Made my Day!

It is a beautiful day in Calgary. It is Friday - blessed Jumma Al-Mubarak! First thought of the day I had was to send a message to friends and family to celebrate the day by being thankful. I sent the following message to a selected few. Now I am sharing it with everyone:

"Jumma is a Mubarak day. Celebrate the day as Eid. Take a moment and forgive everyone including (especially) yourself. Thank Allah for what He has blessed you with. Clear your head and purify your heart. Pledge to LOVE other human beings and ALL of other Almighty's creations otherwise you cannot claim to LOVE Allah"

If constantly craving for something defines addition, in addition to a few other things, I am addicted to coffee. A big cup of Nescafe Classic Instant charges me up. It prepares me to face the interesting challenges that come my way, professionally in the role of AT&T's Sr. Architect and from daily life of a student of leadership, politics, business, investing and religion.

Amongst others, I have been following James Altucher's blogs for a while. Today's blog first caught me by surprise (because he wrote about Islam) but then it started to make sense. Following are a few excepts:

"Success is when we are ok with the unknown we invite in" -- James Altucher

"Islam suggests do “prayer” five times a day. I think it can be done all day long" -- James Altucher

"In Judaism, to give anonymously is considered the highest good. In Islam, it is one of the main pillars of their religion" -- James Altucher

"Arrogance is the opposite of pilgrimage" -- James Altucher

"I don’t watch the people arguing on TV about who killed who under what god’s name. All of that is BS and fiction" -- James Altucher

"when I look at my own definitions of these five pillars: “faith”, “prayer”, “fasting”, “charity”, “pilgrimage”, I find these are guideposts in the direction of “surrender”....And surrender has often been a great source of success and creativity for me" -- James Altucher

You can read the complete blog here

It is heart breaking to see how the born Muslims are tearing each other apart in the name of the religion while totally missing out on the true message of PEACE and LOVE. It is encouraging to see a non Muslim is getting true guidance from fundamental five pillars of Islam. If God's message is supposed to guide, it has done so! It has made my day

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The author is a Senior Business Solutions Architect with AT&T Global Services. He is a Professional Engineer with APEGA, holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore and a Master’s degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal. His interests include reading, writing, photography, painting, promoting human development using Information Technology, applied research, innovation, leadership, investing and religion. He lives in Calgary, Canada and can be reached at uwaqar@gmail.com

Colours are beautiful!

Thought of the hour, excerpt from a very positive talk: “…I am not asking you to be tolerant. Do not tolerate each other. Tolerance is for losers! What I am asking you to do is to WORK HARDER than that, get in those uncomfortable discussions, responsibly, and then UNDERSTAND each other….that is what promotes truly progressive diversity…”

Castles, Moats and Investing!

Broad and deep ditches built around castles, buildings and towns in the medieval times were called moats. Left dry or filled with water, their purpose was to provide defense and fortification against enemies. It was relatively difficult to build deeper and broader moats - which, of course, provided better defense against hostile parties.

Having a better moat was a competitive advantage. Castles have transformed into corporations now and competitive advantage between corporations has become a rather complex topic. The concept of moats, however, is still used in comparing corporations and evaluating them with respect to competitive advantages. While the term has not lost its luster, like everything else, it has transformed into a metaphor signifying the relative business strength of corporations.

With respect to financial analysis, the corporate moats are classified as Narrow or Wide. In fact the Morningstar Equity Research firm has trade marked the term as 'Economic Moat' to elaborate competitive advantages of different corporations in their research reports. They define the Economic Moat as:

"Morningstar's proprietary measure of the quantifiable, sustainable competitive advantage a company enjoys. All things held equal, we would expect a wide-moat firm to sustain relatively higher returns on invested capital for longer than a narrow-moat firm and a narrow-moat firm to sustain relatively higher returns on invested capital for longer than a no-moat company."

So, the Moat Value in combination with other evaluation parameters like yield, market cap, risk/volatility, current and fair value price can combine to form a great strategy for investment. 

An equity with wide-moat with fair market value significantly higher than the current price with medium to low volatility risk is a good choice. It becomes even a greater choice if the equity has significant (greater than 500 million dollar) market cap with higher (more than 4%) yields.

When diligently followed, this investment strategy looks promising. Until I try this myself and then write the next blog on the topic, enjoy several beautiful pictures of moats by googling 'moat'.

Cheers!

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The author is a Senior Business Solutions Architect with AT&T Global Services. He is a Professional Engineer with APEGA, holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore and a Master’s degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal. His interests include reading, writing, photography, painting, promoting human development using Information Technology, applied research, innovation and optimized business solutions. He lives in Calgary, Canada and can be reached at uwaqar@gmail.com