1. Everyone’s super talented, in reality there’s no big fish, it’s just a notion in our mind
2. Prioritising and decision making is everything
3. There are unexplored parts of our personality, the unknown unknowns are the worst
4. Most CEOs/ leaders struggle with turnaround situations. Transformations are the hardest. Proof lies only and only in tangible success, not in best particles unfortunately
5. Having a mindset to win is a great asset, accepting defeat with lessons is a greater asset.
Lessons from week 2 at INSEAD:
1. Vision can many times be greater than excel models
2. Successful companies choose between product leadership/operational excellence/customer intimacy, work towards that goal endlessly. Avoid that doesn’t align
3. Sometimes not playing means not losing and that’s perfectly okay
4. FOMO can be a positive feeling, JOMO (joy of missing out) is a great place to be
5. Competition benchmarking can be useful but not if one copies only some of the traits, either ape the model or don’t bother too much.
Lessons from Week 3:
1. Most of us finance professionals have a need to put everything in quantifiable forms, we end up liking formulae and models more than abstract stuff. Creates a bias?
2. The need to stick to what has some history is very human. And that’s why the Blue Ocean strategy can be studied easily but can only me implemented by the most dynamic. Something to aim?
3. Financial engineering isn’t as complex as it first appeared, there’s some value in learning it well
4. You can leave accounting but accounting never leaves you: a personal note to self
5. The case of ‘Yellow Tail Wines’ has something for every business, simplification is and will be the key for mass businesses.
The term 'bear flattening' is likely to be the floating narrative now! What does it mean and how does it impact investors?
Bear flattener refers to the convergence of interest rates along the yield curve as short term rates rise faster than long term rates and is seen as a harbinger of an economic contraction.
So the term premium falls because the short term rates rise while long term stagnate
Why bear? Because rise in long term rates are considered as a signal of higher growth(&inflation) expectations, rise in short term rates purely reflect Central Bank's actions which emerge from tightening