Investing in shares - Strategies, Terms, Research

Investing in shares :

It is an absolute necessity for each and every individual to understand how money works.   Money inflows into your pocket and Money outflows from your packet.  If you have not worked out how much money that you could spare per say at the end of every month to invest , that is a first step to start.

Where is the money?

Have you have worked out much money that you can spare and, out of which how much you can invest in shares ?  After that, below is the quick checklist to consider. 

• Its risky :  Unlike other investment options out there, share markets investment is risky. You could loose your money if you invest in a wrong company or at a wrong time or even for a wrong reason. So, consider the worst case of loosing all that money and work out your financial situation based on that.
•  Its volatile :  Markets are volatile, you may not be able to cash out the money when you need it as pulling out the money at wrong time may come with  capital losses. So, commitment is required. 
• Brokerage charges :  Every time you buy  or sell a stock you will pay fee to the broker, so if you want to buy stocks for short term gains , leave enough margins to yourself.
• Taxes and regulations : Depending on the place you live in and the place of companies that you buy stocks from , you will be subjected certain regulations and capital gain/loss taxes.  So,  get an idea. 
• Managed funds: It takes lot of time for you to find the right company and understanding the fundamentals, past history and predicting future of the it over short, medium and long term. If you have do not have enough time for that, you could use the professionals to invest the money for you to start with. You invest in managed funds and they invest in the companies for you.  Win, Win.  

What is your strategy:

Steady income vs capital growth:

You could make money in two ways as an investor from share market. 

Some companies pay monthly or quarterly portions of their profits to the share holders.  Yes, I mean Dividends !!!.

Some companies will reinvest the profits back into the business to generate more profits through increasing their market capitalization i.e increasing their product, service offerings or even expanding the existing offerings to more customers.  This increases the company value and thereby the share price. so you can eventually sell the shares at a higher price than you bought.   

Generally, if you are in your 20's or 30's, then consider capital growth stocks over dividends.  After all, you need money at later stages of your life, so reinvesting the money that you would have otherwise been paid  in dividends back into the market make sense.  

That said, there are companies out there which can pay you dividends and as well as grow over the period.  Growth and dividend stocks for the mixture of both worlds.  

Short term vs long term:

When investing in share market , you must ask yourself how many days that you are willing to hold that investment.  

From the day traders: who buy and sell on the same day,  there are share holders holding the stocks for decades.  

Consider investing for the long term, that gives you peace of mind and you do not have monitor the share market every second.   However, re-balancing the portfolio is required at times to limit the losses but otherwise you buy and forget about it and let the market do the magic over a period. 

Here is another article where I wrote about investment: Investment Secrets

First Day at Work ?

First Day at Work ?

First of all, Congratulations on securing a job !! Well done. 

Preparation for the first day:

May be this is your first job or your changing job to new employer,  you will have to prepare for the first day to make sure you leave good impression on your employer. Below is the list of Items I would prepare for my first day at work.

Know when and where to report?

 This may sound obvious but it gets slipped through many occasions.   This is absolutely crucial.   From all the communications that you have had with the future employer, make sure you have got the details on where to go on your first day. and make sure you also have the details of contact person or person to report to on the joining day.   That last thing you want is showing up late on the joining day.

Prepare for awkward conversation:

For some people it is an easy thing to initiate conversion with new people and go in with it for hours but for the most,   It is hard to engage in a conversation with a stranger. That is when bit of mental preparation helps. You have to see yourself in it. Probably,  Practice few mins with a friend or just in front of the mirror, Your friend or other character of you being reporting person. 

Be confident and bold:

You have gone past all the hurdles to secure a job,  that means your employer wants you to work for the organisation .  Just remember that.  A Firm handshake with confident greeting will set the things for the rest of the day. 

Refresh your skills:

You will meet one guy at least who wanted to inquire and investigate  your capabilities straight on your first day.   So expect that and prepare for it. 

Sample ITIL V4 questions (Service, Service management)

1) [..........] is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling vale to customers in the form of services?

A. Product

B. Organizations

C. Service management

D. Value

Answer: C

Service management is defined as a set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling vale to the customers in the form of services.

2) [............] is a functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need?

A. Value

B. Utility

C. Warranty

D. Outcome

Answer: B

Utility is a functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need

3) Service relationship management consists of joint activities performed by a [.............] to ensure continual value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings.

A. Service provider and Customer

B. Service consumer and Provider

C. Service consumer and Service provider

D. All

Answer: C 

Service relationship management consists of joint activities performed by a service provider and service consumer to ensure continual value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings.

4) [........] is the perceived benefits, usefulness and importance of something?

A. Value

B. Product

C. Service Offering

D. Resources

Answer: A

Value is the Perceived benefits, usefulness and importance of something.

5) [...........] is a configuration of resources, created by the organization, that will be potentially valuable for their customers?

A. Service consumer

B. Service Offering

C. Product

D. Goods

Answer: C

A Product is a configuration of resources, created by the organization, that will be potentially valuable for their customers.

6) A person who defines requirements for services and takes responsibility for outcomes from service consumption.

A. Sponsor

B. Customer

C. User

D. All the above

Answer: B

Customer will be defines requirements for services and takes responsibility for outcomes from service consumption.

7)  'fit for use' is determines?

A. Service

B. Product

C. Utility

D. Warranty

Answer: D

Warranty is also determines 'fit for use'

8) [..........] is refer to possible events that could cause harm/loss, or make it more difficult to achieve objectives?

A. Risk

B. Cost

C. Output

D. Resources

Answer: A

Risks refer to possible events that could cause harm or loss or make it more difficult to achieve objectives.

9) Access is granted/licensed under terms or conditions; this sentence is related to which word?

A. Service Offering

B. Goods

C. Service Actions

D. Access to Resources

Answer: D

Access to resources means giving the access under terms or conditions.

10) Which statement is related to outcome?

A. Tangible

B. Result for stakeholder

C. Result of a user

D. None

Answer: B

An outcome is a result for a stockholder enabled by one or more outputs.

11) Which sentence is correct?

A. Costs removed from the consumer by the service.

B. Costs imposed on the consumer by the service, including charges by the service provider

C. Costs expressed in non-financial terms can be translated into financial costs

D. All the above

Answer: D

Costs are divided 3 types:

> costs removed from the consumer by the service

> costs imposed on the consumer by the service, including charges by the service provider

> costs expressed in non-financial terms can be translated into financial costs

12) Service is a mean of enabling value co-creation by facilitating [.........] that customers want to achieve.

A. Outputs

B. Products

C. Resources

D. Outcomes

Answer: D

Service is a mean of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customer wants to achieve, without the customer having specific costs and risks.

13) [............] is the assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements?

A. Warranty

B. Utility

C. Service Actions

D. Goods

Answer: A

Warranty is the assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements.

14) An organization is a person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its [.......]?

A. Value

B. Objectives

C. Service

D. Product

Answer: B

An organization is a person or a group of people that has its own function with responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its objectives.

15) What is Utility? 

A. fit for use

B. fit for purpose

C. Offering

D. All

Answer: B

Utility can be also called as 'fit for purpose'

Prepare for the colors/gallery appointment

Do you have a Gallery/Colors appointment soon and no clue where to start ?

Building an home is not an easy thing. Its takes lot of energy and patience to put together all the things needed for it. If you have gallery appointment soon then congratulations!!!.  You are half way through the journey. You have decided on other major things such as where to build i.e location, and what to build i.e floor plan and size and type of the house.


Me and my partner are going through this process now and we have just finished the gallery appointment today and I thought I will share our experience in this article.

Preparation for the big day:

There are so many things to decide, so normally the colors appointment with the major builders will last entire day.  You will have so many options and so many decisions to be made on that day. More home work you do, the less stressful it is going to be. Here are the few tips.

• Budget :  Go with the budget in mind.  The amount you are willing to spent. 

• Important vs Nice to have :  In terms of addons and upgrades,  If you are from an area where it is going to be cold for most part of the year, Heating system may be necessary for you than having Feature FACADE. So work out !!.

• Pictures:   I am sure, you have visited display homes during floor plan selection phase. If you have taken pictures during those visits, they will come in handy now.  Pictures of interior, exterior,  bathrooms , kitchens, bed rooms  everything or anything will give an inspiration at this crucial stage.  

Below are things you need to decided on, 

•  Electrical plan: Down lights, power points, TV points,  Heating and Cooling outlets how many of them, where exactly you want them in your home.  My suggestion here is,   don't comprise on power points as they generally will not cost much and you will see the benefit of them in the long run.

•  Floors : Below are few flooring options for the house.

• Laminate ,Vynl, Wood for the timber look. 
• Different Carpets.
• Different Tiles.

• Bathroom, kitchen tiles:  This is one of the area, we have not paid much attention to during our home work and ended up spending lot of time on the colors day.   So, please keep that in mind as well.

• Cupboards, benchtop colors and handles:   If kitchen is the center of the home, you will have to pay extra attention on deciding the colors for the area.   

• Bricks, mortar, renders :  Have you thought about exterior look of the house, if not its the time!!. You have to choose colors for bricks, mortar, render. 

•  Doors, locks :  You will also have to decide on the passway and entrance door models and colors and you can add locking system to them if you want to. 

There are  definitely other things as well, but above lists give you an idea on the items and having an opinion on them will help you on the big day.

Working with Assignment Rules

Assignment Rules in ServiceNow:

Assignment rules are configurable feature in ServiceNow to drive the task assignment.  Based on attributes of the task, we can configure rules to assign that task to a group.   That is all good until I find myself in a situation where the assignment rule that I have configured not working and I could not figure for a while why  ?

So,   Below is the example set up that I have created dev environment to describe the issue.

Workflow:

Assignment Rule Configuration:

That set up fairly simple and I was expecting to work. i.e When change request type of Normal gets created the change task of it will be assigned to Change Management Group. But It did not. The created change task remained unassigned and I have got work in hand to debug why is that the case.

After bit of time, I have realised its the execution order. The workflow engine here is running ahead of the change request insertion into the database. So, when the assignment rule gets executed the condition in it will not get satisfied as the parent change request type is going to undefined by then.

Work Around:

I have created my custom script include to exactly mimic, what out of the box assignment rules is supposed to do. i.e I have glide recorded the assignment rule table and evaluated the matching condition and returned the assignment group. Since, this is my custom utility I had the control of injecting missing values on to the change request reference.

Here is the script  that did the trick.

var WorkflowUtils = Class.create();
WorkflowUtils.prototype = {
initialize: function() {
},

getAssignmentGroup: function (task) {
gs.log('running');
var rules = this.getRecord('sysrule_assignment', 'table=' + task.getTableName() + '^ORDERBYorder');
var filter = GlideFilter;
while (rules.next()) {
if (filter.checkRecord(task, rules.condition + '')) {
return rules.group + '';
}
}
},

getRecord: function (table, query, limit) {
var log = [];
var gr = new GlideRecord(table);
gr.addEncodedQuery(query);
if (!global.JSUtil.nil(limit))
gr.setLimit(limit);
gr.query();
log.push('table ' + gr.getTableName());
log.push('encodedQuery ' + gr.getEncodedQuery());
log.push('count ' + gr.getRowCount());
gs.info(log.join('\n'));
return gr;

},

mapParent: function (ge, parent) {
ge.type = parent.type;
return ge;
},


type: 'WorkflowUtils'
};


I have called the above script from the workflow CreateTask Activity.

Car Odour Eliminators - How did I get rid musty smell from my car

Yes. We bought a used car ..

Me and my partner have decided to buy a used car  to get around the shopping centres and visit family friends and occasional get a ways from the city for fresh and more natural air.

The car mechanically was in a okay condition and but it had dull musty smell inside. We thought we will be able to get rid of the smell easily by cleaning the interior and we went ahead and bought the car.

Ain't an easy job

We have then cleaned the car interior,  seats,  top, floor and carpets of the car.  We have vacuum cleaned the car.   Dirt Devil Hand Held Vacuum cleaner did the job and its worth the money. We have purchased the product from Bunnings here.    We have sprayed the Deodorant and felt we are set to zoom around in our new car.

But guess what, right after a day we have started smelling  it again, the same musty smell. It has gone nowhere its only been masked by Deodorant for that day.

So, We have  gone back to Bunnings to see what else can be done and found a Sanitiser & Deodoriser , then it all made sense to us.  To eliminate the smell, masking is not just enough we will have to kill the bacteria underneath that causing the smell. 

So,  We have bought below 2 products

 2 hours of hardwork paid off.

With those 2 products, We have sanitised entire interior of the car. Please read the usage guide from the manufacturers of those products. They have done amazing job and now our car smells so fresh.  Everytime we step into our car,  We remember the 2 hours we spent cleaning the car and appreciate ourselves for the effort.

Multi Variable Set - ServiceNow

Multi variable set

Multi variable set is a new variable set type that has been introduced in London version of ServiceNow.   Its a great feature but it still requires few enhancements to blend in with rest of the platform.

Below are few scenarios that I have encountered while working on it and felt its worth a share how I worked around the limitations.

How to limit number of rows using client script?

Write an onload client script as follows

var field = g_form.getField("multiple_approvers");  // multi variable set name

if (field != null) {
field.max_rows_size = 3;  // number of rows allowed to be entered
 }


You would have the multi variable set limiting entries to only 3 and Add button getting grayed out after the 3 entries.

Here are the related articles on ServiceNow.