Archive for the ‘Alchemy stuff’ Category

Finally a show of spine…

Beginning to wonder if the only organization with a backbone in this country is the army, amongst all the other spineless representatives we have roaming around the globe at any given point in time. Regrettable incident but the exact response that was required. I wonder what our other delegations would have done if subjected to [...]

September 1, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Top Ten MBA programs: 15 months as a MBA student at Columbia Business School

I put these together as an informal sampler of my business school education, a journey that started with an ideal conversation in March 1997 and ended on commencement day in April 2000 at Uris Hall, the Columbia Business School campus on 116th and Broadway. In March 1997 I never thought that an Ivy League MBA [...]

August 31, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Pakistan Flood Relief: The uphill battle to rebuild lives.

The water came at night in Nowshera. Not silently like a thief, nor on tip toes, but with all the ferocity of a moving sea mixed with the weight of mud, stones, trees and swept away dreams. 2 am at night, all you could do was wake up and run. But unlike a tidal wave [...]

August 29, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  3 Comments

Interesting Historical context: World GDP over the last 2000 years

Gulzar at Urbanomics picks up a graph courtesy of the Economist showing the top contributors to world GDP over the last two thousand years using 1990 dollars based Purchasing Parity Index. Over the years it seems that atleast using the Purchasing Parity Index the Global Economy has actually shrunk. Also witness the rise of the [...]

August 21, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Pakistan flood relief: Mosharraf Zaidi gives a voice to our thoughts: Where is the world in Pakistan?

How different are these kids from my kids, this family from my family, this room from my room. Mosharraf Zaidi articulates what all of us are feeling right now in his Foreign Policy piece on Why doesn’t the world care about Pakistan. In his powerful words “There’s a degree of truth to all these explanations. [...]

August 21, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  3 Comments

Happy Birth day to me

Now that the news is out, I might as well wish myself. For my 39th birthday at the stroke of midnight in the midst of a blog upgrading orgy (from WordPress 2.7 to 3.01), I blew up the Crude Oil Insight blog. The resulting four hour headache reminded me how inadequate I have become when [...]

August 16, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  One Comment

Crude Oil Outlook – Crude Oil price outlook increasingly bearish for second half 2010

This weekend ran into a bit of time and did a review of educated posts on the status of the US economy, China, Europe, crude oil production, foreign currencies and the combined impact of all of the above on crude oil price outlook in the next two quarters. Do you want a quick summary? One [...]

August 16, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Fixed Income securities, Bruce Tuckman: Recommended Reading

They say you can tell everything about someone by taking a look at his bedside reading list. Here is a new feature that shares my bed side reading habits as well as reviews one handy and useful book that helped me get to the next stage of understanding in this field. My book of the [...]

August 15, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Learning Corporate Finance – A new look for the top five courses

August 14, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Online Finance courses – Top finance courses at the Finance e-education portal

Based on Google analytics tracking, here are the top courses on the Corporate Finance e-education portal this month.   Structured Products: Basic Products, sample term sheet and pricing | Learning Corporate Finance - 171 Views Calculating Forward Prices, Forward Rates and Forward Rate Agreements (FRA) – Calculation reference | Learning Corporate Finance - 146 Views Asset Liability [...]

August 14, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  2 Comments

Learning Corporate Finance – Now a Technorati Top 100 Finance blog

It took five months to break through the Technorati Rating system but earlier this month Learning Corporate Finance finally became a Technorati Top 100 Finance blog. Couldn’t have done this without our content team (Agnes, Nabil and Adnan) and our super editor (Uzma) or our designer (Nida Faizi) or without the marvelous technological platform of [...]

August 13, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Online Financial Education – Corporate Finance for the truly insane

Jehan reviews the Corporate Finance E-Education at In the line of wire and calls it a finance for the totally insane. More details at her blog where she uses finance, torturous experience, punishment, difficult childhoods and interest rate options all in the same paragraph and manages to crack a Greek joke too at the same [...]

August 11, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Istanbul Hotels – Radisson Blue at the Airport

When the Turkish airline shuttle drops you off at the Radisson Blu airport hotel at 10 pm at night, you think that you have been dumped at yet another airport hotel. But that is before your monring walk when you discover that you are right next to a Metro station and the Metro station is [...]

August 9, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Istanbul – Sultan-Ahmet-Hagia-Sofia-and-Bosphorus Cruise

Sultan Ahmet Suites, Nida’s selection of a place for us to crash for four days was perfect in many ways. Lots of space for four kids to romp around, central location (the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace and cheap as well as expensive food were all a short walk away). Unlike a hotel [...]

August 9, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Turkey: Antalya – the city with many faces

Antalya the city has many faces. Its warm in the Sun and cooler in the shade. The first face that we saw was suburban Antalya, outside the humdrum of the old city, the markets, the grand bazar. Set besides Duden park it was a modern retirement home for the Turkish expat community with a small [...]

August 9, 2010   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments