PDCA Cycle – Plan, Do, Check, Act is a 4 step process in Quality Control measures created by Deming. It is typically represented as a continuous cycle…

picture credit

some famous accidents… from which powerful lessons were learnt and safety policies were imposed

1. Titanic – 1911, 1500 plus cruise ship members and passengers perished
2. Challenger Space shuttle - 28 jan 1986, 7 crew members perished
3. Piper Alpha - 6 jul 1988, 200 on board crew members perished
4. Gare de Lyon - 27 june, 1988, 56 train passengers perished
5. Chernobyl reactor - 26 april 1986, 55 perished, 4000 cancer death, 6 million exposed to radiation

other sites recording such accidents…

• site 1
• site 2
• searchable database

Book Title: Smart WOmen finish Rich
Author:David Bach
Year written/published: 1999
Book Source: Google Books, Library
Summary: Personal Finance for Women
Some extracts:

some myths…
• Make more money and you’ll be rich
• My husband (or father or brother or son..) will take care of me
• The government has finally gotten inflation under control

File folder system…
1. Tax Returns
2. Retirement accounts
3. Social security
4. Investment Accounts
5. Savings and Checking Accounts
6. Household Accounts
7. Credit Card debt
8. Other liabilities
9. Insurance
10. Family will or trust
11. Children’s Accounts
12. Inventory Planner

Quantum leap system…
1. Until it’s written down, it’s not a goal – it’s just a slogan
2. Goals must be specific, measurable and provable
3. take some immediate action within the next 48 hours to start moving towards your goal
4. Once you have written down your goals, put them someplace where you can see them every day
5. Share our goals with someone you love and trust
6. Develop goals that fit in with your values
7. Review your goals at least once every 12 months

For protection…
1. You must have at least 3 to 24 month’s worth of living expense saved in case of emergency
2. You absolutely positively no matter what must have an up to date will or living trust
3. Get the best health insurance you can afford
4. If you have dependants, you should have life insurance
5. You need to protect your income with disability insurance

dream basket…

• for short term (less than 2 years) – money market accounts, certificate of deposits, treasury bills
• for mid-term (2 to 5 years) – treasury notes, corporate bonds, municipal bonds
• for long term (3 to 10 years) – stock, mutual funds, exchange funds

DRIP Investing…

A great way to invest systematically in individual stocks is to start what is known as Dividend Reinvestment Program (DRIP) Essentially DRIP plan allow investors to purchase stocks directly from the companies that issue them. Once an account is set up, investors can continue to buy more stock systematically and have stock dividends they earn reinvested automatically, often with no commission costs.

Some mistakes…
1. Becoming an investor before you are organised and have a specific goal in mind
2. not taking credit card debt seriously
3. having a 30 year old mortgage
4. waiting to buy a house
5. putting off savings for retirement
6. speculating with your investment money
7. building a portfolio that’s not diversified
8. paying too much in taxes
9. buying an investment  that is illiquid
10. giving up

Determining your net worth…
1. you family info
2. personal investments – cash reserves, fixed income, stocks, mutual funds, annuities, other assets
3. retirement accounts
4. real estate
5. estate planning
6. cash flow
7. nest cash flow
8. net worth
9. financial objectives

Book Title: Mutual Funds – an Introduction to the core concepts
Author: Mark Mobius
Year written/published: 2007
Book Source: Google Books, Library
Summary: Mutual Funds introduction
My Comments: Really good one… my first book on mutual funds… it’s great
Contents page:

1. An introduction to mutual funds
2. types of mutual funds
3. making sense of mutual funds documents
4. analysing preformance
5. mutual fund cost
6. buying and selling mutual fund shares
7. building mutual funds portfolios
8. the mutual fund industry: trends and growth drivers

Some extracts:

Mutual funds or unit trusts are called open0ended funds beacsue theya r erepored to buy back shares or units from the shareholders at any time at a price based on the current value of the fund’s net assets

Close end funds, or investment trusts are another typr of fund that issues a fixed number of shares, as in the case of open-ended funds.

Benefits of Mutual funds…

• professional management
• diversification
• lower cost
• convenience
• liquidity

Mutual fund structure…

• sponsor
• distributors
• custodian
• shareholders
• transfer agent
• management company
• fund manager
• board of directors
• shareholders

Equity makes money for investors un 3 different ways…

1. dividends 
2. capital gains distributions
3. share price appreciation

The most important document for a  mutual fund is the prospectus…which has…

• investment objectives
• strategy
• risks
• costs
• management
• performance history
• procedures for opening an account and buying and selling

some terminology…

Ratio of net investment income to average net assets – shows the ratio of annual dividends that the fund is paid form companies, in which t is invested, to the net asset of the fund
Turnover rate – shows how often the fund trades its securities.

2 key questions to choose the right fund…

1. Performance: Which figures are key to evaluating a mutual fund’s past performance and forecasting future performance?
2.  Risk: Which characteristics of a fund help determine its degree of risk?

Evaluating return

• Dividends
• capital gains distributions
• share price, or NAV increase
• total return 0 annualised total return, load-adjusted total return

Evaluating fund performance…

• benchmark
• fund management company changes
• peer comparisons
• consistency

Measuring risk…

• Alpha is a measure of a fund’s excess return relative to a market index. A positive alpha means the fund manager produced a higher return than the benchmark
•  Beta measures the sensitivity of a fund’s returns to the returns of a market index
• Turnover rate
• Taxes
• Risk associated with specific fund categories – Foreign and Global Equity Funds (Currency risk and country risk), Bond Funds (Quality and Interest Rate Risk)

Buying strategies…

• Pay yourself first : Dollar –Cost Averaging
• Timing the market
• buy and hold
• reinvesting dividends and capital gains
• buying on margin

Selling mutual fund shares….deciding when to sell fund shares…
• rebalancing a portfolio
• style changes
• manager changes
• changing investment goals
• poor performance

Selling mutual funds… deciding which fund to sell
• specific shares
• first-in-first-out
• average cost

Aggressive investor…
• focused on equities
• funds may include aggressive growth, small cap, emerging markets
• younger or more experienced investors
• longer time horizons to goals – more than 10 years before needing the money invested
• can tolerate higher market volatility
• have higher expectations for returns
• desire returns that outpace inflation

Conservative investor…
• needs current income from investments
• willing tolerate only low amounts of risks or volatility
• older or less-experienced investor
• has 5 or fewer years before money needed for financial goal
• investments may be concentrated in money market funds, bonds, large-cap equities

How many funds??

Still, after 4 funds, the effect of adding another fund on standard deviation declined. After 7 funds, changes were slight, and after 10 funds the portfolio’s standard deviation stayed the same no matter how many more funds were added. Therefore, after owning 7 to 10 funds, it may be unnecessary to add more to a portfolio.

Book Title: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind – Mastering the inner game of wealth
Author: T. Harv Eker
Year written/published: 2005
Book Source: Google Books, Library
My Comments: Great book.. clear and concise.
Some extracts:

so getting a huge sum of money the next day will make us rich?

The vast majority of people simply do not have the internal capacity to create and hold on to large amounts of money and the increased challenge that go with more money and success. That, my friends, is the primary reason they don’t have money. A perfect example is lottery winners. Research has shown again and again that regardless of size of their winnings, most lottery winners eventually return to their original financial state, the amount they can comfortably live with. On the other hand, the opposite occurs for self-made millionaires. Notice that when self-made millionaires lose their money, they usually have it back within a relatively short period of time. Donald Trump, is a good example.

money for..

Some people like crazy because ‘you could easily loose all your money, so you might as well enjoy while you can.’ Others go the opposite route: they hoard their money and ‘save for a rainy day.’
A word of wisdom: Saving for a rainy day might sound like a good idea, but it can create big problems. One of the principles we teach in another of our courses is the power of intention. If you are saving money for a rainy day, what are you going to get? Rainy days! Stop doing that! Instead of saving for a rainy day, focus on saving for a joyous day or for the day you win your financial freedom. Then, by virtue of the law of intention, that’s exactly what you will get.

Wealth principle…

• Your income can grow only to the extent you do!

• If you want to change the fruits, you have to change the roots. If you want to change the visible, you have to change what’s invisible.

• give me 5 minutes and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life

• thoughts -> feelings -> actions -> results

• when the subconscious mind must choose between deeply rooted emotions and logic, emotions will almost always win

• if you motivation for acquiring money or success comes form a nonsupportive root such as fear, anger or the need to ‘prove’ yourself, your money will never bring you happiness.

wealth files…

1. Rich people believe ‘I create my life’
   Poor people believe ‘Life happens to me’

2. Rich people play the money game to win
   Poor people play the money game to not lose

3. Rich people are committed to being rich
   Poor people want to be rich

4. Rich people think big
   Poor people think small

5. Rich people focus on opportunities
   Poor people focus on obstacles

6. Rich people admire other rich and successful people
   Poor people resent rich and successful people

7. Rich people associate with positive successful people
   Poor people assoiate with negative or unsuccessful people

8. Rich people are willing to promote themsleves and their values.
   Poor people think negeatively about selling and promotion

9. Rich people are bigger than their problems
   Poor people are smaller than their problems

10. Rich people are excellent receivers
    Poor people are poor receivers

11. Rich people choose to get paid based on results
    Poor people choose to get paid based on time

12. Rich people think ‘both’
    Poor people think ‘either/or’

13. Rich people focus on their net worth
    Poor people focus on their working income

14. Rich people manage their money well
    Poor people mismanage their money well

15. Rich people have their money work hard for them
    Poor people work hard for their money

16. Rich people act in spite of fear
    Poor people let ear stop them

17. Rich people constantly learn and grow
    Poor people think they already know

Book Title: How to be Idle
Author: Tom Hodgkinson
Year written/published: 2004
Book Source: Google Books, Library
My Comments: Loved it… lazy chilling out reading realised that i’m indeed an idler at heart …
Contents page:

1. 8am: Waking up is Hard to do
2. 9am: Toil and Trouble
3. 10am:Sleeping in
4. 11am: Skiving for Pleasure and Profit
5. Noon: The hangover
6. 1pm: The death of Lunch
7. 2pm: On being ill
8. 3pm: the nap
9. 4pm: time for tea
10. 5pm: ramble
11. 6pm: first drink of the day
12. 7pm: Fishing
13. 8pm: smoking
14. 9pm: idle home
15. 10pm: the pub
16. 11pm: riot
17. midnight: moon and the stars
18. 1am: sex and idleness
19. 2am: art of coversation
20. 3am: party time
21. 4am: meditation
22. 5am: sleep
23. 6am: holidays
24. 7am: a waking dream

Some extracts:

early morning…

Most countries have a serious news show first thing in the morning. This has the effect of stimulating such emotions as anger and anxiety in the listener. But a certain type of person feels it is their duty to listen to it, as if the act of merely listening is somehow going to improve the world. Duty, oh, what a burden you are!

work

One key index to success of a country is the size of unemployment population. The more people have jobs, the better we are told. ‘Job’ is rarely defined with any precision to the teenager or to the student as they make their journey towards it, but the myth suggests to us that a good job will offer us ample money, a social life, status and work which we will find ‘rewarding’. It’s actually astonishing how little we pause to reflect on these terms when at school and college. And though as children we hear our parents complaining every day about their bosses and co-workers it doesn’t put us off the world of work. We think it’ll be different for us.

less work, more done…

As lunch went on and on, I started to get fidgety. Surely, we should get back to their office, and conclude our business? After all, we had to catch the Eurostar. But on voicing my anxieties, my desire to work was r9oundly dismissed by the French distillers. They laughed, arguing that there was no hurry that things would happen all in good time, and they justified themselves with the following paradox. travailler moins, produire plus. The less you work, the more you produce.

on being ill… a new perspective!

Being ill – nothing life threatening, of course – should be welcomed as a pleasure in adult life too, as a holiday from responsibility and burden. Indeed it may be one of the few legitimate ways left to be idle. … … When ill, you are the master. You do what you life. …Looking deeper at the benefits of being ill, we may argue that the physical pain can lead to positive character development, that bodily suffering can improve the mind. “That which cannot kill me makes me stronger,” said Nietzsche.

on idle walking, flanerie…

Like idleness itself, there is a paradoxical purpose to flanerie: slow walking may seem like a waste of time to your man of business, but to the creative spirit it is a fertile activity, for it is when walking that the flaneur thinks and generates ideas. … … No less a figure than Beethoven… … Victor Hugo was another wanderer: “The morning, for him, was consecrated to sedentary labours, the afternoon labours of wandering.”

watching the stars and moon…

Gazing at the stars opens out minds to another reality a mysterious eternal world, beyond material struggle. … Freedom is out there, somewhere, glittering, almost visible, but just out of our reach. … … Liberty is represented as a spectral presence, lit only by moonlight, appearing as an ideal at that witching hour, midnight, when the ‘real world’ of the day has receded. The stars are a tantalizing mystery. And the great thing is that the stars are free, in that they cost nothing to watch, and can be seen from anywhere by anyone. … … We feel small under the stars, yet paradoxically we feel more ourselves. We are who we are.

staying at home…

On a simple level, of course, staying in is the idler’s dream, because of the low physical effort involved. It avoids the tedious and costly business of getting ready… … … Beyond the obvious attractions of staying at home, there are also social and spiritual benefits to this particular piece of inaction. First and foremost, staying at home represents an attach on the ‘go’ culture that surrounds us.

Meditation…

There is no purer form of idleness than meditation. It is where doing absolutely nothing for hours on end is elevated to the level of a spiritual quest. Meditation is a way of connecting oneself with an inner dimension, a spirit, a soul, some sort of essence, which is largely ignored by the rational over mind. … I would argue for a far more informal approach. For me, meditation can occur at odd moments. It can come (and often does) when staring out of the window of a train, always one of the true idle pleasures.

Book Title: Discovery of India
Author:Jawaharlal Nehru
Year written/published: 1933
Book Source: Google Books, Library
Summary:Father of Indira Gandhi and Grand Father of Rajiv Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India in 1947. He wrote this book while in prison. Discovery of India talks about the history and transition of India to what it is today… it’s a really inspiring and eye opening book. Anybody who want to read about the Indian civilisation and Nehru’s thoughts about India must definitely read this book.
My Comments: It’s a truly thought provoking book… i never knew Nehru is just a great writer too. A thorough knowledge of history from the pre-aryan ages… Nehru also inputs his own thoughts about the way numerous people and cultures and believes that has shaped India.
Some extracts:

well-travelled…

Two years later [1938], in the summer before Munich, I was invited on behalf of the Nazi government, to visit Germany, an invitation to which was added the remark that they knew my opposition to Nazism and yet they wanted me to see Germany for myself. … … Again i declined with thanks. Instead I went to Czechoslovakia, that ‘far-away country’ about which England’s then Prime Minister knew so little.

about death…

Someone said the other day: death is the birthright of every person born – a curious way of putting an obvious thing. It is a birthright which nobody has denied or can deny, and which all of us seek to forget and escape so long as we may. And yet there was something novel and attractive about the phrase. Those who cannot master life we can at least master death. A pleasing thought lessening the feeling of helplessness.

on religion…

Religion, as I saw it practised and accepted even my thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life’s problems which was certainly not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural.
Yet it was obvious that religion had supplied some deeply felt inner need of human nature, and that the vast majority of people all over the world could not do without some form of religious belief. It had produced many types of men and women, as well as bigoted, narrow-minded, cruel tyrants. it had given a set of values to human life, and though some of these values had no application today, or were even harmful, others were still the foundation of morality and ethics.

Social ills…

There has been in the past, and there is to a lesser extent even today among some people, as absorption in finding an answer to the riddle of the universe. This leads them away from the individual and social problems of the day, and then when they are unable to solve that riddle they despair and turn to inaction and triviality, or find comfort in some dogmatic creed. Social evils, most of which are certainly capable of removal are attributed to original sin, to the unalterableness of human nature, or the social structure, or in India to the inevitable legacy of previous births. Thus, one drifts away from even the attempt to think rationally and scientifically and takes refuge in irrationalism, superstitious and unreasonable and inequitable social prejudices and practices.

God…

What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of personal God seems very odd to me. Intellectually, I can appreciate to some extent the conception of monism, and I have been attracted towards the Advaita (non-dualist) philosophy of the Vedanta, though I do not presume to understand it in all its depth and intricacy and I realise that merely an intellectual appreciation of such matters does not carry one far.

unity in life…

The human mind appears to have a passion for finding out some kind of unity in life, in nature and the universe. That desire, whether it is justified or not, must fulfil some essential need of the mind. The old philosophers were ever seeking this, and even modern scientists are impelled by this urge. All our schemes and planning, out ideas of education and social and political organisation, have at their back the search for unity and harmony.

we can easily turn the top part of a text area into a Rich Text Editor / WYSIWYG Editor / html editor…

1. example 1
2. example 2

textarea tag revisited… this is really simply actually. I wanted to insert codes in the text box, but ‘<’ and ‘>’ could not be shown if your code looks like this

<textarea> codes to be inserted </textarea>

and with the open and close tags…

<textarea name=”string”> ><a> with the tags! </a> </textarea>

ok this is really easy

Book Title: Chicks Laying Nest Eggs – how 10 skirts beat the pants off wall street .. and how you can, too!
Author: Karin Housely
Year written/published: 2001
Book Source: Google Books, Library
Summary: Investment Club – how to set up and carry out an invesment club. Karin writes about how she and other 9 women came together and set up their own investment club to learn and invest together!
My Comments: This is the most fun book on investment i have ever read!
Some extracts:

7 criteria of a rule maker:

1. repeat purchase of low-priced products
2. gross margins
3. net margins
4. sales growth
5. cash to long-term debt ratio
6. foolish flow ratio
7. familiarity and interest

Chicks Dozen!

1. Buy what you know
2. KISS (Keep It Simple Sister!)
3. Industry
4. Leader in its field
5. Repeat Profitability
6. Gross Margins
   (Revenues – Cost of Sales) / Revenues = Gross Margins > 50%
7. Net Margins
   Net Income/Sales > 8%
8. Lots of Cash
   Cash/long-term Debt > 1.0
   Cash = marketable securities and short-term investment
9. Flow Ratio
   (Current Assets – Cash)/(Current Liabilities – Short Term Debt) = Flow Ratio < 1.5
10. Increasing Growth
11. Strong Management
12. Buy on Sale