Muthukrishnan Dhandapani

@eduinvestingin Thanks for writing. But there is absolutely no need. Lot of information are either inaccurate or not updated.

Dhandapani's career arc is itself a case study in financial discipline. Born into a low-income family in Tamil Nadu, he began working at age 19 at a stockbroking firm on the Madras Stock Exchange, handling accounting and delivery. His employer sponsored a three-year part-time MBA in Finance from IFMR (Institute for Financial Management and Research). When the rise of the National Stock Exchange shuttered many small broking houses, he pivoted to the BPO industry, entering at the ground floor and climbing over a decade to Assistant Vice President. At 34, he made the unconventional decision to abandon his corporate trajectory entirely. By that point, he and his wife had accumulated a house, zero debt, and a financial corpus worth ten years of expenses — a living testament to his philosophy. He earned his Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designation and around 2006–07 founded Wise Wealth Advisors in Chennai. He also holds postgraduate degrees in Commerce and Corporate Secretaryship. @dmuthuk eduinvesting.in/muthukrishna-d…

South Pars gas field is world’s largest gas reserve and it is shared by Iran and Qatar. Israel has bombed that facility. Iran has said it would retaliate by targeting similar facilities in the gulf region. Iran has already said that if pushed to wall it would destroy all oil and desalination infrastructure in the entire gulf. This would make the entire gulf region uninhabitable. Desalinated water is the lifeline for gulf. We are all hoping for some positive turn to end the current crisis. In a worst case scenario, world would be pushed for many years into very severe humanitarian and economic crisis. Looks like Israel want destruction of Iran at any cost even if it means severe pain for rest of the world for many years to come. Iran is implying it would not go down without taking many others with it. Let's hope sense prevails.

How dare the remaining 0.07%?

If you're an investor, you need to face barrage of false alarms every day. More so in geopolitical situation like today. Also since negativity sells well, many exaggerate every single event and attribute meaning even if there is none. Conspiracy theories have become main stream. Despite so much information being available, becoming very difficult to know what is correct. If you've time and interest, just read history of last 100 years. The world has faced lot of difficult problems. It would continue to face. Don't worry about the end of world. If it is going to happen, there is nothing we can do about it. Plan and act as if the world would exist tomorrow. If it ends, it ends for all of us. Warren Buffett has been investing for more than 80 years. He has witnessed most part of last 100 years history. Listen to what he says: "Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. The Dow Jones Industrials advanced from 66 to 11,497 in the 20th Century, a staggering 17,320% increase. And don’t forget that shareholders received substantial dividends throughout the century as well. You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy."

That was till yesterday. Today India has got a blanket permission.

According to Iran Observer @IranObserver0, only following four countries have been granted permission by Iran to transit the Strait of Hormuz: India China Turkey Pakistan This is a huge diplomatic breakthrough for India.

There has been lot of rumours for the last few days that Benjamin Netanyahu has been killed. He has just put out a video. It looks genuine. So, there is no truth to the rumours which have been circulating for the last few days.

Never knew about Sachee Trivedi till today. Saw a Moneycontrol video. She is both passionate and logical in her arguments. Being bullish on equities is real contrarinism now. Her conviction shows.

We often talk about multibaggers. When we say Titan, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala's wealth creation journey automatically comes to our mind. There has been another long term investor in Titan with similar characteristics of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who is not much spoken about. I'm talking about Government of Tamil Nadu’s stake in Titan. In 1984, the state invested Rs.11 crores in Titan. This gave Tamil Nadu around 28% stake in Titan. That Rs.11 crores has multiplied by around 10,000 times by now and valued at more than Rs.1 lakh crore. Last year dividend income alone was close to Rs.300 crores, almost 30 times of initial invested capital. This is as legendary as Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and now his family owning around 5% stake in Titan for nearly 25 years.

I told in November that I'll give an update before end of March. You may remember the problems I had with Mahindra XUV 700 and how senior management got involved in addressing the issue. There has been zero problem in the last 4 months. We took the vehicle confidently for outstation trips too. We never faced any problem. All is well as on date. Hope it remains so till we own the vehicle.

Geopolitical situation is now extremely uncertain. It doesn't mean only bad should happen. Positive developments too can happen suddenly. But keep the expectations very low. It is good enough to survive for now. Physical survival for those who are in dangerous locations. Emotional survival for people impacted by conflicts. And for all of us, just financial survival. This is not the time to worry about returns, notional losses and so on. Things would turn around sooner or later. Till then, focus on survival. The beauty about uncertainty is suddenly many positive things can happen too. If it happens, well and good. If it doesn't, we are mentally prepared.

The most useless plan is one that believes everything would go according to the plan. Bad things happen. Despite best planning, future remains uncertain. No one can escape vicissitudes of life. You can only manage risk. There is no way to avoid risk. Risk is unavoidable part of life. Expecting positive outcome in everything leads only to disappointment. Sounds philosophical. May be. But this is how your personal finance needs to be planned.

Last year, I touched up a lot on having safe money. It is not that I then knew about AI disruption or tariff problems or middle east crisis. Reading history of economies, businesses, markets, commodities and so on - gave an insight how important safe money is. By safe money I mean what you keep in banks or overnight funds which is the nearest equivalent to treasury bills in India. In general, people say keep 3 or 6 months expenses as emergency corpus. It is actually not that simple. The unemployment period instead of 3 months can be say one year for some. You may have dependents with serious health issues requiring sizeable spending every month. Your EMIs would not stop just because income stops. Safe money requires lot of planning. If you are among privileged few, your lifestyle needs to be completely delinked from markets. Though possible only for few, ten to fifteen years of life style expenses should only be in safe money. Irrespective of the size of your income and wealth, the focus on safe money is must. You need to create what is maximum possible for you. Opportunities are more and so are uncertainties. Earlier, discussions about safe money or emergency fund were more procedural. Now it is very critical. Without risk free money as cushion, not possible to pursue wealth creation opportunities involving risk.

The country's highest literary award, Jnanpith award has been conferred on Vairamuthu. Like many in Tamil Nadu, always enjoy Vairamuthu's lyrics with Ilayaraja's music. Vairamuthu became controversial after me too allegations and his comments about Andal. Ultimately what matters is the bigger picture. Vairamuthu has contributed a lot to Tamil and many of his lyrics are very powerful. After Akilan and Jayakanthan, he is the third Tamilian to be conferred with Jnanpith award, after a gap of 24 years. Congratulations. Well deserved for his contributions.

True. One month stock is there. When our association checked with gas company, they said to place order two or three weeks before running out of supply.

Don't know about LPG availability. We use piped gas in our apartment and association tells me we've one month stock. Just for one day, there were huge queues in petrol bunks and fuel was running out of stock. I see complete normalcy today and was able to fill our vehicles without any problem.

Though we never completely stopped buying crude from Russia, we agreed to reduce or phase out imports from Russia as that was a precondition for US reducing tariff on our exports. Russia ensured both reliable supply and cheap cost for us. Russia was selling crude to us at a discounted rate of around $50. Due to latest crisis, we are again hugely dependent on oil from Russia. Russia did not say no and willing to supply us. But no more special concession or discount for us. We are now paying $90 for the same oil for which we paid $50 last month. Diplomacy is a very difficult balancing act. I'm not saying it is easy for India. Not only we are paying double for the price for crude, US has suddenly opened investigation against few countries including India for providing manufacturing subsidies (like PLI schemes) which US says is distorting global trade. Knowing current administration under Trump, this can have impact on our trade agreement and tariffs with US. All I'm pointing out is due to diplomatic compulsion we are tilting towards an unreliable USA than a time tested reliable Russia. For last few days, India is deeply engaging with Iran. Though belated, only yesterday we conveyed our pain for killing of innocent 170 school children in Iran. My view is that the first 2 days of war when the entire Iranian leadership got eliminated, India was probably of opinion the war would last only for few days and US would be the winner. Prime Minister offered no condolences for Khamenei's death. Only on March 5th, our foreign secretary offered formal condolences.Iran's attack of gulf countries was condemned by us. No condemnation of killing of Iran's school children was made. Now our country is making amends to ensure our economic interests are not hurt by Iran and our ships are allowed to pass Strait of Hormuz. I'm no expert in anything. As a citizen, I'm entitled to share my personal views. I believe we can do much better in our diplomacy.

Kharg Island accounts for 90% of oil exports revenue of Iran. Oil is the only source of revenue for Iran and with out that it cannot even pay it's soldiers. Last night, US completely destroyed the entire military infrastructure in Kharg Island. For now, it has left the oil facilities intact. US has clearly warned Iran that if they stop any ships in strait of Hormuz, the oil facilities too would be destroyed. Without this oil facility, Iran cannot economically survive. Iran can now choose to end the war for it's economic survival. But it would be on US terms. Or as Iran has threatened before, they can try destroying all oil and desalination facilities in gulf region. The economic consequences of this is is unimaginable. US is also sending thousands of marines too. US wants to end the war soon at their terms. Either Iran has to accept US terms for it's economic survival or escalate by targeting oil and desalination infrastructure in gulf region. It's good for the entire world if war doesn't escalate any further. Any escalation can lead to catastrophic consequences. The world is now at a very critical point.

Khamenei was killed on February 28th. He was the political head of Iran and religious head of Shiates across the world. Etiquette demands that our Prime Minister immediately convey his condolences. I don't know whether our Prime Minister has conveyed condolences so far. Vikram Misri, our foreign secretary offered condolences only on March 5th. Once Iran started attacking infrastructure in gulf countries, our Prime Minister called head of each country and conveyed India's concern. But he never called and conveyed concern when around 170 innocent girl children were killed in Iran by US bombings. And BJP supporters started glorifying that India has taken a side in the war. India's neutrality is it's biggest strength. We are going to gain zilch by being identified as an US supporter. Even NATO countries condemned school attack. Even Pakistan offered condolences for Khamenei's death. It is perfectly fine to have good relationship with US and Israel. But avoiding even basic etiquette to countries inimical to them is not good for us. An enemy of Israel and US is not an enemy of India. We need to define our relationship with each country based on our self interest and national priorities. It doesn't matter whether that country is a friend or enemy of US. Already US is fighting Israel's war which in my view is a most stupid decision. There is no need for us to take any sides.

It is no longer the question of US and Israel ending the war. The war would end only if Iran decides so. Iran is already asking for US to vacate the middle east, money for rebuilding the country, removing sanctions and a strong international agreement preventing any future attack on it by US and Israel. Iran cannot be destroyed by US and Israel. US couldn't even do that to Afghanistan. Israel would not be comfortable with not having US bases in the middle east. They would feel immensely threatened. We need to remember conflicts can last for many years too. Iran has nuisance value to keep destroying oil Infrastructure in gulf. If Iran keeps regularly attacking oil depots, airports, civilian buildings and so on, middle east would no longer be attractive for business, immigration, investments and even tourism. $200 oil can become a reality. It would lead to huge economic turmoil across the world. This war is no longer under the control of US and Israel. Khamenei was not only the political head of Iran but also religious head for Shiates across the world. US and Iran sees the world completely differently. For US, every single American life is important whereas martyrdom is celebrated in Iran. US has united Iran by killing their supreme leader, who was both their political and religious head. US and Israel has already started talking about eliminating the new leader of Iran, Mojtaba. This would make Iran's stand only tougher. The hatred is mutual between Israel and Iran. A delicate balance has been maintained all these years. No other US President agreed to get into war with Iran on behalf of Israel. They clearly differentiated between supporting Israel and attacking Iran. I think Trump and Netanyahu has dragged the world into a mess. I don't see this problem ending any time soon unless Iran agrees. I've no clue what would and who can make Iran agree.