Archive for the ‘Alchemy stuff’ Category

Value at Risk, Derivative Products and the Dummies crash course on options

I ran two workshops in Dubai and Abu Dhabi last week on derivatives and treasury risk management. Three new related courses in these two areas have now been uploaded as master classes. They are:

 
Master Class: Calculating Value at Risk – a quick and dirty guide to calculating VaR

 
Master Class: Derivative products – 10 short [...]

March 21, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Welcome home

Every time I land at Karachi Airport I realize how much I miss this country when I travel and how lucky I am that despite my schedule, I spend a large part of my working life closer to home.

As I walk through one of the fastest immigration lines on any airport, pick my [...]

March 21, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Age

From the 6th till about 12 pm on the 19th of March 2010, I managed to get a new first down. For a day short of a fortnight, I got by with four hours of sleep for 13 consecutive nights.

I don’t recommend it and certainly don’t care to repeat this record anytime soon. [...]

March 21, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

What is happening with the Pakistani Rupee

Two weeks ago at a client presentation when someone asked an Analyst about his Rupee outlook he mentioned 90 by the end of 30th June and possibly 92-93 by the end of the year. Much as I hated it, there wasn’t any ammunition I could throw at him. At the rate the rupee slid [...]

March 13, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

My love affair with Google, Google check out, Part I

It was the beginning of the year that would mark the turn of the century. I was a second year MBA student at Columbia, sharing a conference room with a first year who had just moved to New York from the valley. We shared a seat each at the Integrity Board Club [...]

March 9, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, entrepreneurs  No Comments

New Course on Risk Management within the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Industry

Over at the Learning Corporate Finance Blog, I posted a new free online course on risk management within the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical.

A short six session introduction to a risk management framework for the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical industry focused on managing crude oil price volatility for Oil refiners, Polymer and PVC manufacturers and [...]

March 9, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, I can't hack it, Risk, Risk Training  2 Comments

On Vista, Chrome rocks – notes of a defector

It has been exactly twenty four hours since I gave up on Internet Explorer and Safari and moved to Chrome and all I can say is that I regret every minute I spent on the last two browsers. If I had switched to Chrome a few months ago, so much heartache would have simply [...]

March 7, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  2 Comments

Defecting to Google Chrome

Took Moti’s advise today and finally defected to Google Chrome. I recently became a fan of Google after Badar Khushnood intervened to help me sort out a misunderstanding. And then when I finally got sick of both IE and what’s his name Safari crashing on Vista every 5 minutes, I finally downloaded [...]

March 6, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Clueless on a Wednesday evening…

So you start a database extract on a table with 12 million rows. Your desktop has been cranking it away for the last 12 hours. You are done with 10 GB of data and you step out of the room for an hour. There is still another 10 hours of processing left and [...]

March 3, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Alchemy signs Tameer Bank as a risk advisory customer

The good news that we have been waiting for… Earlier in February 2010, Alchemy signed up Tameer Bank as a customer. After the InvestBank risk advisory engagement and the Consultnomics FZE LLC account in UAE, the Tameer Bank account is the third major account we have closed in the first two months [...]

February 27, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  One Comment

Learning Corporate Finance – course guide

 
Here is the structure of the full course. This should help with Navigation

 
The first course in Corporate Finance – Session Zero

Session I – B: Corporate Finance: Financial Statements – Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss and Cash flows

Session II-A: Corporate Finance: The Balance Sheet, Assets, Depreciation

Session II-B: Corporate Finance: Balance Sheet: Liabilities & Working [...]

February 27, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  One Comment

Learning Corporate Finance or memory lane meets online education meets content…

It was instruction at a level that I had never been exposed to. I had come across some truly great teachers in my prior life but this whole relationship driven, hands on learning approach was the new new thing. The professor was not a professor, the course was not a course. It felt [...]

February 26, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  2 Comments

Understanding Commodities Risk – in print March 2010

Understanding Commodities Risk – out in print early March 2010

The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behaviour and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete.

Interesting enough while commodities [...]

February 23, 2010  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  3 Comments

Shaukat Tarin Quits

Shaukat Tarin, the Banker behind Union Bank and its successful sale to Standard Chartered Bank for about 500 million dollars in 2006, quit this morning as Pakistan’s Finance Minister. Post Union Bank, Shaukat along with a consortium of multination investors acquired Saudi Pak Commercial Bank from SAPICO for a second Union run. The [...]

February 23, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Challenges of Life Insurance Marketing

I learnt how to type first on a Remingten typewriter typing away life insurance policy proposals and articles Aba wrote for the Insurance Journal. From issue dealing with trust to issues dealing with Fiqah and Islamic thought on life insurance, my early education on this subject was primarily on account of the work [...]

February 23, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments