The Hindu Business Line : Winnowing the willow wisdom

Cricket is about scoring runs while not losing wickets. Similarly, achieving success in finance is about maximising wealth despite risks. It is an exercise no different from `building up an innings bit-by-bit, run-by-run capitalising on opportunities and preserving profits,' writes Sanjiv Mehta in Winning the Wealth Game, from Tata McGraw-Hill (www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

The book brims with lessons from cricket that you can well adopt for making money. Such as laying a solid foundation. "Imran Khan, after winning the 1992 World Cup, said that retaining wickets and consequent ability to accelerate was an important factor for their success," recounts the author. Solid foundation in an investment portfolio means paying attention to liquidity, safety, and acceleration with yield-enhancing assets.

Use the right technique, he advises. As would Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting, Jayasuiya and Gilchrist, the stars with good averages and strike rates, thanks to consistency and rapidity in scoring. "Beauty of the wealth game is the same: just by following basic investment principles, it is possible to consistently make high returns."

While cricket uses the scorecard to organise information, you can use the four-square scorecard that Mehta prescribes, for recording incomes and expenses, assets and liabilities. The four squares are not standalone; they have deep connections. For example, an added liability can cause a spike in expenses and consequently erode savings, leading to deceleration in asset build-up.

Determine your wealth strategy by first `assessing the pitch', that is, assess the stage of the economic cycle. "When the economy is growing at a brisk rate, inflation is low and controlled, companies are doing well and their earnings are growing - this is a stage that is very good for stocks."

Cultivate a winning mindset and avoid behavioural traps like the herding instinct, self-attribution bias, representative bias, cognitive dissonance, loss aversion, and anchoring. Cricketers too need the right mindset. Why else do you think it was necessary to have Sandy Gordon, a professor of psychology at the University of Australia, advise the Indian team around the time of the last World Cup?

"India had started very poorly in World Cup 2003. Their performance in the first two matches led to unprecedented crowd anger back home. Sandy's techniques including the team huddle contributed to the Indian team lifting itself and creditably reaching the final," narrates Mehta.

Part 3 of the book is about `selecting the team'. The author devotes a chapter to each of the team components, as follows: top strikers (stocks), wicketkeeper-batsman (real-estate), steady batsman providing stability under difficult conditions (debt), players over the hill (small-savings schemes), absolutely necessary twelfth man (insurance), sheet anchor (retirement planning), genuine all-rounders or bits and pieces players (structured products and derivatives), and reserve players (alternative asset classes).

`Cricket strategies for financial freedom' that you can read between the overs.

Riot of records

From 1986, Akhilesh Kumar Sah of Faizabad has collected more than 2,500 equity issue forms of different public limited companies. "What is the idea behind this collection? Perhaps a kind of historical record to look back upon many years later," notes an entry in Limca Book of Records 2007, edited by Vijaya Ghose.

`Largest bookbuilt IPO' is the entry that follows. It is about the June 2003 sale of 27.5 per cent government stake in Maruti Udyog. "With more than 3 lakh retail bids, it generated over $2.4 billion demand for a $211 million offering."

The `banking' section begins with a world record — our banking network, which covers more than 35 crore people. The first bank is the Bank of Hindustan, Kolkata (1770). The first joint stock bank, the General Bank of India, opened 16 years later. Savings bank facility had to wait till 1833 (Presidency Bank).

The record for `largest single cheque' is held by VSNL, which issued `a cheque for Rs 1,132.21 crore drawn on HDFC Bank to the Government of India by way of dividend for the 52.97 per cent stake held by it.' HSBC was the first bank that launched its ATM service, in 1987.

`Largest ATM provider' is HMA Group Ltd, with a 56 per cent market share of ATM installations; with the Swadhan network, it has installed and maintained `over 700 ATMS of 45 member banks of IBA (Indian Banking Association)'. Interestingly, Greater Bank, a cooperative bank in Mumbai, with 17 branches is `the only bank in India' awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification for the entire branch network.

Entertainingly informative.

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