16.08.2007

• Postal bill highlights
• Bill to prevent private sector players from carrying any letter of parcel below 150 gm
• Price to be 5 times more than rates charged by India Post if companies want to deliver letters below this weight slab
• FDI in the sector to be limited to 49%
• A regulator for the postal sector to be created – Mail Regulatory Development Authority
• Large companies to pay 10% of revenues as universal service obligation fee
• How many countries has India entered into a CECA with?
• Only one – Singapore.
• CECA (Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement) is an all-encompassing FTA (Free Trade Agreement) covering trade in goods, services and investment.
• Malaysia also has shown interest in entering into a CECA with India. The talks are expected to begin sometime in January 2008.
• Incometax returns
• As against 1.23 crore returns filed last year (a growth of 37% over the previous year then), this year the returns filed are at 1.25 crore showing a marginal improvement.
• Various subsidies that we bear
• Oil: Rs. 39,000 crores
• Fertilizers: Rs. 50,000 crores
• Power: Rs. 39,000 crores
• What are quant funds? We are hearing about them of late.
• I dug about them on the Internet for you; and this what I found on Investopedia:
• An investment fund that selects securities based on quantitative analysis. In such funds, the managers build computer-based models to determine whether or not an investment is attractive. In a pure "quant shop" the final decision to buy or sell is made by the model. However, there is a middle ground where the fund manager will use human judgment in addition to a quantitative model.
• If computers can beat world champion chess players, shouldn't they be able to beat the traders on Wall Street? That's the thinking behind quant funds, whose name comes from the term "quantitative analysis". The advantage is that computers aren't swayed by emotion, and they obviously react much faster than a person ever could. The problem is that humans have to program those computers, and even computers can make mistakes when they are programmed incorrectly. Remember the saying "garbage in, garbage out". To take advantage of the power of computers, you still have to figure out a superior investment strategy.
• The term "quantitative fund" also doesn't tell you anything about the actual investment strategy being used. Any study of a company or an industry based on quantitative data can be considered a quant strategy.
• Plant growth hormones – Auxins
• Researchers at the University of California, Davis found that a plant’s sensitivity to the hormone auxin varied depending on the time of day, with the plant most susceptible at night.
• Auxin is vital to a plant’s growth and development. It aids responses to changes in light, gravity and water. It also assists the plant in producing fruit and dropping leaves.
• Artificial glaciers; ever heard of them?
• It is an interesting story. I was amazed to read about one Mr. Chewang Norphel (68). He is considered the glacier man of Ladakh.
• To understand his story, it is imperative that we know a bit about Ladakh’s environment. Ladakh is in a rain-shadow area. The average rainfall seldom exceeds 50 mm. The only water source is glacier water coming down the mountains. When the glaciers melt in summer, they release a little water that is used by the people of Ladakh to irrigate their crops. But the problem is, natural glaciers release water too late in the summer to be of help to the farmers to start their sowing season.
• So, using some local ingenuity, he built his first ‘artificial glacier’ from stone embankments and a few hundred meters of iron pipe in Phuktsey village in Leh District in 1992.
• How is this done: First, water from an existing stream was diverted through iron pipes to a shady area of the valley. From there, the water was made to flow out onto a sloping hill at regular intervals all through the winter. As temperatures drop steadily, the water in these small pools freezes. Once this cycle has been repeated over many weeks, a thick sheet of ice forms, resembling a long, thin glacier.
• Advantages of the artificial glacier: It is closer to the village and is at a comparatively lower altitude. Early water release (a whole month before snow starts melting in the mountains) from an artificial glacier enables the farmers to start their sowing works.
• You can look at his profile here.