James Bond and the Middle East markets

We’ve seen quite a bit in 2010, haven’t we, and if you ask me it’s almost been like watching a James Bond Movie with its high points, creepy suspense and finally the ‘good guy saves the world’ moments. Scandals, unexpected stock market busts, political turmoil, bad guys beating up the good guy and finally histories (sporting) being created. Over the Christmas weekend, I was having lunch with a friend and we got into discussing the same and comparing the stock market with a action thriller movie and here’s the thought.

You're watching a thriller, you laugh at the happy moments, lose interest at the slow dragging dialogues and then when the suspense creeps in and the movie twists and turns, it scares the living daylights out of you. The movie could as well be called “The Middle East stock Market” and it wouldn’t be any different.

Ok, there are no blond babes and Daniel Craigs in tight shorts strutting around (thankfully) in our 3000Xtra/ Eikon terminals, but think of it laterally and you’ll find a action thriller storyline no different from DFM, ADX, Doha or Tadawul markets. In a Bond movie for example – we know what we’re getting into even before the movie begins, Bond is going to walk around with the coolest gadgets, hottest babes and get himself nearly killed (remember you nodded in agreement with the word ‘nearly’).

Take this classic James bond movie clip (Click Here) , Bond is all tied up and has a laser which is slowly going to cut him into two pieces and burn his “ahem! ahem!” off. Even if we have 30+ years of past James bond movies (stock market) data, which points out that James Bond cannot at any instance have his “ahem! Ahem!” burnt into fine dust particles; you still sit up at the edge and experience anxiety and tension, wondering ‘what next’.

Ever thought why this happens, and the only answer we could figure out was that , we experience this anxiety because in those 'moments', we're not only following the movie (stock market) with our eyes, but also our brain cells move into autopilot and an emotional brain takes over.. That means the intellectual brain goes into sleep mode and the emotional one takes complete control. Makes sense?

When we’re watching the movie (market), we’re not thinking of the long term, we’re sucked into thinking of the moment and we get drawn into the emotion and struggle to see the big picture. If the movie shifts from being a James Bond movie to watching ‘Dracula’, what would be the reaction - we hold our partner’s hand tightly (strictly speaking it may not be the way it happens in the market situation). Ok, maybe you don’t hold your partners hand, you probably just close your eyes..right?

I think its great advise when someone says with reference to the market that - Get out of the momentary reaction (short term) and focus on the big picture (long term), its also great advise when someone tells us to supplement emotion with intelligence when handling the stock market…but hey, it would make the whole James Bond movie one heck of a bore!!!

All this year end intellectual exercise is fine, but hey what’s a good ol’ action thriller without enjoying its moments :)

Happy New Year 2011 to all of you,

A City is where your heart (money) is...

Guess what, some nut offered me this really juicy offer from New York a month back and I decided to say no to it. No I’m not mentally ill; I just have a problem with reality. To top the job losses, and meager commissions, the poor investment banking souls I know down there are into their last million and are still taxed to death.

I wanted to quantify my argument, since my wife had already started apartment hunting in NY when she heard about this. I did a bit of research and came across this interesting study done by Mercer Inc (www.mercer.com). It’s called the Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2010. From what I could read, these are the cities which I knocked out of the list and here’s a few surprise cities I’ve added

- Africa : I know Africa is booming, but just in case you get a $$$ million dollar offer from a blue chip investment bank in Luanda, Angola, remember it’s the most expensive city in the world for expats to live in. Chad and Gabon are also quite expensive and rank number 3 and 7 globally. Errr..and just a bit of friendly advise from someone who’s been quite a bit,.” In case you didn’t know…everything. I repeat everything.. in Africa bites too’

- Europe: Oh Africa is not in your radar and its Europe, I would highly recommend that you ignore all offers from London, Paris and Frankfurt and if you get one from Tirana in Albania, grab it with both hands. It’s apparently the cheapest city to live in all of Europe!!!! Oh! You’ve accumulated a zillion miles on Skywards already, am not sure what you’ll do with that, the only airline which could take you to Albania is Albanian airlines and they fly converted Hercules and Antonov Cargo planes.

- Americas: You’re looking at the Americas, how nice, you and my wife will get along well….the last I heard the economic crisis is so bad out there, they caught a truck load of Americans trying to sneak into Mexico!!! On a more serious note, It turns out Sao Paulo (21), Brazil is more expensive than New York (27). If any of you get tickled into packing your bags for this rapidly developing economy, you’d better read the fine print very carefully. Am sure most of us won’t look very good dancing around in a thong at the Rio Carnival to earn a few extra bucks to make ends meet.

- The United States of India : And if you thought you should take revenge on Indians because they just off-shored some jobs from your office to Slumdog millionaire country, think again. Someone calculated that if you’re a single guy with no kids and were offered a Million dollar job in Mumbai, 458K would get eaten up by the tax bogeyman. So let’s get India out of the list too.

Just for the heck, let me throw in some stats which I found on another blog (Singapore Hedge Fund) “KPMG’s calculations are based on the assumption that the employee is single, has no children and earns a salary of 1 million pounds a year. Tax and social security payments are calculated from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2010 As of April 2010

City -->Income Tax -->Social Security -->Total
London --> £477,519 --> £13,759 --> £491,278
Frankfurt -->£476,469 -->£10,339 -->£486,808
Paris -->£350,786 -->£110,342 --> £461,128
New York -->£414,250 -->£18,520 -->£432,770
Tokyo -->£349,655 -->£12,260 -->£361,915

Good ol Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah and Muscat rank quite low in this list!!! Add in the Sun, the bling, gasoline costs and friends like you, I’ll happily pay my traffic fines and toll tax and stick around here for some more time.

Stick around guys and God bless!

To all those who taught me how to hunt!

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs, pushes, yells but leads you through the crossfire, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called 'truth'

I have been fortunate to have had some of the most amazing teachers at work and life. What I am today is undoubtedly because of having had the good fortune of having either directly or indirectly worked under these awesome guys . When I happened to come across a video the other day (posted by another person whose blog I admire a lot ), it reminded me of similar situations where I have been through at work. Have a peek at Al Pacino's speech from 'Any given Sunday' . If only I had recorded some of the moments at work on a camcorder, they would not have been any less inspiring! Read on or watch the video on youtube on the link provided.

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I have reproduced the Al Pacino speech for easier reading below

I don't know what to say really. Three minutes till the biggest battle of our professional lives. It all comes down to today. Now either we heal as a team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play, till we're finished. We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch at a time.


Now I can't do it for you. I'm too old. I look around, I see these young faces, and I think... I mean I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who's ever loved me, and lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know when you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's part of life. But you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life's this game of inches. And so is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean... one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow too fast, you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that's gonna make the f%*ing difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this - in any fight, its the guy whose willing to die who's gonna win that inch. And I know if I'm going to have any life anymore, it's because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch.Because that's what living is! The 6 inches in front of your face...


I can't make you do it. You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think you're gonna see a guy who will go that inch with you. You're gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it, you're gonna do the same for him.



That's a team, gentlemen. And either we heal, now, as a team, or we will die, as individuals. That's football, guys. 


That's all it is. Now, what are you going to do?
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To all my teachers at work and life who have taught me to hunt and love the game! Remembering you this moment! and a big thank you for everything...

The day I met Dubai in hospital

It was a cold November morning last year and I was on my way to meet my friend ‘Dubai' at the hospital Intensive care. I had heard of his ill health and it came as a shocker to me (and a lot of us) that such a healthy looking person from the outside could have been so terminally ill on the inside. A debt restructuring consultant friend of mine who was part of the team tending to him at the ICU had said he was in the weakest condition they had ever seen a patient of this category.

As I walked into the hospital on that day, I could see a team of fund managers and bankers all standing outside the hospital and shouting in the top of their voice that they had been predicting this situation for my friend for the past 2 years, but no one had been listening!!!. I said to myself ‘That was not true, you guys may not have necessarily created this mess, but you didn’t help him in any way and only goaded him along into this path to the ICU’, but I kept quiet and didn’t want to add to the cacophony.

Today, a year had passed since that fatal day and I was on my way to meet my dear friend. It was a near miracle, Dubai had survived a very close shave with death and had lived to tell the tale. As I walked into Dubai’s residence, I could see the change. A couple of years back the same place was filled with blue/ black suited men with cheques waiting for signatures, now they were no more there. The suits had been asked to stay off for a while by the expert team of medics.

I spotted my friend resting in the shaded greens and on first glance it was evident, I was looking at a new Dubai in front of me. Gone was the naughtiness and innocence from those eyes and there seemed to be a sheet of boredom drawn over the eyes. He saw that I noticed the same and said “I know, the doctors (restructuring consultants) worked very hard, but there is no medication for bringing back a state of mind to its old self, medical science has only found cures to bring back the body to its old self, not the mind”. I nodded quietly. I knew what he was going through.

A year on, from the state I had seen him at the hospital when some of his Nakheel cells had turned cancerous and resulted in several more related complications, he was now physically back to his old healthy self. The team of consultants, bankers and Global lobbyists had worked tirelessly on him by bringing in infusion of new capital medication; undertaking continuous chemotherapy to remove the advanced real estate/ mortgage finance cancer cells. Importantly they also made him live a completely changed lifestyle away from the private equity vices.

As I was leaving the house later in the day, I reflected on what this Reborn Dubai had told me and thought; “Miraculously the body was almost back to the old self, but the mind …that may need more time to recover. The confidence had been shattered, and the only medication for treating that was time”

As they say in Spanish "El tiempo da beun consejo"....time will tell

(Disclaimer: These views are purely personal and do not in any way represent the views of my employer)

The ‘Geek Vs Cool’ Wars

As a blackberry owner, I was a certified member of the ‘Not-so-cool guys in office’ group. Then should I not be thrilled with the Blackberry Playbook launch, because it’s supposed to bring the missing Pizzazz to my boring blackberried life??? Well here’s my take on the Playbook; but first a background on why and how I ended up with the ‘not so cool’s’.

My experiments with 'Cool'
The first day I bought an iphone (trying to join the cool guys gang in office), I had this business dinner engagement with a lady. The moment she saw me at the restaurant, she went shades of pink and whispered, “my my ..are you HAPPY to see me or what (staring at my pants)”. I was zapped and had to quickly whisper back” I AM happy to see you, but THAT’s just an iphone in my trouser pocket”. Then the other time we had this Asian housekeeper (No, I’m not racist, so I won't state the nationality of the philipino.. :), I could never realize how a random ‘yes’ to a statement from her “I phone you tomorrow, I phone you tomorrow” could lead to a major confusion. For a month, our house remained a disaster and dusty, until she confronted me and said “you cheat me, you not give iphone to me..you always say tomorrow, tomorrow, yes yes” and I’m like whoa! I decided that the iphone and me have some karmic disconnect somewhere and a complex relationship with a fat phone was not worth it.

And the ‘not-so-cools’
I decided my fate was written long back and whatever I tried, I would always end up being part of the boring guys group in office; so I went ahead and got myself blackberry anyway (the bosses were thrilled too –email, calander, messenger, roaming number..I was tracked for life now). But to be honest I find the average blackberry user also a weird and sometimes rude species. Haven’t you noticed they always hold the berry cupped in their palm, in a meeting they listen to what you’re saying and then compare what you’ve just said with something that’s written on the blackberry ; and without looking at your face they just reply back ‘ yeah yeah’ and keep fiddling with the blackberry.

So finally what is my identity now– not-so-cool, grey suited, boring, borderline geek and happy blackberry user; feels good that there are now over 50Mn of us in the world!

3 reasons why the Blackberry Playbook won’t take off
1) What’s in a name, sometimes everything
What’s with fruit names and tech devices anyway. Apple, Blackberry,…I dread the day some tech geek comes out with a brainwave and invents a mobile communicator which becomes an inseparable part of my life and to further torture me he names it a ‘Banana; and I still end up buying it.

Coming back to the Playbook, We’re the ‘not so cools’, and we’re not supposed to be carrying anything that even remotely suggests that we use our gadgets to play around in office. Then why is this called playbook, and why is it not called the workbook. I’d bet 6 out of 10 blackberries around the world have been sponsored by a corporate. How would it sound if you go to the CEO for an approval for 15 ‘Play’books for your team. Chances are that the CEO (struggling with red ink all over his desk), would probably call his HR manager to do a employee productivity review.

2) Missing Pebblekeys
The blackberry caught on because of the enormous amount of fat fingered guys like me in the world. Do you know there was a phone launch called the Blackberry Storm? It's highly likely that you don’t know about it, and why is that? The Blackberry Storm does not have any keys to punch on and is a full touch phone. As expected, in a hurried way, RIM released another product called calling it the Blackberry Torch. The major difference - They took the Storm and fixed a sliding keypad below the Storm and gave us back the pebble keys. I looked around for a sliding keypad somewhere in the Playbook and couldn’t see one. I’d wait for a sliding keypad to be put in very soon in the playbook before I spend money on it.

3) Diluting the core Product Positioning

On the website it says the playbook is great for gaming and media and in the same breath it says it’s a CIO’s delight(mail exchange server etc.). I mean, have the RIM guys lost it, that’s like tomorrow ‘ Emirates Bank saying ‘we’re not just a great commercial bank, but soon we’ll also be a great grocery store chain’. Just because you built a gadget with monster processing speeds (The Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU is on par/slightly ahead of iPAD’s 1Ghz A4 processor) does not mean, you move so far away from your strongest selling point that we dont recognize you anymore. There’s an identity crisis here and even RIM is not able to figure out if the playbook is supposed to be a testosterone deficient boring officey gadget or a red bull drinking hip hopper's accessory

Let's wait and watch...

Caution: Mad men around

The Mad Men TV Series hit the world at the right time. The boom years of 2007 were all about idolizing the protagonists in Mad Men. Every male character in the series was successful, rich, cigarette smoking and a hard drinking womanizer; every female counterpart was an unintelligent, polygamous, attractive blondie. You couldn't’t help us not to be carried away in that wave. After all, those were the times when Gordon Gekkos and the Mad Men were omnipresent in our board rooms. Watching the series; I wondered if TV inspired real life or real life inspired TV; it was more like watching a reality TV show in a different setting.

Is their rule ending globally
I am neither rich, successful nor famous, So I guess I can write quite dispassionately about this whole affair. In the last couple of months in case you haven’t noticed (oh you haven’t noticed, can’t blame you for not noticing while sitting in your 160th floor Burj Pad or Yacht parked at the Marina), letters have gone out to most of these mad men who remained in office globally stating ‘Dear Big Cheese who ruled our world; we regret to inform you that you have been fired. We’re really sorry about having to let you go but in case you did’nt noticed, the world has changed while you have not'.

Aaah, I can see that smirk; you don’t believe me. Here’s the hard facts for writing this piece:

• August 2010 – Mike Hurd - HP’s CEO gets fired by his board, he’s caught in a sexual harassment case (Source: Tech Eye)
• July 2010 – Robert Moffat – IBM’s Sr Vice President & Sam Palmisano’s prodigy gets jailed after being caught in a web of sex and hedge fund leaks (Source : Fortune)

Collectively these two gentlemen resulted in a net loss in valuation of IBM & HP of around USD 20 Billion (check out the stock prices slipping on the days the news broke out last month). This was just a sample, I could list more. With due respect to all these big cheeses, they were not mere mortals. These were some of the brightest best minds in the business. Why is it that men who were authoring some of the best turn around strategies failed miserably in this case in something as simple as keeping their fly zipped!!!

Look out: They still rule around here
What is it with successful men that gets them tripping over something as commonplace as beautiful women (any expat into the Middle East would agree that it is one commodity this region has aplenty other than Oil). My personal analysis is that Middle East region is full of Mad Men and teeming with Gordon Gekkos who are idolized and eulogized every day in print. Here’s why

Surrounded by Psychopathic ‘Yes’ Men
Out here of all the places I’ve worked, I have found that on an average most CEO’s are surrounded by too many psychopathic ‘yes’ men. Some of these men seem to be vying for the CEO’s post itself and the others are overpaid expats who just don’t care what happens as long as the money keeps coming. So for approximately 12 hours a day, the CEO (our central character) is fed with a daily dose of how great his decisions have been. Can’t really blame the poor guy to start getting this false sense of invincibility leading to the birth of the Mad men.

Living in a Material world
Again of all the places, the Middle East is the most brand conscious, material conscious region I have witnessed. Want to test it out - go to the office on a weekend and check out how many men you find in there who’re wearing T shirts with a horse on the right side and a number on the arm. Check out the watch being worn by your pizza delivery boy, chances are they’re from Jacob & co. When you start living in such a material world, you cant blame the over paid exec – He’s not worried about his strategies poisoning mother nature, he’s not bothered about painting the economy in various shades of red. He’s just busy making his buck being cocksure of his false arrogance of ruling the world.

If you’re one of those totally idealistic, hopelessly naive and laughably unrealistic guys you may not agree with the above OR worse you may have just become on of those mad men we’re talking about above.

The Extinction of Homo sapiens FinancialMarketus Arabia

This bipedal primate (Homo Sapiens FinancialMarketus Arabia) used to occupy large tracts of the Arabian Peninsula during the great boom years of easy credit. The Lehman bomb followed by the subsequent Nano Aktomic Eliminator Bomb (also known as the Naakel Bomb) dropped in the region resulted in the virtual extinction, migration or mutation of a large number of this sub species. An analysis of this species and sub species in greater detail led us to identify certain distinct migration and extinction patterns.

By definition ‘Extinction’ is the end of an organism or species. They become extinct when they are no longer able to thrive in the changed environment. Before we begin, here's a bit on the ‘Homo Sapiens Financiual Marketus’ - They were a prolific talking, good looking species, well fed and the mature ones developed beautiful feathers around themselves. During their hey days, they took an exceptional interest in dressing themselves up in finery (brands) to attract prey and mates.

The Extinct/ Migrated Species

• IPO Lead Managers - With the way the markets have been headed this summer, there is no realistic chance that we will find them in the region till around 2020, It is predicted by experts that the last of the few healthy remaining species of this class will starve to death or migrate to by the end of this summer.
• Foreign Institutional investors - They vanished by the end of 2009 from the GCC region. A few of them were seen eking a living by putting whatever AUM remained with them in emerging markets and some printing press stocks in the United states
• Real Estate Fund Managers - Scientifically they should have been renamed locusts – wikipedia defines locusts as ‘a species that can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory. They form bands and rapidly strip fields and people. They have migrated after leaving a trail of destruction across the gulf region
• The ‘Oh I get a skin rash unless I wear Armani’ Hedge Fund Managers - In the late part of 19th century, this species roamed a certain parts of United States dressed in Stetson, cowboy boots and six gun. In the GCC a few years back these Jacksons, oh I meant these Texans…oops, I meant Hedge Managers were found in plenty investing in one hare brained scheme after the other. The last of this breed now survive in some parts of a place known as Abu Zaby.

Bomb radiation Mutated Species

Nature has an amazing way of evolving newer species from the old. Guess that’s life. The following have been found in large numbers in the region. We believe it is a mutated version of the old species.

• Chinese ‘looking’ Investment managers - Remember, they just look the part. At one instance, we found that one of them turned out to be actually the Nepali security guard of the investment bank who was given a suit by the CEO and taken for his press meetings and pow wow with local HNIs for announcing his Shariah compliant Asian Equity Fund. Today this security guard/fund manager is considered among the top Asian market experts residing in the middle east region.
• Commodities Experts - Suddenly the guy whom you knew as a equity day trader pops up with a visiting card saying Biriyani Rice & Pulses Portfolio Manager for Blue chip asset manager co.He confessed privately to us that he did not lie in the interview to get the job, he just said ‘yes’ and was not allowed to elaborate his answer to a question on ‘Does he have several years of experience in buying of these products,
• ETF Experts - Before the Bomb blast they were hidden away in the back office of a mutual fund and had not even managed to generate a proper NAV weekly is now going to give you an intraday NAV. Now they are ETF structuring experts who plan to generate Real time NAVs.
• Charitable Institution Development Manager - This has been one of Nature’s most interesting mutation. The guy whom you saw as a Private Banker/HNI relationship manager just before the bomb dropped is now chasing you for a meeting to show you some pictures of children starving in third world countries, and ask for some money. Same begging bowl in a different garb, nature’s wonders.

At a time of this economic uncertainty and daily flat stock market pain, we all need some comic relief. What is written above is to be taken only in a light hearted way. What is written above is in no way real and any resemblances to people who are living, extinct or mutated is purely accidental :-)