Google Finance

Use of Google Finance to track your Equity portfolio

The investment culture in India is shifting from saving to investing. The instruments are shifting from tangible assets like gold, real estate to intangible assets like stocks. The investment gurus are suggesting mutual funds as the option to take to investing, but they are also suggesting to invest in some good stocks if you do understand - with a medium to long term horizon to get appreciation of your investment.

But even if you do invest in good stocks, how do you measure the growth or appreciation in the invested stocks? It is one thing to read newspapers or reports giving out growth numbers; but another to do that calculation on your own.   

Add to it how do you track and record all the corporate actions? No doubts your DP / broker gives you such reporting tool. But does reporting tool provide the flexibility to do the analysis? Also every time you have log-in to the live system which is not a good option.

Google Finance portfolio tracker

I attempted to enter stock data manually in a spreadsheet but I found Google Portfolio tracker offers the following benefits.

Firstly it allows you to import a spreadsheet with basic trade data (date, amount and numbers) and that's it. It adds all corporate actions automatically in the background and gives you the complete report at a stock or at a portfolio level that has multiple stocks in it. Secondly for the stock it offers all the news and comparisons with its peers. So you can keep yourself abreast with the developments in the stock. Thirdly it offers choice of Indian Rupee as a currency. Last but not the least, you can export your portfolio in spreadsheet format.

I did come across errors where it couldn't handle corporate actions involving dividend plus special dividend and bonus offers resulting in fractions where It didn't round-off.

But on the balance it is easy and intuitive to use like any Google product. Since most of us have a Google account, you may want to try it. 

HORN OK PLEASE TO GO OFF TRUCKS

A welcome move! It was long overdue.

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/cover-story/Horn-ok-please-to-go-off-trucks/articleshow/47115692.cms

In addition to honking their is safety involved here. 

1. In addition the authorities have to ensure that the side mirrors of these vehicles are in working conditions. If the side mirrors are not in working conditions; they do not know who is in parallel lanes. And when they change the lane they are hazard to other vehicles.
2. Also their tail lamps and brake lamps have to be checked. Driving behind such vehicles in dangerous when brake and tail lamps are not working especially in the evening. Worst when such vehicles are parked without working tail lamps. Hence driving in the evening becomes hazardous more so on Mumbai Pune Expressway. 

Visual Search

Visual Search using Google Goggles

I tested the app on Android phone. It is easy to use. 

It read QR codes, business cards, printed logos, logos on metallic surfaces, 3D logos on wall, bar codes  very well.

I have a large number of business cards to scan and I found this to be a good tool. The cards can imported in to Microsoft Outlook. It also allows you to import cards in to Google contacts.

I found it to be a useful tool.

The app is worth giving it a try. 

Indian Billion Dollar FMCG Brand

In our family if we eat glucose biscuits then these have to be Parle-G. If Parle-G is not available then we do not eat any other glucose biscuit. It is true of my many friends and relatives. And may be true of many from Mumbai.

So I was happy to note that Parle-G in February 2013 became the first Indian FMCG brand that crossed 5000 crore Rupees mark in terms of retail sales in one year. Parle Products were launched in 1939 when the British ruled India. Factually, Parle Products in 2012 sold 5010 crore rupees worth glucose biscuits at the retail price. To me Parle-G is almost a billion dollar Indian brand. But compare this with Pepsico.

PepsiCo offers the world's largest portfolio of billion-dollar food and beverage brands, including 22 different product lines that each generate more than $1 billion in annual retail sales and are sold in more than 200 countries.

Indian FMCG brands have a long way to go.

Fact based search in google

If you type the text on the left hand side as given below in the Google search box then you will get an answer as is on the right hand side. No web page to be opened. Great feature.


height of mount Everest, = 8,848 m, Mount Everest, Elevation
population of India, = 1.241 billion (2011)
length of ganga river = 2,525 km, Ganges, Length
Area of India = 3,287,263 km², India, Area
mumbai to Delhi distance = 1,443.3 km
usd=inr 1 US Dollar equals 61.27 Indian Rupee
20% of 200 = 40

How to capture text from an image

 

Over a period of time I ended up having lots of visiting cards. I was looking for a solution to capture the information on the visiting card in soft form without typing it. I looked at various solutions. The one solution that is working is using Microsoft's OneNote.

 

It is very easy to use. 

You capture the image of the visiting card.

Copy the image in the OneNote's page.

Right click the image and choose the image. Then use the command - Copy Text from the Image.

Paste the text.

You have the text from the image. You can also capture text from any other image. However the solution did not work when the card had fancy font.

Tumblr

After the acquisition by Yahoo I wanted to know about Tumblr.

Tumblr, stylized in their logo as tumblr., is a microblogging platform and social networking website, owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.

Users can follow other users' blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Much of the website's features are accessed from the "dashboard" interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear. Its headquarters is in New York. It was founded in February 2007.

As of May 19, 2013, Tumblr hosts over 108.2 million blogs and more than 50.8 billion posts in total.

In April 2013 the website received more than 13 billion global page views. As of May 2013, 75.8 million posts were created on the site each day.

The service is most popular with the teen and college-aged user segments with half of Tumblr's visitor base being under the age of 25.

I found only one leading Indian brand on it.