal of this project is to make textbooks freely available to all the kids. According to him California alone spends more than half a Billion dollars on text-books every year. That money would be rather well spent on the teacher’s salaries for example. Is open source (and free text-books) not contradictory to the capitalistic principles?

Gut Feeling – He mentioned that we never looks at the extensive spreadsheets and financials calculating ROI and all the good stuff for making investment decisions. He evaluates opportunities solely relying on his gut feeling.

In this meeting I saw in him an ordinary person like you and me who goes through contradicting battles in his own mind. One who is trying his best to make a dent in these massive world problems utilizing all his resources to the best he can. Good luck Mr Khosla in your pursuit of happYness (with a Y instead of i).

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Speed: Is fast good?

When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

–Alan Watts

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How to put time on your side?

A good question – “Now that we can be in touch with anyone at any time, do we risk being out of touch with ourselves?”

Read Here …

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Silence …

A man’s silence is wonderful to listen to.

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How green is my purchase?

When we ask this question about “How green is this purchase of mine?” – Remember this –

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

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What’s going on?

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

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Discipline fosters creativity

Popular Belief: Discipline hinders creativity.
Reverse: Discipline fosters creativity.

The most prevalent way to depict creativity is Einstein’s photo with his shabby hairstyle and chaotic looks. Creativity does not always come packaged as this confused picture. The other well-behaved gentleman shown above is C.V. Raman – another physics Nobel Prize winner. It is a different face of creativity than what is popular. Raman was a disciplined scientist who performed ground breaking research while still receiving a gold-medal in college [Einstein got into repeated trouble at school].

Quantity of ideas is very important for creativity. Discipline provides a platform to create an “idea factory”. Discipline helps create a fine-tuned operational process to generate a lot of ideas. A lot of ideas are always better than the few ideas that shabby zealots find themselves boxed in because of their inflexible mindset.

Being chaotic has suddenly become hip. It is the current fad in the enterprise. We have gone too far when it comes to creating an “informal” culture. Being informal does not mean being dirty and messy.

A number of chaotic-creative-people never get to implement their creative ideas because they are not focused. They do not have a goal in mind when they start with their creative process. Disciplined thinking requires you to clearly state your goal in mind before you start any creative endeavor. With structured thinking you start on a stated goal, identify a compelling motive and follow a disciplined approach to finding creatively disciplined ideas.

Another related popular notion is that a shabby work environment is a sign of creativity. A clean environment is much more helpful when it comes to creating good ideas. A dirty environment breeds dirty ideas. A messy environment creates stress and stress in turn kills creative juices. A clean environment on the other hand lets you focus on the creative task at hand.

In conclusion, do not get rid of the basic discipline which is required in the creative process. Do not create unnecessary chaos just hoping that creativity is directly linked to dirty desks and lunatic looks. Discipline is a virtue – embrace it when you embark on your next creative endeavor. And, please get a decent haircut.

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Presentation Zen – Simplicity and Complexity

How to make a presentation simple yet powerful in message?

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Kindness & Competitiveness

Another contradiction – It is just too tough to be competitive and kind – both at the same time.

From David Copperfield –

I believe in kindness.
But it’s hard to be kind. We’re not trained for it. Kindness is for sissies; we learn that early. “Nice guys finish last.” If they even get invited to the race. Kindness is taken for weakness, rube-ishness, stupidity. No one seems to respect the kind. They respect the killer. We’re taught to value competitiveness, strength, cunning, Darwin.
I work in the entertainment business, where kindness just never seems to be “in.” It’s not macho. It doesn’t sell tickets. In the movies, the hero never kills the bad guy with kindness. But I believe Economics 101 is right. The value of a thing is determined by its scarcity. Which makes kindness spiritual gold.
I am writing these words a few weeks after my father’s death. […]
For my father, being kind was natural. He had a gift for it. I have to really work at it. I love competing and winning, conquest — not words you usually associate with kindness.
As I became successful — famous, even — my father wasn’t jealous. He basked in it. He and my mom came with me everywhere I toured. I’d always stop and introduce him to the audience, and he’d stand and bow. Afterwards, he’d sign autographs. I knew he loved getting the attention.
Only recently did I understand that he loved giving attention as well. He loved the chance to be kind to the thousands of people who came up to him. He drew strength and vitality from that chance to be nice. The chance to learn that gift was, more than anything, his legacy to me. He showed me that kindness doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be very small. It’s something that’s not expected and that’s offered absolutely gratis, no strings — like an act of friendship. Now, the memories that hold the most peace for me are of kindness, of my dad offering it to strangers.
With my dad’s passing, I’ve resolved to make life more about those moments. My dad taught me that what you do counts. For me, that has to be about being kind, despite the odds. I believe in kindness, plain and simple.
— David Copperfield

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Contradiction between simplicity and more features

How to keep feature rich products but still keep them simple.

From FastCompany –

http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/100/beauty-of-simplicity.html

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Dave’s Next Move

Dave Duffield (PeopleSoft founder) has come back to business world with his next move.

http://www.davesnextmove.com

Rightly said –

Today’s enterprise applications are no longer meeting the needs of their customers.
These applications

• Are too expensive to deploy and maintain.

• Are complicated and difficult to use.

The challenge is to balance the two contradictory facets of enterprise applications – ease of use (ease of deployment) and feature richness.

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Stocks That Dwell Below 50-Day Tend To Warn Of Sell-Off Ahead

Stocks That Dwell Below 50-Day Tend To Warn Of Sell-Off Ahead

Friday January 28, 7:00 pm ET David Saito-Chung

When a good stock plunges below its 50-day moving average on huge volume, generally the stock should be sold and profits should be logged.
Not all sell signals are that obvious, though.
You might come across a stock that slips below this key price line, but takes its time doing so. The volume may not be that hefty, either.
But if the stock spends at least three weeks below its 50-day line (or 10-week moving average on a weekly chart), consider locking in at least some gains. IBD’s study of past market winners has found that such a stock tends to no longer enjoy brisk demand from pension funds, mutual funds, banks and the like.
During a healthy market, every solid stock pulls back during the course of its long run. A stock may even cross below its 50-day line on a day when the market is feeling the heat of sellers.
But if the stock still has gas in the tank, it won’t retreat for long. The stock will cruise back above its 50-day and resume its uptrend. Keep in mind that some stocks swing more wildly than others and hence may bob above and below the trend line throughout the rally.
Always keep a lookout for telltale signs of a top, even before the stock reaches its 50-day line. They include the climax run, jetting above an upper channel, new highs on low volume, and a sharp drop on the heaviest volume since its breakout. (Please go to IBD Archives or the Investor’s Corner Archives at investors.com for more on these topics.)
Tiffany (NYSE:TIF – News) broke out of a five-month cup-with-handle base in May 2003, then bounded out of an even longer, deeper cup pattern in August that year (point 1). The fine jewelry retailer didn’t keep up with the market’s biggest leaders, but its 40% gain over the next three months was nothing to sneeze at. Tiffany also eased to its 10-week moving average on light trade, offering a chance to add shares (point 2).
Trouble signs appeared in November that year. For starters, Tiffany fell 8.2% on the heaviest weekly volume since its breakout (point 3). The 13.3 million shares traded that week was the highest since July 2002. Message: Institutional investors were grabbing profits and leaving.
The next week saw Tiffany sink to its 10-week moving average and stick. But from the week ended Dec. 5, 2003, the stock closed below its 10-week line for three straight weeks (point 4), a sign of flagging demand. This, combined with the big sell-off the prior month, was a message to start raising some cash.
Tiffany sold off again for two weeks in January 2004 (point 5). It tried twice to get back above its 10-week line. But by then, the trend was firmly down. As the market went into slow burn from late January 2004, the retailer eventually gave back all of its gains. Earnings fell in the July and October quarters.

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Happy going to doctor

There is a point in life when a husband is happy going to a doctor – when his wife is pregnant :-). One of the most exhilirating moments to visit a doctor.

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Private Corners of the Brain

Once you realize God knows everything, you’re free. I had been through many years of psychoanalysis and still I had managed to keep private places in my head – I wouldn’t say they were big, labeled categories, but they were certain attitudes or feelings that were still very private. And suddenly I realized that he knew everything that was going on in my head, all the time, and he still loved me. Because who we are is behind all that.

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Managing the Bad Boss

Are you in control of a “bad manager”? You need to read http://www.badbossology.com/.

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Maharajji’s Contradictions about Truth

Maharajji said –

Christ died for truth.

Total truth is necessary. You must live by what you say.

Truth is the most difficult tapasya. Men will hate you for telling the truth. They will call you names. They may even kill you, but must tell the truth. If you live in truth, God will always stand with you.

When asked how the heart could be purified, he said, “always speak the truth.”

In contradiction to all of these teachings, however, maharajji frequently lied.

Maharajji would usually agree to any request from a devotee. People frequently invited him to come and bless their homes and to partake of the food prepared by the family. He would inevitably agree to all those requests, yet more often than not he wouldn’t go.

When questioned by one of his devotees about his habit of making and breaking promises, Maharajji replied, “I’m just a big liar!”

Maharajji would say something and later, if he contradicted himself and the contradiction was pointed out, he would say, “I didn’t say that.”

(Excerpts from “Miracle of Love”)

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Best Buy’s Unwanted Customers

Today’s Wall Street Journal has this article about Best Buy trying to separate the “angels” among his 1.5 million daily customers from the “devils.”

What a contradiction? Do you know that businesses have unwanted customers? Best Buy is trying to shy away the bargain hunters. They will analyze customers and decide who are “not welcome”.

Best Buy estimates that as many as 100 million of its 500 million customer visits each year are undesirable. And they want to be rid of these customers. This

campaign against devil customers pits Best Buy against an underground of bargain-hungry shoppers intent on wringing every nickel of savings out of big retailers. At dozens of Web sites like FatWallet.com, SlickDeals.net and TechBargains.com, they trade electronic coupons and tips from former clerks and insiders, hoping to gain extra advantages against the stores.

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You can not go to heaven …

To go to heaven you have to die yourself! I love seeking knowledge. BUT, it is so hard to acquire. Financial Accounting is so much fun 🙂 (truly) and so is Marketing Management. BUT, It requires so much effort to master these subjects. I know I will eventually nail them.

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Thinking outside the box …

BUT, how do we define the box? It is a cliche to say we should think outside the box. Nobody knows how to limit the box. Remember Einstein’s theory of relativity (http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/relativity.html). I am trying to redefine my box my new frame of reference.

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Contra-Dictions

You are happy : You are sad. You are rich : You are poor. You are entertaining : You are boring. Everywhere on earth we see contradictions. Actually, outside earth too. My life is full of many such contradictions too. This is an effort to capture some of them.

Contradictions are a major part of my life. But, that is not everything in my life. This blog records the journey of my life.

I started couple of blogs earlier too. None of them went on for more than few days. I really wish that this will be an exception, a contradiction and will go on forever.

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