Every person who invests in the market has his individual experiences to share; nevertheless there are few common misconceptions. To become a successful market player one must be well aware of the truth behind these. For instance, very often we hear people saying that the elderly are not supposed to take risks. They must be very conservative because their earnings power is limited. Well, who decided that young people could afford to lose their money? Taking another example, it is easy to say that stocks that go up must come down but laws of physics do not apply in the stock market. There is no gravitational force that pulls stocks back to even. To give you a better understanding, let us go through the widely prevalent myths in the market that one must be beware of.

Read More »

As a web developer, it is important to look for anything that helps boost productivity. One potential boost would be to have access to the source code that makes up the .NET Framework libraries. Luckily for developers, this has arrived and has made Windows Server 2008 the platform of choice.

Back in October 2007, Scott Guthrie — the Microsoft Program Manager in charge of .Net — announced on his blog that Microsoft would be releasing the source code for many of the libraries in the .Net Framework. Among the libraries released are the base class libraries, the ADO.Net and XML libraries, Windows Forms, and ASP.net (which is of most interest to many developers). This is big news for developers because it helps streamline debugging and troubleshooting. When debugging, developers are much less likely to hit a "black box" in the form of an unreadable library from Microsoft.

The libraries that are being released are also included in Windows Server 2008 and are the most up to date available as of publication. They are even more up to date than the libraries that shipped with Visual Studio 2008.

The release of these libraries can be of great assistance to developers, especially when working on particularly complex projects. When .Net was first released there was no documentation on how to accomplish many tasks that developers knew were possible. This included many of the elements that were included with Visual Studio, like the drop shadow on menus. Before the release of the library source code, developers resorted to looking at the Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) to reverse engineer the proper calls and produce the desired effects. This was a successful — but a horribly draining — process because the MSIL is essentially an assembly language for .Net. If the source code for the .Net Framework had been available back then, developers could have simply browsed the code and found the correct calls and parameters. This would have reduced development time from weeks to days.

In addition to examining the source code to copy desired effects, developers can now debug the libraries from Microsoft. This means that if code is returning a strange error from the Framework (an all too common experience) developers can now examine the libraries themselves and see what the problem is, which will likely save a call to Microsoft Support!

Developers can even read the developer comments that Microsoft has left in the source libraries, which include some of the most helpful information available. There are explanations of why some elements work the way they do, and why some libraries are constructed in particular ways. Compatibility with previous versions is mentioned regularly, which often helps to make sense of changes that otherwise can frustrate developers.

The best information about these changes can be found in Scott Guthrie’s blog at: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu.

A quick search using the keyword "source" reveals several entries with details about how to utilize the source code in development environments. The blog also contains information on updates and new releases.

What is a Yield?
Yield is the interest paid by the bond expressed as a % of its current market price. E.g. the yield of 7.99% 2017 G Sec at market price of INR 100 will be 7.99%, at INR 90 will be 8.87% and at INR 110 will be 7.26%.

Read More »

Fund Manager: S Naren

Type & Investment Objective

An open-ended equity fund with a focus on capturing the opportunity presented by the long term growth potential of the Indian Infrastructure Sector. To invest across infrastructure sectors such as Cement, Power, Telecom, Oil and Gas, Construction, Banking etc.

Read More »

Punj Lloyd Ltd. is one of the largest engineering construction companies in India providing services to energy and infrastructure sector projects. PLL provides engineering construction services for onshore and offshore pipelines, gas gathering systems, oil and gas tanks and terminals including cryogenic LNG and LPG storage terminals, process facilities in the oil and gas industry including refineries and for power plant projects. In the infrastructure sector, Punj Lloyd Limited has worked on various civil infrastructure projects for highways, flyovers, bridges and elevated railroads. PLL’s operations are spread across the regions of the Middle East, the Caspian, the Asia Pacific, Africa and South Asia.

Read More »

For the week ended 15th March’08 inflation numbers came in at a high of 6.68% as compared to 4.89% on 16th February’08. Inflation is the rate in change in the Wholesale price Index (WPI). The three major components of the WPI index are a) Primary Articles with a weightage of 22.02%, b) Fuel, Power, Light and Lubricants with a weightage of 14.23% and Manufactured products with a weightage of 63.75%.

Read More »

Open Interest is an important indicator that can help one in ascertaining the flow of funds.

1. If the open interest rises with rise in price it is a bullish indication.
2. If open interest rises and prices fall it is a bearish indication.
3. If open interest falls and prices rise it is a sign of short covering by bears.
4. If open interest falls and prices also fall it is a sign of profit booking by bulls or liquidation of positions.

Put Call Ratio is an important indicator that can help one in gauging the future direction of the market.

1. If the Put call ratio rises then there is hope of higher prices in the near future.
2. If the Put call ratio falls it is a sign of weakness in the market.
3. Generally put call ratio is read along with volatility.
4. PCR can be calculated for Open Interest/positions or no of puts and calls traded.
5. Historically – 1.06 -2.00 is bullish. Above 2 and below 1.06 one may expect a sharp fall.

There are two types of Volatility – historic volatility and implied volatility. Historic volatility is based on historic prices of the futures and implied volatility is based on the volatility calculated from options i.e. volatility implied by premiums in options.

1. If volatility rises and PCR falls, it has bearish implications.
2. If volatility falls and PCR rises, it has bullish implications.