When i was a kid, i was fascinated by numbers. So much so that I used to top all the maths courses. Later during the engineering first year when I failed to add 2 matrices in the final exam I felt like suiciding. It was such a shame for me. All the penchant for numbers made me buy extra books outside syllabus. I burnt my midnights oil trying to comprehend the obscure number theories and encryption algorithms from Art of Computer Programming. Most coveted things in life for me were encryption, number theory and poultry in the same order.
cut to 2003.
First day in office. I was jumping with joy for being inducted into a project team. I felt like a kid wearing new clothes in a school function. Ready to display my skills and win my collegues and bosses. One week passed. I got my first work. And to my dissatisfaction it has got nothing to with all algorithms and number theories crammed in the four years of engineering. A simple jsp page with some silly validations. That is all i have got to do. I thought the interesting work will come somedays later. Days passed into weeks then to months. And I was busy all the while coding some validations and database stuff.
cut to 2004.
Got an MBA admission. Yuhooo.. Time for number crunching. That is what i thought. With all the hopes of majoring in finance and becoming a portfolio manager or something as crazy as that, I landed up here. And what do i see. An ocean of incomprehensible jargon and logics. The scariest things happened in the form of simple addition and subtraction. if civilization wasnt there accounting would never have been this hyped. but alas, I lost the game.
cut to today.
“A diversified portfolio that is constructed to have exposure to, say, factor 1, will offer a risk premium, which will vary in direct proportion to the portfolio’s sensitivity to that factor. Therefore, if you divided your money….” rants Brealey Myers.
for me it is as good as saying,
“The competitive advantage of the firm is derived from its advantages, viz., competitve market position, ability to raise up the learning curve and do perfect ‘U’ on a beanbag”
Plain simple over head transmission.
The more I ask myself “why” the more i hear “beta! (incidentally beta is also a finance jargon), Corp Fin is Findigestible“.
I hope the npv of my portfolio of investments of time in various courses is still positive and the irr of this mba is greater than typing for some company in an AC room.
