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The jury chaired by Deepak Parekh, executive chairman of HDFC, had much work to do before the final list of 40 could be agreed upon.
The methodology comprised of two phases: research and assessment.
The talent trends in India are very promising today, and we are excited about the future of the next generation of leaders that this talent represents.
Humans have a lot of trouble trying to beat the market. That's not necessarily true for other species.
In the U.S., the most recent major sporting events were the NBA and NHL finals, but the rest of the world is more engaged with the Eurocup. Football ("soccer" to us Americans) is the world's biggest sport, played on the world's biggest stage, with most of its biggest stars. And when that kind of action is happening, yo...
"What?" you ask. "Animal what?" Yes, there are animals that have an apparently more than random level of success at predicting the outcome of big-time athletic contests. That led Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp to wonder how well some animals have done at beating active human investors. The answer might surprise yo...
Southwick: ... making predictions. Isn't that a great name? So far, Nellie's gotten one right and Oobi-Oobi has not. But whatever. So how do animals fare when it comes to stock picking? Because yes, people have made animals pick stocks.
Southwick: Back in 2013, I believe it was the London Observer that decided to have a cat named Orlando pick stocks against a team of professionals -- stock-picking professionals and also some students. Each team invested about 5,000 pounds into five companies from the FTSE, and every few months they could exchange the ...
While the professionals used decades of investing knowledge and traditional stock-picking methods, the cat selected stocks by throwing his favorite toy mouse on a grid of numbers allocated to different companies.
Southwick: ... compared to the professionals at about 5,200 pounds.
Southwick: So the cat out-invested them. But, it turns out it's not just cats that are good at investing.
Brokamp: What other animals are good at investing, Alison?
Southwick: But before we go into the monkeys, Bro, why would someone have monkeys do investing?
Brokamp: Well, when you read about this, it usually harks back to a book that came out in 1973 by Burton Malkiel called A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and one of his arguments -- and he was one of the first people to be making this argument back then -- is that it's very hard to beat the market.
Southwick: The quote is, "A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts."
Brokamp: With monkeys and darts.
Southwick: So in 1999, it was a chimpanzee named Raven. You might remember her from Babe: Pig in the City. She threw 10 darts at a dartboard of 133 internet-related companies, and she managed to outperform more than 6,000 internet and technology money managers and earned an astonishing 213% return. Remember, this was i...
Southwick: So apparently on MarketWatch.com there's a headline that said, "Chimp '99 champ! Makes monkey of Wall Street." Obviously she did very well, but then 2000 happened, and after the dot-com bust, she did very poorly, leading a finance professional to say, "Any monkey with a dart can potentially make money in a r...
Brokamp: Didn't they make an index named after her? I think they called it the Monkeydex.
Southwick: Yes! The picks were so impressive that they created the Monkeydex, an index based around her picks. Thrown with a dart. We also have the circus chimpanzee Lusha, who did very well in Russia. Her portfolio topped 94% of Russia's mutual funds. And then there was also a monkey name Adam Monk, which I would argu...
Brokamp: He was very contemplative.
Southwick: Eh, whatever. He worked for the Chicago Sun-Times. He's a Brazilian cinnamon ringtail cebus monkey, and he picked stocks by circling them in the newspaper with a red pen. He outperformed the indexes four years in a row, from 2003 to 2006, and he did it again in 2008 with a portfolio that only lost 14% while ...
Southwick: Not only are they fun, but they're also really good at investing. This would make me feel like maybe Malkiel was right and I shouldn't bother investing in individual stocks.
Brokamp: Well, not necessarily. There are other studies that show things like this. Research Affiliates did a simulation of this where they would pick random stocks that also would beat the market. And one of the conclusions they drew is actually similar to what I mentioned earlier with "Answers, Answers" in that part ...
But it does go to show that a lot of what happens in the market, in terms of investing over the short term, is luck. I think that's one lesson about this. I actually sent this article -- the one about the stock-picking cat, Orlando -- to Tom Gardner, founder of The Motley Fool and CEO. I said, "Aha, isn't this pretty f...
And his response, and I dug it up today, was, "I find these stories kind of funny, but mostly absurd. One year tells me nothing as an investor. You put that cat up against Charlie Munger over 10 years and it will be begging for mercy."
A lot of these things are very short-term, and I think any stock picker and any mutual fund manager -- anyone who's managing any kind of money -- will tell you that they don't know what's going to happen over the next six months to a year. So who knows? Measuring a cat or someone over a longer period of time would be a...
Southwick: And that's what we're really looking for here.
Southwick: We're really looking to get some meaning behind monkey stock pickers. Rick, if you had a pet monkey, what would you name it?
Rick Engdahl: In high school we had a toy monkey that was passed around between people. It had, like, Alice Cooper makeup and a sword in his hands. It was really scary, horror-movie stuff. And it was named Zip the Monkey, and that is probably what I would name my monkey.
Southwick: Bro, how about you?
Engdahl: I'd want it to get Alice Cooper makeup, too.
Brokamp: Michael Nesmith, my favorite Monkee.
Southwick: My monkey would be named Lord Archibald Fuzzy Britches.
Southwick: Yeah, that's just a good name.
Editor’s Note: Michael Scheuer worked as an analyst for a CIA unit tracking – and trying to understand – al-Qaeda. Under the name “Anonymous,” he wrote Imperial Hubris, a critical look at U.S. counter-terrorist strategies. He was interviewed recently about the War on Terror by journalist Richard Fricker. A version of t...
Scheuer: “From the start, the [CIA’s] clandestine service would much prefer to bring these people to the United States. One of the Cold War hangovers in America is we are still looking for people to do our dirty work. We were so used to, during the Cold War, of using proxies that we’re still doing that. Look how much w...
“There’s just a huge misperception that we are kind of invulnerable and we can have other people do our bidding. In terms of the Islamic militants, on both sides of the aisle in America, there is a huge self-delusion that these people are gangsters and deviants and criminals and that they are such a small part of Musli...
“Al-Qaeda is a liberation movement in many ways in the sense that their main target is not the United States, but to get us out of the way and then to overthrow the Israelis and … Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the tyrannies as they see them.
Scheuer: “The intelligence community, as well the people who worked on counter-terrorism, clearly told the administration that an invasion of Iraq would break the back of a fight against bin Laden because it would validate virtually everything he had said about the United States over the years. This administration came...
Scheuer: “I think the debacle in Iraq is the real horrific thing that’s coming down the road. Al-Qaeda is now al-Qaedaism and has really taken hold in other parts of the world. The media, especially American media, is really bore-sighted on Iraq. But if you look at Thailand and the Philippines, the Northern Caucuses, n...
“The real tragic thing about Iraq is that the administration didn’t put much thought into what they were doing, especially about the Sunnis. They thought they would box them into a place where the Sunnis would attack and we could kill them.
“The militants aren’t going to be bought off with economic improvements. One of the great mistakes that Americans make is to believe that these people are motivated by poverty, or the lack of education or that they don’t have prospects for a career. Al-Qaeda and its allies are mostly middle- and upper-class educated pe...
Scheuer: “I don’t think anybody has been released. … People we picked up are being held someplace else. I don’t think we held anyone until after 9/11. But the rendition program initially delivered people to countries where they were wanted. [These people are either still incarcerated] or they’re dead. We never picked u...
“We still behave as if this were still the terrorism of the Eighties. The terrorism of that era was a lethal nuisance, but it was never a national security threat. The problem, for the U.S. at least is that the possibility of a large attack is a reality and the possibility of another attack is on the horizon.
“What’s going to happen in the United States is that there’s going to be a much larger attack than 9/11 or there will be a kind of nuclear attack with a weapon acquired from the former Soviet Union. The surest sign that neither party in the country takes the possibility of an attack seriously is that we have done nothi...
“Part of the reason we haven’t seen al-Qaeda is because bin Laden had to satisfy an enormous amount of critics within the Islamic militant movement before he attacks us again. He was criticized first for not having warned us enough. Secondly, for not offering us a chance to convert. Both of those things sound silly, bu...
The Green Bay Packers are reportedly fading out of the Dez Bryant sweepstakes.
According to NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, the Packers "do not seem to be in" on signing the wide receiver and "are not expected to be."
The update comes hours after former Dallas Cowboys tight end and Monday Night Football analyst Jason Witten told ESPN's Adam Schefter (h/t PackersNews.com's Aaron Nagler) he thought Bryant would wind up with the Packers.
Bryant, 29, has been searching for a new home since the Cowboys released him in April. Despite his Pro Bowl pedigree, interest has proved sparse.
"There are far more teams that are unwilling to pay Dez Bryant the veteran minimum than there are teams willing to give him a veteran minimum type-contract right now," Schefter said on ESPN's NFL Live earlier this month. "It's going to be tough for him to find work. Eventually something will turn up. There will be an o...
Additionally, Bryant reportedly turned down a multiyear offer from the Baltimore Ravens because he wants to sign a lucrative one-year prove-it deal before hitting the market again, according to veteran NFL scribe Ed Werder.
At this point, though, it appears Bryant may have to make some serious concessions if he wants to find a landing spot soon.
Removing allergens from milk, making mānuka disease-resistant and preventing wilding pines are some potential future uses of gene editing in New Zealand.
The possibilities are explored in the Royal Society Te Apārangi's new discussion paper The use of gene editing in the primary industries, released today.
The paper outlines the relevant considerations, risks and potential benefits for five scenarios of how gene editing could be used for primary production sectors including agriculture, forestry and horticulture.
The Royal Society Te Apārangi said in a statement it was part of its larger Gene Editing in Aotearoa project.
A multidisciplinary expert panel and reference group had been brought together to explore the wider social, cultural, legal and economic implications of gene editing in New Zealand, incorporating Māori perspectives and broader cultural contexts, the society said.
Professor of Molecular Genetics at Massey University and co-chair of the expert panel, Barry Scott, said gene editing techniques would allow more targeted and precise genetic changes than what had been possible before in crop and livestock breeding.
"It's a good time for New Zealanders to consider what gene editing could offer our primary industries and how they'd feel about its use."
The society is holding three workshops around the country to discuss the potential use of gene editing in the primary industries with the panel and reference group members, and gauge New Zealanders' views.
Scott said one potential application of gene editing would be to speed up the time it took to produce new apple varieties.
"New Zealand is known internationally for our apples and there is strong commercial pressure to develop new and improved varieties but the process is slow, because it can take five years before any fruit is produced to start the evaluation and testing of potential new apple varieties.
"Gene editing could offer the opportunity to temporarily remove the gene that slows down flowering – so the trees would flower in eight months instead of five years. Once a new variety of apple with desirable characteristics had been selected, traditional plant breeding would reintroduce the genes that slow down flower...
Another scenario the paper discusses is using gene editing to make mānuka resistant to disease.
Lawyer and panel member Irene Kereama-Royal said myrtle rust and kauri dieback disease had started people thinking about what could be done to conserve native taonga species.
"Extracts of leaves and bark from mānuka have been used for centuries by Māori and, with the growth in the mānuka honey industry, mānuka is now an important plant for New Zealand both culturally and economically. Should we use gene-editing to create new varieties of mānuka that are resistant to disease?"
Massey University agronomist Dr James Millner said if gene editing was able to help protect mānuka it should be evaluated.
"Mānuka is very valuable as a pioneer species after disturbance caused by erosion or fire. More recently, the high value of mānuka honey is driving a lot of investment in the honey industry, ranging from the establishment of mānuka plantations for honey production to the acquisition of hives so that apiarists can incre...
He said recent planting of thousands of hectares, mostly on steep erosion-prone hill country, would result in benefits for the environment and allow landowners to generate income from land which is generally unproductive.
There were a number of examples of self-introducing pests and diseases (blown in on the wind) which had affected or potentially could affect mānuka.
"Myrtle rust is the latest example. Prior to that there have been a number of scale insects which also arrived from Australia. Leptospermum Scoparium is present in Australia so there is considerable potential for more pest and disease arrivals and a risk that one or more of these new organisms could threaten mānuka.
"Mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) is very valuable as a pioneer species after disturbance caused by erosion or fire. More recently, the high value of mānuka honey is driving a lot of investment in the honey industry, ranging from the establishment of mānuka plantations for honey production to the acquisition of hives so...
A third scenario is to use gene editing to make exotic conifer trees, such as Douglas fir, sterile.
Panel member Dr Phil Wilcox said wilding trees were a big problem in New Zealand.
"Not only do they outcompete native species, they invade and modify unique natural ecosystems, are costly to remove and can contribute to pollen allergies."
Wilcox, who has more than 30 years' experience in forestry research, said gene editing could halt the production of cones and pollen in these species, "which would mean that when these trees are planted for forestry, shelter belts, or to help prevent erosion or climate change, they wouldn't escape into places where the...
"There are risks, however," said Wilcox. "For example, the prospect of artificially modified sterile pine or Douglas Fir forests does not sit comfortably with some New Zealanders, who may perceive such forests as unnatural and inconsistent with New Zealand's clean, green image.
"Widespread use of such sterile conifers could exacerbate some of the other issues associated with commercial forestry, including perceived loss of biodiversity and in some cases, poor environmental management."
Dr Elspeth MacRae, Chief Innovation and Science Officer at Crown research institute Scion, said an added advantage to creating sterile trees was a boost to reaching New Zealand's zero carbon by 2050 and low emissions economy targets.
"Faster-growing sterile trees take more carbon out of the atmosphere in any unit of time because they use energy to grow rather than to reproduce.
"Achieving sterile Douglas fir and other plantation conifers will also benefit the 1 billion trees planting initiative of the current government by preventing unmanaged spread of wilding trees."
Professor Andy Allan from the University of Auckland School of Biological Sciences said gene editing of plants should be treated in the same way as any breeding method.
"If the resulting plant is measurably better for the environment or the consumer then that is the only hurdle it should meet."
"At present, these plants are categorised as 'genetically modified' or GM by NZ law, even though the DNA changes made are exactly the same as those created by sunlight, and a lot less than those made by traditional breeding. The simple message should be: these plants now contain new DNA.
"I hope that the [society's] discussion paper on the use of gene editing in the primary industries will be a great start to an adult conversation on benefit versus risk for this breeding method."
University of Otago genetics professor Peter Dearden, of the Bio-Protection Research Centre, said the scenarios in the paper were not really futuristic, but ideas that could be implemented relatively quickly.
"The report clearly shows that the biggest barriers to using these technologies are regulatory ones and that the regulatory regimen is complex and often contradictory."
"The scenarios show the benefits that gene editing could bring in each scenario, clearly indicating the benefits we would miss out on if we do not engage with this technology, and develop the skills to carry out effective gene editing in New Zealand. Without skills and research in gene editing we will not be able to de...
Gluckman said he had looked into ways to reduce agricultural emissions, and we shouldn't shy away from the debate about genetic modification.
He said New Zealand had a "fairly rough" debate a couple of decades ago, and that most people wanted to wait and see what everyone else did.
He said one example was a rye grass that could reduce the amount of methane in cows.
Dunedin - Tuesday October 23, 10am-2.30pm, The Dunedin Centre, Fullwood Room, 1 Harrop St.
The discussion paper is the third in a series, which includes papers exploring the potential use of gene editing for human health and pest control in New Zealand. All resources are available online at royalsociety.org.nz/gene-editing.
You can never have too many heavyweight knits.
We gave the brewer and craft-beer legend a new riff on his signature look.
How Much Would You Pay for an Ugly Christmas Sweater?
They're made with luxury knitwear brand The Elder Stateman, and they're actually pretty cool.
Keep those cardigans and cable knits looking their best.

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