If you’ve read Jawwad Farid’s Reboot, then you know how his flaming startup Avicena that was supposed to sell easy to digest finance courses online. The good news is that Jawwad has been putting a lot of that content in the public domain for anyone. From a beginners guide to Corporate Finance to the demystification of derivatives – you might just find what you’re looking for here, saving the agony of a class-room finance course.

Below is the current inventory of online finance courses at the corporate finance e-learning portal.

Corporate Finance

• CORPORATE FINANCE: FIRST COURSE
• MASTER CASE: CORPORATE FINANCE: LLC OR C-CORP

• MASTER CASE: AMD: VALUATION AND PROJECTIONS: CASE GUIDE
• MASTER CASE: ELECTRONIC ARTS: CORPORATE FINANCE

Ratio analysis

• MASTER CLASS: RATIO ANALYSIS
• MASTER CASE: OFFICE DEPOT: RATIO ANALYSIS
• MASTER CASE: RATIO ANALYSIS: ODP AND STAPLES

Value at risk and risk management

• MASTER CLASS: CALCULATING VALUE AT RISK
• MASTER CLASS: RISK FOR THE OIL AND PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Credit analysis, process and case

• MASTER CLASS: CREDIT ANALYSIS
• MASTER CLASS: CREDIT PROCESS

• MASTER CASE: CREDIT PROCESS: BALDWIN PIANO

Treasury and derivative products

• MASTER CLASS: DERIVATIVE PRODUCTS
• THE DERIVATIVES CRASH COURSE FOR DUMMIES
• TREASURY OPERATIONS
• PRICING INTEREST RATE SWAPS – THE VALUATION AND MTM COURSE

• DERIVATIVE PRICING, RISK MANAGEMENT, FINANCIAL ENGINEERING – EQUATION REFERENCE
• INTEREST RATE OPTIONS – PRICING CAPS AND FLOORS

Asset Liability Management

• ASSET LIABILITY MANAGEMENT – THE ALM CRASH COURSE AND SURVIVAL GUIDE

Visitor profiles and demographics

• VISITORS PROFILE, US DEMOGRAPHICS, SEMRUSH TRAFFIC COST

• THE BEST OF JAWWAD FARID

Last time I was in Karachi, Jehan invited me to a bloggers meet-up at t2f to honor Self Exile’s adventurous motorbike exploration of Pakistan. Other than Jehan and I, there about 4-5 other bloggers on the table – and as is usually the case with our generation, each one of them had a burning desire, veiled by light-hearted jokes and banter, to make the world a better place. Not necessarily in a touch-feely, NGO-type way, but by doing cutting edge work, fostering entrepreneurship and empowering others.

As the conversation veered towards education, one of the guys on the table asked me if one needs an MBA to be successful. To be sure, I’m only qualified to answer that question, not by any illusions of success, but the clarity of failure. That afternoon I gave an uncontroversial answer: it depends. If you want a career in management consulting or investment banking or brand management (i.e. In Pakistan: selling soap at Unilever), then an MBA might make sense. But you don’t NEED an MBA to be a successful entrepreneur: some would say its quite the opposite.

At the macroscopic level MBAs (and especially BBAs) do not significantly contribute to the competitive edge of a nation. That responsibility lies with engineers and scientists. It also rests with artists, writers and other cultural leaders – not MBAs. For any country, especially one like Pakistan, to be competitive, we need to build stuff to solve pressing problems in the world. Energy efficient water purification, pest resistant crop, natural language search, portable micro-labs, AIDS vaccines, implantable insulin pumps – that’s the kind of stuff we need to build. Paintings, movies, novels, calligraphy, ceramics, architecture, fashion – that’s the kind of stuff we need to export.

MBAs can help you re-engineer business processes. They can teach you about talent management. They can do a Porters 5-forces to help you understand the obvious. They can charge jaw-dropping amounts to underwrite your IPO. But they can only do that if you, mr. entrepreneur, set up a billion dollar business around patented technology that helps you solve real problems. We need more engineers, not MBAs.

An MBA is not a futile degree. If are you are a sitar maestro who has never read a balance sheet, an MBA can open a new world rich with business possibility and ambition. If you’ve spent 4 years researching the nuances of micro-biology, an MBA can accelerate your career through the business ranks. An MBA gives you the opportunity to build a network that spans the globe. But to derive real value from an MBA, you need to have substance going in. In Pakistan, however, this substance is often missing.

Most kids I come across want to study business management to take a “managerial position” right after undergrad. Often, you have a thousand kids competing for 4 odd MT positions at Unilever or P&G so they can push pre-formated marketing campaigns to the unwitting Pakistani populace. And the 996 who are the unable to get in then return to business school to learn more of what they will never need.

We need our smartest kids to take up  engineering and science so they can solve the world’s problems and not squander their potential by enrolling into BBA/MBA programs.

-Adnan

I find interviewing 2-year-old toddlers for their suitability for admission into primary school repulsive. There its out of my system. What continues to puzzle me is that 3000 parents, grandparents, drivers and maids are willing to take turns to queue up at 5am just to get an  interview slip, which entitles a snobbish, post-colonial relic to judge if your little star has what it takes to make the cut. You give them the power to reject your son, nephew or granddaughter. By queuing in line you’re telling them that they hold all the cards, all the keys, all the magic potions. Without  their stamp of snobbish approval, your kid might as well not try, because the effort is futile. Why would you do that?!?

I have nothing against Grammar. Its a private school, and they can structure their admissions process anyway they want. They can make parents jump through hoops and roll over backwards for all I care. They can even make toddlers sing karaoke to verify if their theatrical skills meet the standard of the mythical grammarian. My problem is with the parents. Don’t they know any better?

Why do you send your kid to school? Because you want him to learn, interact, have fun, make friends. You send him to school to find inspiration, interests, diversity. To sing in tune- and out of tune. To draw with vivid crayons between the lines – and outside of them. You don’t send him to school for a thappa.

Grammar does not have a monopoly on good education, nor does it claim to. What it does have, however, is a reputation built over decades-which some argue is gradually eroding. Its reputation is built, not so much on the quality of its education, but by the subtle social hierarchy that it plays into. “Oh, my kid goes to Grammar” means so much more than where your kid is learning to read and write. If you’re sending your kid to Grammar to get ahead in the social rat race, go right ahead. But after 12 years, and by consequence for the rest of his life, he will still be a rat.

If you plan to play the Grammar admission roulette, then do it for the right reasons. Would sending your kid to Grammar teach him social values? Would it show him the joy of mathematics? Or Urdu literature? or Mandarin poetry? Would it develop not destroy the unburdened inventiveness of youth? Would it make him a dreamer ready to take on the world? Would your child wake up full of excitement to go to school?

If you believe Grammar is that institute, then by all means queue up at 5am. Don’t do it for a thappa.

-Adnan

So now I finally understand what the big deal with China is. Last week I was out discovering Shanghai and  Beijing, two cities with with a collective population of about 35 million people; a full 3% of China.

I was supposed to be in the US right about now. After 7 weeks of waiting, when they decided that my application warrants “additional administrative processing” and that I should contact them after 90 days in case the status of my application does not change. I decided it was time to visit a more welcoming country. After striking out all of north America, most of Europe, most of Oceania, one country that clearly stood out was China. With the October issue of Economist fresh in my mind, I decided it was time to explore the exoticism of the orient. Visa took 3 working day, and the flight cost $600. This trip was going to be a bargain.

One small detailed I neglected to look into, amidst all the pseudo-intellectual journalism on China, was the freaking weather. How cold can China be I wondered, thinking rather profoundly that its next to Pakistan, hence… Geography was never my strength. Nor well planned vacations. Sitting in my dadi’s living room in Karachi, a day before departure, when my chacha told me that all flight to Beijing had been canceled because of a wild snow storm, it was a reasonably unpleasant jolt. It was too late to cancel anything. Hotels booked, tickets issued. I took out my only winter jacket (a fleece Duke hoodie), a sweater, and off I went to -7 degrees Celsius of Chinese bliss.

The hotel which seemed very central, turned out to be 30 minutes from the city center far. Next time you look up hotels in Google maps, please remember that the proximity of two pins depends radically on the zoom level. Braving a whiplash of freezing wind, I headed out to meet an old friend at Wangfujing.  Emenegildo Zengn, Aramani, Prada, Herme stood lined up against little shop selling beanies and scarves. After eating the best damn Kungpao chicken and beef with chilli ever (btw food in China tastes radically different from the junk served at China Town Karachi), we headed out to the Hutongs, the narrow streets and katchi abadi type single story dens where Beijingers lived as recently as 1980. Now most have been converted into streets with posh bars, art shops, and galleries. I would attached pictures, but for the fear of frost-bite couldn’t take any.

That was Evening 1. In the next couple of days, I explored the Forbidden City, the infamous Tianemen Square, the Olympic stadiums, the industrial art district. Most notably, I omitted the Great Wall; I figured I can just see it from the moon.

-Adnan

ps. This post was written in November 2009 and then conveniently forgotten in an obscure corner of my now defunct hard drive. Better late than never.

The most erudite iPad analysis I’ve come across; you can trust Nick to give pretty much everything a new twist:

Is it possible for a Geek God to also be a Luddite? That was the question that popped into my head as I read Cory Doctorow's impassioned anti-iPad diatribe at Boing Boing. The device that Apple calls “magical” and “revolutionary” is, to Doctorow, a counterrevolutionary contraption conjured up through the black magic of the wizards at One Infinite Loop. The locked-down, self-contained design of the iPad – nary a USB port in sight, and don't even think about loading an app that hasn't been blessed by Apple – manifests “a palpable contempt for the owner,” writes Doctorow. You can't fiddle with the dang thing:

The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+ ... The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: The iPad Luddites.

Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I’m trying not to think about you
Can’t you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should’ve known you’d bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

…I will miss you Lootmaar.

-Adnan

Lyrics by A Fine Frenzy

This is going to be a long, hard war and there will be no clear winner. Let me start by saying that both phones are exceptional devices, and even as I’ve made my transition to Nexus One, there are days when I lust after the 3GS for seemly no reasons reason other than its sheer sexiness.

So, why did I switch to Nexus One? A combination of geekiness and practicality:

Openness: Let’s start with the geekiness. I like the fact that Android is open, and that developers have more freedom to develop great apps.  I like the fact that Steve Jobs doesn’t obsessively reign over the inventiveness of the entire mobile computing world, blocking competition and innovation in entire categories that potentially compete with Apple’s revenue streams. Browsers, podcasters, Turn-by-turn directions – Apple has selectively blocked anything potentially competitive. Mac freaks are prone to throwing hissy fits about the big bad PC, have they looked at the developer terms for the iPhone?

Multi-threading: Multitreading may seem like an obscure requirement, but its actually quite mainstream. Why should you get kicked out of chat everything you recieve a call? Why should your online radio station stop playing if you want to browse through your notes? Basically, why can’t applications run in the background? Android does multitasking beautifully. Notifications are subtle and effective, and running multiple apps has apparently little or no impact on battery life.

Tweak-ability: There are a myriad setting you can play around with until the feel is just right for you. iPhone has made improvements over time in its configurability, but its still not quite there. For example, I can specifically position icons on an empty screen in Android. May not seem like a big deal, it isn’t, but its a tweak that improve usability for me. Can’t do it on the iPhone.

Navigation: While I enjoy the minimalism of the iPhone, a single home button is too constrained. I like the navigation buttons on the Nexus One (and other Android sets). When I press Search, it brings up a context sensitive search bar. When I press Menu, it shows the settings and options available. The presence of context sensitive buttons makes the user experience more consistent, and the navigation better anchored.

Widgets: Widgets are little apps running on your home screens, making information and functionality available right up front. You can have todos and upcoming appointment showing on the home screen, or a stream of facebook status updates, or weather and news…basically anything you want, accessible right from the home screens. Android, especially the HTC variety, come with great widgets out of the box, and of course developers can build any widget they fancy. iPhone, so far, is “widgetless”.

The Devil’s Advocate

That, in not quite a nutshell, is why I went the way of the Android, but there’s a little more to be said. While the applications in the Android store are steadily growing (20,000 the last I checked), that’s only about a fifth of what it is on the iTunes. I don’t think this a particularly useful measure, since the number of apps is immaterial, 95% of  users need 50 great apps. These apps exist on both platforms. There are some things that Androis, and Nexus One in particular needs to improve upon:

A desktop app: I get the whole cloud thing, but contrary to what most engineers in Google may believe, people on earth still use desktops. Google needs to make it easy for people to  browse and install apps, sync music, download podcasts and sync Outlook/Lotus Notes from their desktops. In terms of managing podcasts and music, iPhone/iTunes is light-years ahead of Android.

Hard buttons: The navigation buttons on Nexus One are soft, which basically means they’re part of the screen and operate on touch. Having hard buttons (like HTC Desire) would be much much better, as sometimes you have to press multiple times for the soft buttons to ‘click’.

Oleophobic Coating: In plain language, Nexus One needs an oil repellent coating (which the iPhone 3GS features). N1 is a smudge magnet and the sensitively of the touch screen seems to go down as the smudges get thicker.

There you have it, a run-down of the iPhone vs Android war. To summarize, iPhone and N1 are both exceptional devices, but to put it in the words of Gina Trapani “iPhone’s for sheep, Android’s for geeks”. And I’m no sheep.

-Adnan

Ten years back Blackberry was revolutionary. There were several features in the Blackberry that made it unique, for instance…

It was an early entrant into the PDA phones category.

Before that, you had cell phones (e.g. Motorola) and then you had PDAs (Palm). The space in between was ripe for conquering – and conquer Blackberry did.

It made mobile computing easy.

The ecosystem around Blackberry is closed and propriety  and as evil as that sounds, it’s actually a blessing for a vast majority of the users. The two greatest mobile makers in the world (RIM and Apple) have a stranglehold over their platforms, and they still continue to outsell everyone else. Blackberry obvious discovered very early on in the game that it had to make the use experience easy – no funky widgets, no unstable apps, no bells and whistles. And to do this it had to obsessively control the platform.

It made mobile data secure.

Its probably the only device that the president of the US would be allowed to use. RIM has always had a razor focus on the people they want to target: business users who travel and need to keep on top of their email. BB is designed from the ground up to be secure – hence the close control over every aspect of the platform, including the telco part.

It pushed email

You have to understand that back in the day this was revolutionary. The fact that you could get emails as soon as someone on the other end pressed Send just played into the growing hyper-connectivity addiction. You might argue that you can do the same on your Windows Mobile by setting the mail client to check for email every 2 minutes. Yes, but it would require tweaking and cost data every time it connected. Blackberry was an elegant solution that just worked.

So there you have it, a brief run-down of what made Blackberry great. So basically, if you’re coming from mid 90s to early 2000s, and you discover the Blackberry, you will be dazzled, the clouds will part, the mountains will sing, and in divine unison everyone would seem to say…”BLACKBERRY”….but that was 10 years back.

If you go to the Blackberry after 2 years of living, loving and hating the iPhone, then at the best of time your reaction will be “Meh”. And the fact that Blackberry is increasingly trying to position itself as a consumer device is ironically making matters worse. But all is not lost, after using a flashy platform like iPhone, there are certain some aspects of BB that appealed to me:

• It’s Snappy: That’s the first thing you notice when you start playing with it. Try opening a calendar or contacts or another app on iPhone and then compare the loading time with Blackberry. BB gives instant a whole new meaning.
• Keyboard: I loved the keyboard on my BB. After 2 years of a soft iPhone keyboard, actually feeling the click of a button gave me this deep happy feeling that I only otherwise get when I eat organic cereal. There’s something real, healthy and satisfying about it. More practically though, while my typing speed is still probably quicker on a soft keyboard, what I still like about physical buttons is that its easy to dial numbers and look for contacts…just start typing and viola.
• ….struggling to think of another bullet.

But the real reason people continue to use BB is non of the above; its legacy. In most cases it works with corporate email systems, and is unanimously approved by all major corporate and government CIOs. That’s a difficult feat to match for touchy, feely mobile media devices like iPhone and N1, at least for the time being. So essentially vast swathes of the user base is essentially blackmailed into using BB.

In almost every aspect of usability, Blackberry lags behind iPhone and Android. The trackball or the optical track-pad is just no match for capacitive touch, or pinch-and-zoom. Internet browsing is generally a pain on BB; you can’t double tap to the section you want to read. Adding a number to an existing contact requires like 4 deliberate steps, not 2 simple taps. BB doesn’t maintain SMS conversations in one place, as each message you receive and send shows separately. You have to scroll down to the received message, click R for reply and only then can you SMS back.

I could go on and on and on with usability pains on the Blackberry, but it has been written before. To put it in the words of Infoworld “the BlackBerry has become the Lotus Notes of the mobile world: It’s way past its prime.”

Part III: The iPhone vs Android War

The past six months have been a slog. First I lost my beloved iPhone in a taxi in Bulgaria, then to compound the matter I got talked into getting a Blackberry, sold by the constant evangelical preaching of my colleagues. For the first 4 weeks I tried to convince myself that once I get past the learning curve, life will improve immeasurably. It never did. So I plotted on getting the smacking new 3GS. When the elaborate plot to import a a set from Italy failed, I turned to coercing my friends in Hong Kong to ship me one. I need to work on my persuasion skills.

Many, many times I almost caved into the temptation of the slick new iPhone, but persevering in the tradition of monks, I held out, and then one day, like a revelation, I saw a gleaming rendition of the Google Phone and I decided I had to have one. In two weeks, serendipity played its part, and I had a little Android playing in my hands.

So, after using the three titan of the smart phone world, I understandably have strong opinions on the subject…

Part II: The Blackberry Mistake