Great to see you back in action. Just while I was wondering if VP is going down the lines of TED. Version 2.0 is much needed to separate the wheat from the chaff. The role of the “catalyst” is indeed highly important. Looking forward to higher participation under your guidance.
Broadly thinking, as we had a very successful model portfolio, could it be possible to present how the model portfolio was arrived at? It would be a great demonstration of the implementation of Stock picking, Business quality, Management quality and Allocation concepts. Even if it is historical, there is a lot that an equity investor can look for to learn and strive do the same with his/her own portfolio in the present.
Coming to the present, thread clean-up that you mentioned in caps is necessary to filter out facts from opinions. Maybe we need more moderators for that effect. I can put up my hand here.
Looking forward to brighter days ahead for VP. And best wishes for your health. God bless you.
Donald – absolutely thrilled to see you back and speak about VP 2.0! Though have been a silent admirer since many years of VP1.0 I plan to participate and collaborate wherever possible in VP2.0!
Extremely happy and excited to have you back on VP, participating actively and re-igniting the passion (which had gone into hybernation for many, i candidly admit )to take VP to next level. I am more than willing/happy to contribute in this endevaour.
Last one and half year has been a great learning passing through a tough phase in market especially for the universe in which we operate. It clearly highlighted the lacuna that I had in terms on understanding the business quality involved. In fact all the mistakes I made were more or less were related to not getting the BQ and/or the growth visibility part right. In cases where I over paid but did well on assessing BQ and growth, things worked out quite well. This lesson, hopefully stays there in next cycle and help me avoid doing the same mistakes again. However, as you like it, these generic things mean very little. It is important to reflect on our learnings, re-caliberate our framework on BQ/MQ and refine it further.
I think we can take that up on separate thread dedicated for it (I think we should start a new one or re-invigorate the BQ/MQ framework thread).
Again I am so happy to have you back as I feel the quality of discussion and the rigour of the work was wearing down a bit on VP. Looking forward to interact more soon on the forum
Thanks for the enthusiastic response. Separate BQ thread started
As mentioned by you, we have perfect hindsight again of last 2 years (and more actually) that will help us immensely to improve on the last job.
Looking to you to drive a hard look at the lacunae in BQ understanding/analysis. Always loved working with you on this crucial peg on our learning curve. You were always one of the first to respond to call for detailed work. Still remember and marvel at the ENIL BQ draft you produced last.
Akbar, good to hear from you. If I remember correctly, you were one who initiated threads for some huge gainers like Kitex, also Accelya Kale, and the like that prompted us to dig deeper into them.
Great to see you put up your hand for the thread clean-up job. Really appreciate. And I know you will do a sincere job. Its best that you consult current moderators @manish962, @basumallick@ayushmit to get a grasp of do’s and dont’s before we embark on a thread clean-up job.
@manish962
Perhaps we should open a Thread Cleanup thread and outline essential do’s and dont’s and also call for senior member volunteers like Akbar?
Coincidentally, I had a conversation with @basumallick dada on the same topic informing him that I will be available to help with any thread clean-up tasks.
Per my discussion, flagging the questionable/non-value-adding post is the heavy lift task. Once a post is flagged - @manish962, @ayushmit, @hitesh2710, and dada look into it and take appropriate action.
If we can flag questionable posts while we keep reading new posts on different threads that we follow on daily basis, that should be of great help. Additionally, if we can do spot check on other threads that we don’t follow and ensure that ongoing conversation is meaningful, that should do the job.
Moderators - please add if I missed anything.
@Donald - I may have missed out of VP 1.0 (didn’t even know about VP then ) but I’m SUPER EXCITED and looking forward to contribute to VP 2.0!
That’s great Amit. Top Contributors are already aligned with VP ideals, so most welcome. Way forward, to be decided by current moderators - they know best.
Absolutely. Obviously intensifying flagging thru dedicated volunteers would do the job for current and new posts. Also enforcing this strictly from here on will let new members know we take this seriously, will help Inculcate required discipline hopefully.
I was referring more to culling out old posts to clean up and improve discussion flow for all existing threads. Probably doesn’t make sense to increase Moderator workload for that. Senior Members/Top Contributors aligned to VP ideals could perhaps be empowered to use their judgement and just remove irrelevant non-value additive posts.
Hi Ashwini
Great! I was wondering when this hand will be up . Forensic audit skills are rare and prized in any team. I am also told you had strong views about VP Platform getting abused by both wannabe and practised pump-n-dump guys, who are clever enough to disguise their intent and give our normally strict Moderators the slip.
Would love to hear your views on how we can do better on this front, identify patterns, and engage you in flagging potential/known defaulters, and the like.
Welcome back after a well timed sabbatical. As usual even in taking a break, your timing proved to be impeccable. Its been a 2 year grind beginning from Jan 2018.
Now as you say is the right time to get back in the ring and dirty the hands. Even VP forum needed a push from you as most of us feel here.
As I can see, the BQ/MQ thread version 2 is already launched. Its great to see the kind of vigour with which you are writing, which reminds me of Donald of the old days which goes to show that the health is back in the pink.
I think we need more structured strategic threads to go back to high quality discussions. This can take the form of high quality threads on BQ/MQ (already started), reviving or restarting Capital allocation thread with new examples, Portfolio construction and maintenance thread, and prodding the senior contributors to contribute more to the forum which gave them so much.
Once again, welcome back and its great and heartening to see you back in action.
Great to see you back on VP. We were really missing your energy and in-depth research on stocks on the forum. Furthermore, the way you pushed others to do more work was also something which I really missed.
I have been traveling and meeting many companies during the past 2 years - mostly during AGMs. I can take the job of working on new companies, analyzing them and posting the work on VP. I even like the part of preparing detailed questionnaire for the management (off course, no one can match you on that). That is the part which gets me most excited.
Its so heartening to see you back, Donald! And more importantly I can see the energy and passion which has motivated so many people to come out of their comfort zones and do more in-depth work and learn so much!
The timing is perfect too! Market is coming out of a zone of 2 year of tough time for mid and small cap space and surely this will open up several new opportunities. However, with time, markets have become smarter and its not that easy. So time for all of us to learn new things and perhaps refine on the things we learnt in the last cycle and do better.
Actionables - 1. Discussions on framework is the logical thing to start and share/refine our leanings 2. Like in past - we may focus more on preparing individual stock stories/summaries to highlight a summary of underlying business, positives and negatives so that someone new can get a crisp understanding without going into hundreds of pages (many of the threads have become too long and cluttered)
Look forward to contribute in the best way possible and learn from the wisdom of wonderful members we have.
I would also want to contribute in this effort. I am a pharma guy for last 16-17 years and will be based out of hyd. You can reach me through pm and then we can discuss non confidential things.
As VP community celebrating your comeback, I was wondering and thinking since long about you and same time fee more VP old timers, top contributors such as Omprakash, TirumalRao, Vinod MS, D Kiran etc., any clue any reason not seen on forum since long. Atleast I couldn’t seem them or their post in recent times.
Hope everyone is doing well in their respective areas. My best wishes to all.
On moderator & cleaning up threads…I have an idea/suggestion & do not know how technically feasible it is. As user base is going to become larger & larger, information filtering is going to be tougher & tougher amongst various opinions & facts mixed discussions.
Like multi layered pressure sand filter used in treating/cleaning water, VP community can find multiple layers of community contributors.
Layer -1: pump & dump operators.
Layer 0: newbies
Layer 1: Experienced Investment Pros
Layer 2: Top contributors
Layer 3: Sector experts
Layer 4: Moderators
Layer 0 will usually have maximum number of folks. Layer 1 will have far lower number etc. i.e. Layer 0< Layer 1 < Layer 2< Layer 3< Layer 4.
We can combine how FB/Twitter works with likes/shares along with layer gradation of members to filter out noise from valuable insights. Also marking a post as opinion vs fact vs both shall also help in filtering thru posts clutter (this tagging privilege can be given to Layer 1 & up). Layer -1 shall be decided between Moderators & can remain confidential for rest of community.
I follow something similar today to benefit from VP community i.e. to separate wheat from chaff amongst various discussions.
Regarding moderation, I would like to split it into 2 parts
Manual Moderation
Manual moderation is more or less what we (moderators) do now. A post is flagged by community member & moderator looks into & acts. Moderators in their normal routine (or if they are actively following a thread) observe that a message requires action as it doesn’t meet VP community expectations & set guidelines. I understand that there are chances of unwanted messages getting skipped and that is one of the reason behind longer threads for few active shares. We may add few more steps like adding more members with moderation privilege etc. There are active discussions on certain topics where market / media is flooded with news e.g. YES BANK, it is quite obvious that few members would like to express their views on most of news items, which may be source based news and even turn out to be rumour but only time will tell us if it was certainly a confirmed news which will impact fundamental / technical ratios of the company or it was a rumour only having no impact on fundamentals. I don’t see that we have a mechanism to handle it & it is a necessity as the forum remains meaningful only if the thread has all the relevant updated information needed by a VP community member to analyse the company & plan his investment. I may suggest an automated REVIEW REQUEST after a week or 15 days (timing can be debated & finalized) to the person who posted the message, the request would provide opportunity to community member for either confirming that his post still remains valid & adds value in analysing the company or if that information turns out to be incorrect, the member will remove it himself. This will decrease the load on moderators and member will certainly get matured if his posts don’t add value and he is forced to remove it frequently. If any member has post / removal ratio above 0.5 for a month or so, he can be temporarily moved to a pool where he will have ONLY view rights for next 3 months.
Automated Moderation
Coming to Automated moderation, Its only objective is to reduce workload of moderators. We can define multiple metrics for each community member based on his privileges on VP forum. We can start with no of words in a post (I understand that we have it), next could be no of words / no of posts… if it is less than 50 words, the moderation team must get a automated message to look into such member’s posts, we can add a step to send first level of request to member himself suggesting to either remove his unwanted posts or be cautious while posting, if he fails to improve, moderators come in picture.
I would suggest for accumulation of ideas from interested community members & way to implement it.
Let us give more power to VP2.0, which makes OUR investment journey more fruitful
)to take VP to next level. I am more than willing/happy to contribute in this endevaour.
of last 2 years (and more actually) that will help us immensely to improve on the last job.
into them.
) but I’m SUPER EXCITED and looking forward to contribute to VP 2.0!
. Forensic audit skills are rare and prized in any team. I am also told you had strong views about VP Platform getting abused by both wannabe and practised pump-n-dump guys, who are clever enough to disguise their intent and give our normally strict Moderators the slip.