13 Key take aways from One up on Wall Street

Last year I took two Finance classes as a part of my MBA curriculum which got me more interested in understanding investment principles. I had recently decided that I felt more comfortable having a financial advisor manage my investments but this class got me excited about investments again. We had spent a fair amount of or time in Investments class talking about Peter Lynch, I ended up picking up his book, One up on all street. Surprisingly, I found his book quite entertaining and insightful. I felt like, I learned more about investments from this little book than what I had learned in a 8 week course. Here are few general principles that stuck with me.

1. If you are not willing to spend time doing research, put your money in the market instead of picking individual stocks

2. If you can not beat the market, put your money in a good mutual fund.
3. If you can’t find any companies that you think are attractive, put your money into the bank until you discover some.
4. Invest in fundamentals and not news and rumors
5. You do not need to be able to pick all winners to have a successful investment portfolio. Most of the times 6/10 is enough
6. Dont get too attached to any stocks, when the fundamentals /story is no longer good, its time to let it go
7. Invest in what you know and understand. This a principle Warren Buffet follows and recommends as well.
8. Price drops in companies with strong fundamentals should be viewed as buying opportunity.
9. According to Peter Lynch, some of these are characteristics of company worth looking into: The company has a boring name , company is a spin off, the company is a fast growing company in a no/low growth industry, the company produces a product that people keep buying-in good times and bad, Insiders are buying shares, low percentage of shares are held by institutions, the company is buying back shares.
10. When insiders are buying, its usually a good sign. Of course, do you research and check for all fundamentals and relate news.
11. Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy, or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what’s actually happening to the companies in which you’ve invested.
12. Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach. If you are susceptible to selling everything in a panic, you ought to avoid stocks and stock mutual funds altogether.

13. Market does not always behave rationally.

By no means this is investment advice but simply take aways I found useful from the book.

2016 Goals/ Habits

I am not big into new years resolution but have been making goals and list of habits I'd like to follow for the year since 2013. So far they have just stayed on my notes app, but this year I decided to publish them on my blog here. I revisit the list during and at the end of the year to see how I did. As you can see there are quite a few items on the list that are carry over from previous years. So, needless to say I usually do not get to all of them, but still like having this list to go over during the year.

Personal

• Read two books a month
• 8000 steps a day on average
• Go to Gym/yoga once a week
• Meditate 3 times a week
• Publish 12 blog posts( 1 per month)
• Learn basic Spanish( Carried over from 2014,2015) 

• Learn how to play one simple song on guitar (Carried over from 2014,2015)

Business:

• Delegate Radio apps management completely to contractors/employees
• Maintain and support current Radios app portfolio
• Expand African Radios
• Implement Asana and Google drive more into workflow
• Set clear goals and derivable for projects

Expand into educational apps and interactive books as planned(Carried over from 2015)

• Publish 6 interactive books( decide whether to do this through publishing wing of the business)
• Publish 6 educational apps( various subjects, test prep etc)

7 tools in my toolbox

In this post I am going over few tools in my toolbox I use everyday.

1. Canva

I recently stumbled upon this amazing site. Even though i love good designs, my personal design skills are lackluster. I have been looking for simple and affordable design tools for a very long time. I was ecstatic when I found Canva. Their tagline of Amazingly simple graphic design is spot on. With a large collection of design templates and elements, this site makes design accesible to everyone for free or a very low cost

2. Trello

It took me a while to get used to Trello but has been a tool I use everyday now. I use Trello for project planning, to-do lists, and overall project management . With simple cards that can be moved from one bucket to another, it gives me an ability to visually manage projects I am working on school, work, or business.

3. Hootsuite/ Buffer

I try to keep my social profiles active but often struggle with posting regularly. I use both hootsuite and buffer to schedule tweets/ Facebook posts for up to a week. I will still post throughout the week that is time sensitive or new information but these tools let me schedule posts as I am reading and have articles I am interested in sharing.

4. Spotify

Music feeds the brain and soul and Spotify gives me an unlimited option for every mood. I subscribe to Spotify premium, so I can enjoy uninterrupted music and have the ability to forward songs.

5. App Annie

I have been using App Annie since its Infancy, and have always been impressed with the product. Annie lets me quickly see key statistics like downloads, revenue, percentage change, and many other key aspects of my apps in a snapshot. They make it super easy to connect all my accounts.

6. Launch Kit

Launchkit's Screenshot builder lets me create screenshots for all iOS devices at once from one image. This is a huge time saving as I am getting ready to submit new app to the app store.

7. Momentum extension for chrome

Screen Shot 2015-06-01 at 2.21.22 PM

This simple extension has made a huge impact in my productivity. Momentum is a simple plugin that will display a beautiful image any time you open a new tab. The tab will show time and what my focus is for the day along with my task list. This helps by hiding the recently visited site and reminding me to get back to work.

TWIDT: How to add Leadbolt ads on Andromo or Buzztouch as HTML ads

This is a quick guide about how to incorporate some of Leadbolt's HTML ads in Andromo or Buzztouch apps or any other app builder that does not currently have Leadbolt SDK.

How to add Leadbolt app wall to Andromo apps:

1)Head over to Leadbolt and sign up for an account:

(You should get a simple one page sign up page)

2) Wait for confirmation email and activate your account.

3) After you login, click on Apps

4) On your Apps page, click on Create New App/Mobile Web.

5) Fill in the details and click Create now.

6)Next click the green + sign next to your app to bring up a window as shown below, CLick on HTML ads on the, Ad type.

7) Go through the menus and customize your ad, and click add now at the end of the setup process.

8) You will get a screen with ad code/url as shown below

9) All apps needs to be approved by Leadbolt before they receive live ads, click on the Green arrow, saying apply app to send the app for approval

10) Now its time to add this to our andromo app.

11) There are two ways to add this to your app

a) Create an activity(Website) on your app, and add your URL from leadbolt for the    website URL

b) Create house ad in Admob and use this url to create a House ad to serve this URL.

You can try either or both, or so some studies to see what works best.

That’s all, now your app is receiving app wall ad from Leadbolt. You can also add a banner ad using the same process. Other ad formats are not available as HTML ads and have to wait till andromo incorporates their SDK.

Hope this was helpful, Please feel free to ask if you have any questions in the comments section or in android forum.

By- Bikul Koirala

My Thoughts: Technology and Evolution

Evolution says that us humans start losing uses for body parts as we Start using them less and less. The human appendix is a good example of this. With the advancement in technology, we turn to our mobile phones and the web for any information we need these days. While this has made our life immensely easy, where are we heading with this in the decades to come?Here is what I worry about!!

I used to remember most of my friends and family phone numbers until 10 years ago when mobile phones were not that popular. Now that all the numbers are stored in the phone I honestly cannot even remember my work phone number. I used to be able to do simple math in my head with no difficulty. Heck, I used to be able to do even fairly complex math in my head. My nerdiness might have had something to do with that but nonetheless my point is that most people used to be able to do simple math and remember basic things with no problem. I did not need calculator or a computer to be able to calculate what the tax or tip on a certain item would be. Being a chemist, I used to be able to easily calculate molecular weight, do complex multiplications and divisions amongst many other things in my head.Now that I have my phone with me every waking second of my life. Well, it's right next to me when I sleep too, I turn to the calculator app or the web for most of the information and calculation needs.

What will happen to our memory and creativity as we start using them less and less over the decades to come? Now, when we need ideas on how to design our room we go look at sites like pinterest and Houzz... Instead of thinking for a second what color do I really like and what color would go well with my furniture etc.

where are we headed in the coming decades with the advancement in technology with our memory and creative skills. If everything we have learned from evolutions and sayings like practise makes a man perfect is true, it looks to me like we are headed to a future with technology where human innovation and creativity is actually going downhill. We are headed to a future where the start a new segrregation of people who continually continue to develop their mind as they are developing new technology and the technology users who start to loose the basic skills as they get deeper and deeper into the world of technology and forget how to read a dial watch,paper map, or even not knowing how to get their own home without the GPS directions. I believe, It's time to wait and think about where should we draw the line and stop using technology for basically every single thing in our life.

We need to find a balance between nature and technology before we reach the point of no return!!!