After covering topics like valuation, accounting shenanigans, investment checklists, mental heuristics and negotiation amongst others in the past, the FLAME Investment Lab (FIL) successfully held another program, ‘FLAME Investment Lab With The Masters – Invest In Yourself’, from July 12-16, 2017 at the FLAME University campus.
FIL is an initiative that strives to deliver the concepts and decipher the art of value investing to interested students. FIL believes in the dictum “invest in yourself”. It provides tools for self-learning and acquiring knowledge, constantly striving for intellectual stimulation and asking questions. FIL strives to widen your horizons, aiding you to connect the dots within seemingly disparate information. FIL truly believes that the best investment is investing in yourself. As Socrates has said, “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
This year’s program featured the highest number of guest speakers, from amongst the most prominent names in India. These included:
- Amay Hattangadi - Morgan Stanley
- Amit Goela - Rare Enterprises
- Ashish Patil - Nalanda Capital
- Bharat Shah - ASK Group
- EA Sundaram - DHFL Pramerica
- Kuntal Shah – SageOne Investment Advisors
- Kenneth Andrade - Formerly IDFC
- Manish Chokhani – ENAM
- Navneet Munot - SBI Mutual Fund
- Navneeth Harikumar - MIT Investment Management Company
- Neeraj Marathe - Investor
- Nilesh Shah - Kotak Mahindra Asset Management
- Raamdeo Agrawal - Motilal Oswal Financial Services
- Rajeev Jain - Bajaj Finance
- Rajeev Thakkar – PPFAS
- Ramesh Damani - Investor
- Ridham Desai - Morgan Stanley
- Samit Vartak - SageOne Investment Advisors
- Sandeep Kothari - Fidelity International
- Sanjoy Bhattacharyya - Fortuna Capital
- Saurabh Madaan – Google
- Saurabh Mukherjea - Ambit Capital
- Sunil Singhania - Reliance Mutual Fund
- Vetri Subramaniam - UTI Asset Management
It was truly the home of value investing education in India. Shortlisted participants included portfolio managers, research analysts, proprietary investors and private wealth managers amongst others. There were international participants too from Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East. There was great excitement amongst the participants to be addressed by such reputed speakers.
Some of the topics included:
- The five great crashes in history
- Understanding compounding
- Understanding investing
- Challenges in fund management
- What sets outstanding companies apart
- My experiments in the stock market
- Adaptive market hypothesis
- Organizational culture and lessons from the best
- How to invest in a sector which has consensus optimism
- My investing journey
- An investor’s toolkit
- Technology disruption
- Accounting shenanigans
- Valuation
- Leadership
Many speakers spoke optimistically about India and its potential. Nuggets of wisdom were shared throughout all the sessions. Most of the sessions lasted beyond midnight each day of the program.
- "Keep reinventing. There is always a better way of doing things."- Rajeev Jain, Bajaj Finance
- "No strategy is right or wrong. It's about understanding value and having the patience to realize the value.” - Sandeep Kothari, Fidelity International.
- "One may nail the macro but get the micro wrong; may get news right but the market reaction wrong; may get the trend right but timing wrong; may get country right but currency wrong.” - Navneet Munot, SBI Mutual Fund
Stock markets are difficult to understand and for one to be a successful investor, one needs to follow a well-articulated process of investing and also have the discipline and the self-control, to follow the process chosen, without being distracted by the noise of the markets.
The program received positive feedback from the participants. It served as a platform for investors to meet their investment gurus. It was truly a melting pot of investing ideas and thinkers. A true homage to the initiative taken by FLAME Investment Lab to deliver the concepts of value investing.