2009 May have been tough for some, but challenges spawn opportunities!
In my travels I sometimes come across interesting trends or concepts that I take a personal interest in.
Ever since I can remember I've been involved in various business investments. A couple of my favorite areas besides luxury computing are health-care, and investing in foreign markets. As an example I am a founding partner on a healthcare company that could very well change the face of medicine and it's gaining traction. More on this company at another time.
I've told this story before, you may recall when I was 19 years old I made my first million dollars investing in the stock market while running Voodoo - but within a year I lost all of it and then some. It was a terrible loss, but I've learned that the best lessons are usually the most expensive. I also created a series of investing rules which changed the way I invest forever.
Thankfully Voodoo was still running strong. I learned that surrounding ourselves with smart people would allow us to build the company into something significant --- and it happened. Voodoo exploded, HP acquired us, and the rest is history. It's true, investing in yourself or anything that you are good at is the best way to guarantee returns both financially and mentally.
Some people have accused me of "selling out" --- Call it what you want.... but...really?
Over the last two years companies have collapsed in virtually every industry thanks to the greatest economic disaster in our lives. Even our biggest fans know we made the right move at the right time. I still firmly believe Voodoo is in much better hands under HP going forward..and although it can be both rewarding and frustrating working for a large company (sometimes on the same day), it's a challenge that keeps us on our toes.
I feel fortunate to be positioned in a strategic role at a global company with a history of innovation that accepts aggressive constructive criticism and allows individuals to shine. HP supports my entrepreneurial spirit and encourages new ideas, frequently. HP is a large enough platform by which few people can say they have the ability to make significant changes in the world. As long as the industry remains challenging I will likely remain planted here for some time to come.
As a technologist I tend to look far into the future. My goal is to find new and emerging companies or technologies that are cutting edge. I spend a good part of my day looking for new trends that could help us raise the bar. Over the years I've seen some amazing advancements in everything from nano-technology to 3D gaming. Along the way I sometimes find unrelated pieces that if put together can solve new problems.
As any entrepreneur can relate it's sometimes hard to tame the beast within. We can rarely look at any opportunity without understanding the business inside-out. However as an investor, I try to learn from other smart people on macro trends, economic trends, etc. In the past such research required books, hours of studying, and lots of networking. Recently everything has changed, and there has never been tools like there are now.
In the last year I started to focus some of my time on social media applications. In the right hands social media can help a company in sales, marketing, and customer engagement. A friend of mine has a software development company and he created a simple platform that would aggregate data so I could use it to learn more about how people react to and buy certain products.
In the process we inadvertently stumbled across in a major trend which has emerged since the economic crash of 2008.
A little on Crowd Sourcing
Here's something that caught my imagination.
What if you needed advice on something, say legal advice. What if instead of asking one lawyer for advice, you could ask 100 lawyers the same question at the same time and get a bunch of answers?
This is a great way to gather opinions, aggregate them, and make a decision. This, in a nutshell, is the process of crowd sourcing for answers. Now imagine if you had a way to separate "the smartest guys in the room" from the rest of the crowd and learn from them?
The gelling of a new vision
In an amazing turn of events the number of people who fired their brokers and took control of their own financial portfolios in the last year has grown exponentially. Discount brokerage accounts are opening everywhere by the masses. In the investment industry the retail investors are viewed as sheep, and the hedge funds are the wolves. Suddenly a powerful new phenomena has come into fruition and the sheep are now becoming wolves. Crowd Sourcing + Social Media = the most impressive investment research vehicle in decades. It will change the face of investing forever, and those who learn how to harness the power now will never look back.
What the heck am I talking about? Read on - because if you are sick and tired of losing money in the stock market, or you really want to follow the lead of some of the most wealthiest people on earth by "surrounding yourself with smart people" ---- this blog could change your life.
Using Crowd Sourcing to replace your Broker
As we continued the development of our social platform I noticed there were a large number of "traders" using Twitter as a way to communicate what stocks they were trading. Most of the stream was useless commentary, so it wasn't enough. We wanted to take it further as there are only a few people who actually provide actionable data that one could choose to follow or not. We envisioned an engine that would show the user who the most influential and effective traders are so they could choose who they want to follow. It also aggregates all of the trading data on Twitter and combines it with research to see what could come out of it.
By combining group fundamental research with good solid technical analysis the result is amazing. In the last year my entire portfolio has multiplied by over 400% and continues to grow with very little effort. Now granted we did experience a bull run like we've never seen in our lifetime, but I am 100% certain the idea flow helped significantly.
In July the group launched a public beta called "Bulls on Wall Street", you can find it at www.bullsonwallstreet.com. It's effectively a "Gathering of Traders" with some of the best traders and educators on Twitter running the site. I am one of the long term investors, and while I'm always looking for the next greatest thing I focus a great deal of my personal portfolio in on emerging China companies and American green energy investments. I am also well entrenched in the oil & gas sector in Alberta.
Managing your Retirement
It's my opinion based on extensive experience that 99% of financial planners and brokers are simply order takers who bank commissions. They do little research and they rarely step outside the box. They will sell whatever is put under their nose, sometimes with no understanding of what it is they're selling.
Then there are a few stand outs who actually hustle and create their own deal flow, and those are the ones who'll survive the industry. Now that we have tools like Bulls it's unlikely that things will go back to what they used to be.
Diversification is for everyone
Remember Enron? Of course it's not often that we see an Enron, but many of their employees put their entire retirement into that company and look where it ended up.
My sister-in-law works at Amgen. Until recently she invested the maximum allowable amount into her IRA, including options, stock, and other grants. I never understood this method of investing for the future. I'm 30 something years old. If I'm working for the same company in 30 years I really don't want all of my eggs in one basket no matter how much I believe in it.
I guess what I'm saying is many of you have jobs, and you put monthly draws into your own investment portfolio. There's really nothing wrong with spreading your investments across a diverse group of companies. The point is you are better off mitigating risk now while you can, rather than when you're 60.
Some of you are probably scared to open your RRSP and IRA statements, although I would guess the majority of you who are investing took the time in the last year to learn more about your investments. I've been doing this for almost 20 years, and if I had the tools then that I do now I'd be in a much better position.
I recommend you take a look at this site. It's a community effort, a "Gathering of Minds" of investors and traders. There are multiple moving pieces. Currently it's designed for active traders, but in the future there will be resources for people with day jobs that don't have time to manage their portfolios, and Bulls University is starting to take shape.
There is a system in place that helps you pinpoint the best investors thereby avoiding those bad investments that many of us have been caught holding. Ultimately the system automatically decides who the cream is and let's them rise to the top via a complex algorithm.
Bulls University is designed for people who want to learn various types of trading, including swing, technical, fundamental, options, long term investing etc.
There is a great team behind this community, I am very impressed with the entire project. It started off as an idea out of frustration...who knows where it will go in the future. My friend's Rakesh, Simon, Mark, Kunal, Leigh, and Ryan deserve huge props for putting this community together fairly quickly!
The director of Bulls University is Leigh Jones; she's a brilliant trader and she also happens to teach. You can follow Leigh on Twitter @copperstl, talk to her about Bulls University and the programs offered. She is an expert on options, day/swing/momentum trading, and her specialty is "trading anything that moves". Kunal Desai is an executive recruiter by day, and by night he's a ladies man. Kunal is also one of the best technical traders on the internet (simply amazing!), follow him @kunal00. Ryan Mathews aka @urban_ryno is an unassuming Texan who works at a Fortune 50 company and trades part time. Ryan is an incredible swing trader who has developed his own formula which has proven to work consistently - his followers swear by him. If you plan to participate you'll need to also follow @bullsonwallst to get your tweets to appear in the stream.
What you'll find is most of the people on Twitter invest part time while holding down a job. It forces you to take control of your investments and understand them better, which is probably a good thing.
You can also follow me on Twitter @rahulsood to keep up with me, and my work. You can also find me on Facebook. If you want to watch my thoughts on investing or trades, follow @stockgod (yep that's my alter-ego). I'm not as active as some of the others, but I am always connected. I usually focus on long term investments in green energy, oil, emerging markets, and I like biotech. I also believe in paying it forward --- as we all know what goes around comes around!
Charitable Re-Giving
As many 0f you know I have taken a personal interest in Autism research. I started an initiative at HP with Northwestern University some months back which involved our Touchsmart PCs and interaction with virtual kids by kids living with Autism. Neat project, but I still feel there is much more that can be done. We all have our own causes that we like to support, and I've always wanted to find a way to enable charities to grow their equity rather than blow it. Eventually I'd love to see this community take on a unique way of charitable "re-giving". Anyone have any suggestions?
I've always said luck is for losers. You must create your own opportunities in life, and for the first time ever there is an opportunity for people to use crowd sourcing to help build their financial future part time. A novel idea indeed. Thanks Twitter!
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