Bhabishya Kumar

This is a snapshot from my portfolio that I entered for CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge. Its the perfect way to get into the current dramatic stock market action without losing sleep at night.

Feels pretty awesome that I am in top 1.5% (kinda feels like I cracked IIT-JEE once again).

I know, I know, most of it is pure luck and I might be in bottom 1.5% tomorrow, in this volatile market. But still, out of 400K players, most of whom I guess trade with real money too, if I am in top 1.5% even for one day, I will take it.

Every dog has its day.

As you can notice, I have moved this blog from Mephisto to WordPress. One of the reasons was that Mephisto doesn’t have Trackback support. Also, WordPress has a much more active community, with lot of Themes & Plugins available, kind of like Firefox.

The move was quite smooth, thanks to a Ruby Script. Only part that I had to do manually was to categorize the posts. Also, WordPress was treating my ‘About’ Page as a post.

I can’t believe we have been together for one whole year! It was this very month last year that I started this blog. It was supposed to be a medium to share my experiences during my journey in Ruby on Rails & JavaScript hacking.

Of Course, I hadn’t met you yet!

All I wanted to do was create a super-simple website using Rails & JavaScript. But I couldn’t do that after meeting you. You were always there luring me with things which were much easier & fun then starting a project from scratch. You gave me the instant gratification which is so tempting. I was always looking for excuses to meet you even though it made me feel guilty afterwards. Whenever I faced some obstacle, you took me in your loving embrace and made me forget everything.

To be honest, I haven’t been totally loyal to you this whole time. I have been sneaking out to meet other people like Gadgets & GreaseMonkey scripts. They make me feel good about myself. I don’t feel miserable afterwards as I do after spending time with you. But those occasional dates never materialized into anything meaningful like a full website. Its about time that I change that. Its going to take a lot of commitment, effort from my side but I have to bite the bullet.

I am so sorry to say this but I think we should break-up.

I just finished watching Boiler Room. Amazing movie! No wonder, the Brokerage firms make all the new recruits watch this movie along with Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross. In fact, there is a scene of “Wall Street” played in the movie and all the Brokers watching it repeat the dialogues word by word!

The best scenes are when Ben Affleck gives speeches to new recruits. I loved this Group Interview scene.

There is something exciting about the Stock Market. Especially the Trading part. Its like Gambling. Very Addictive. I guess if I was not a Software Engineer, I might have have tried my hands at Trading full-time. Or, may be I can mix the two and build some software for Stock Market.

Anyway, can’t wait to see “Glengarry Glen Ross” now. Its next in my Netflix queue.

What an amazing Wimbledon Final!
That was one of the best tennis matches that I have watched in my entire life, along the lines of Edberg-Becker Five-Setters. Nadal really is Federer’s nemesis. He is like that evil character from movies, fighting against whom you are only half as powerful. For majority of the match, he was dictating the rallies and hitting amazing winners. It was just Federer’s serve that was still keeping him in the match. That must have been kind of embarassing to watch for Federer’s fans, it was for me, no doubt.

But just when I thought it was all over and was going to switch my loyalty from Federer to Nadal, he showed why he is the Champion. He stepped up his game just in time to clinch the fifth set and the title. It was unbelievable. I think that’s what separates Champions from great players. They bring out that extra in pressure situations. I have seen Tiger Woods do that again & again.

As you can see, I was so giddy about all this that I almost wrote a Sports Illustrated column. But the point is that things like this, even though from a completely unrelated field, are very inspiring. I mean, look at Nadal. He is just 21 and World Number 2! At 21 he has achieved what I will not achieve in my life-time. Hmmm, now it has turned depressing from inspiring:(