What is Harmful ?

 Knowledge is commoditized today. For anything and everything, we refer google. These are times, even when we have an ailment, we do not go to the doctor 1st, we google 1st then go to the doctor and tell the doctor what’s our probable problem based on the symptoms we have.  So much so that a Doctor came up with a funny fee structure like below - 

Is this limited only to “Others” and “Medical advice”. No, When I put myself in that scene, I am too like that. Each time I have to decide about something, Either I will discuss about it with close associates and then Google or the other way around but googling is not going away! When I think about it, I google more to vet the information I have got from others and I have never vetted the information google gave me! It seems I trust google more just like most others around me. 

So the last week IPL started and I was asked to initiate Fantasy league Mails we play within our office. The game is all about predicting the winning team. The mail would carry information about the 2 teams that are playing that day’s match & a voting button to pick the winner. For some reason, though I was excited to see Dhoni & CSK Play, I never follow the IPL to the “T”. so I had to googled up – IPL 2025 Schedule, Google threw me this – 

I sent out a mail – Match#1 – CSK vs MI. Nothing significant about the mail other than the fact that it went to my Boss’ Boss’ Boss. That’s all! Fortunately, a good friend of mine corrected me quickly that the 1st Match is not “El Classico” but RCB playing KKR. Things were corrected quickly. All’s well that ends well. 

In hindsight -  

This got me thinking, was Google wrong? 

  1. Wrong Question – May be I should have googled – IPL 2025 Match#1 and not IPL Schedule, the answer might have been correct. 
  2. Cross Check – The 1st para of this blog is all about using google to cross check what others say but this time I never cross checked what google said with others, Maybe I should stick to my process of “Cross Checking” 
  3. Luck / Unluck – I was unlucky in getting the right answer from google but luckily My Boss’ Boss’ Boss never saw the wrong mail but in fact appreciated the teaser mail I had sent earlier. I just got lucky in the end!

In the end, this was just a non-event. But in today’s world there’s social media everywhere throwing all kinds of information – Insta, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn and so many others, so many more. Being in wealth management industry, I see so many people just go by handling their hard-earned money just by hearing/seeing things on social media. Do they bother to 

  1. Ask the “Right Question”
  2. To “Cross check” the information 
  3. Undermine the role of “luck”

Of course, Knowledge is commoditized today, and you can get it at click of a button, but Wisdom is not! I leave it to everybody to imagine – How Harmful It will be to your wealth if you handle money based on social media Knowledge. 


Ask yourselves – What is harmful! 



For any financial Planning queries, please contact Droplet Wealth at invest@dropletwealth.com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Gold “really” Glittering ?

Image
Gold is in a phenomenal bull run. Since the beginning of this year, its up 10% and in last year or so it has gone up by 34%, Since the Covid days its up a full 106 % and since 2014, its up almost 200% (~195%). Given these kinds of returns, it’s natural that we get excited and want to jump ship from one asset class to other or over allocate to an asset class. To make matters worse, the Equity returns over the last 18 months have tumbled, making Gold returns look all the more mightier.  So, its not really a bad time to “Stress Test” Gold and see if it’s really Glittering?  We are firm believers that any investment that we make should be looked at from a long-term view meaning starting with a minimum 5 years and then we move on to higher periods. As soon as the investment is ear marked for a long term period, its natural that the investment is made in to equity as we are again firm believers that over longer periods of time , equities outperform other asset classes.  Th...
Read more

Using Automation to create more Wealth

Image
 Couple of weeks back, Microsoft backed Open AI came with its latest version of the AI Tool - ChatGPT-4o. Everyone's already excited about how this AI tool is going to make their work and life more easy and efficient. Given the context, It got us thinking  - Are there automation tools that help us create more wealth ? That will make our investing more efficient ? That will make our life more easy. Can AI /Automation help us finally discover the holy grail that will make us super-duper rich?    Like all comman men, we saw if it can help us find the best mutual fund? or find that exciting Option Strategy ? or give a formula that can help me find next Infosys, Reliance or HDFC Bank? or help me do Algoritham trading that has made crores of rupees for Institutional investors? or heck can it atleast help me buy a "Winnable lottery ticket?  We realized that they may or may not give us the answers we seek but for assure none of these guarantee success....
Read more