Coupon Crazy

Coupon, Is it good remedy for current inflation fight? I think it is not and coupons are highly addictive. Yesterday when i was in train on the way back home, one lady sitting next to me, cut and cut coupons from newspaper. I was watching it all, to make things worse, she put all waste into me. She carried a separate bag for coupons, the bag was filled of coupons. Okay, that was fine, she is just trying to save some 1 or 2 dollars. After finishing all coupon cutting, she opened other bag and took 3-4 lottery, the one that we have to scratch.So now she started now scratching lotteries, again all wastes into me. I just realized that what ever she saved now from coupon were gone.

One day I was standing in queue at Costco for checkout, a man who was standing in front of me had tons of ton items to checkout. I thought i might have to spent another hour or so to check out after him. He placed all items on checkout belt. As soon as, sales clerk started checking the items, he pulled a coupon from his wallet. The sales clerk refused to take any coupon as it was expired the day before and he also refused to buy any item, which are not covered by coupon. Finally, you won't believe, he ended up buying a banana bunch for $0.99. Ohh...gosh...why some one spent 1-2 hours for shopping and finally checking out $0.99, that too because of coupons?.

But my believe is, this coupons are free ticket for shopping, even though you don't want to buy anything, you will buy something, just because you have a coupon.

How to make money from stock investment – Part 3

Sukumar raised an important question from last post, about when technical chart doesn’t work and pitfall. I explained by using Freddie Mac [FRE] example. I think i need to spend some time here about FRE and decision making process when technical and market conditions are not favorable to us.

The 5 year, 50 SMA [Simple Moving Average] charts for FRE is scary one for us. The chart just fell south from 60 to 7, over last 7-9 months. The investor who followed basic ‘double armor’ rule, that is, one limit order with 15% below buy price and other one with 50% above buy price, are not losers, in fact lot of people made good amount of money from FRE for long time.

Now it is million dollar question whether to buy or watch FRE, we don’t have favorable technical analysis and market condition. can we take risk? If yes, how much…

FRE is a government based enterprise and it will always take care by federal government, no matter what happens to it. Latest fall was obvious that US real estate melt down and foreclosures. So the fall would be well predicted by experienced investors a long ago, i would say last summer itself.

In these conditions, we have to use best case and worst case analysis, this is very good exercise before buying stocks.

Best Case Analysis
1. President Bush today signed Home mortgage relief law (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080730/ap_on_bi_ge/mortgage_relief_q_a_5), which is favorable to almost 400k home owners, who are in the blink of foreclosures.

2. FRE business depends on long term treasury bonds also, a long pause of interest rate cut by Feb reserve and strong dollar are good for FRE.

3. Continue sliding oil price and slightly improving labor market is also good for future home sales and FRE.

4. New government and both McCain and Obama are in favor of consumers and ready to make some more laws and relief’s.

5. Iraq war winding down and all factors are pointing to withdraw from Iraq slowly from next year, and budget deficit may improve next year, if Obama become president.

6. FRE can raise money by liquidity.

Worst Case Analysis
1. First home mortgage write off was estimated as 100 Billion and then 500 Billion and now 1 Trillion. Heck..it is lot of money. It is 8% of US GDP. At this point of time nobody knows whether we reached bottom or not.

2. All foreclosures will impact FRE directly or indirectly, because they are monopoly, market share is 70% of mortgage businesses in US, i mean they can’t share profit lose with anybody other than government. But point to remember is, US fundamental is capitalist, how long government provides this socialism support.

3, New government, new laws and war are long way to go to become fully take effort and time line is indefinable now.

Based on the above analysis, i would recommend wait and see for FRE. If we have say 3-5k or so, sitting in extra cushion, i think we can take some risk with FRE now.

How to make money from stock investment – Part 2

There is important element to cover before buying stocks that is, reading the chart, by using simple moving average. This is straight forward and no brainier, but i’m not sure that this is correct, as per professional standard. Any way i used it for last 8 years and most of the time, it worked ;-)

For example, Apple stock, it is very hot stock right now and many small and individual investors want to buy it. In my opinion, Apple is paradise for long timers, meaning buy and hold for next 2-3 years, you might get more than 100% profit. So the question is, is it right time to buy? Let’s see the chart.

Step 1:
Go to following URL
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=AAPL&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=e50&a=&c=
To get there by clicking links, go to Yahoo.com -> Finance -> Enter AAPL -> Click on Basic Tech. Analysis link -> click 1 year -> click Moving Ave. 50 link

If you want more control, try Yahoo’s interactive chart and click Simple moving average from Tech. indicators drop down and leave 50 days as default value.

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL#chart1:symbol=aapl;range=1y;indicator=sma+volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

Step 2 :
The red graph line is smooth 50 days average of Apple stock for past 1 year. There you can clearly see that peaks and valleys. The blue one is day by day stock price variance for last 1 year.

Step 3:
Based on the chart, Apple’s stock’s high value is 180 and lowest value is 120. Now Apple’s price is 156.

Step 4:
There are 2 lows [120 and 140] and 1 high [180] and current moving ave. graph suggesting me that, Apple’s stock attained 2nd peak and ready to fall for 3rd low. I can point 3rd low is anywhere between 150-145.

Step 5:
It is good to start buying Apple’s stock for 150 and then complete all by 145. What i mean by start and complete here? There is the golden rule of stock buying, never buy all at once. Let’s say, if you are planning to invest 10k for Apple stock, first create 4 limit orders

2.5k for 150
2.5k for 148
2.5k for 146
2.5k for 145

This is like fishing, wait and wait for price drop and patience will prevail.

Now question is what will happen if the price not coming down and i waited for long time??, what is the time limit? i would say, daily check for market conditions, adjust your limit order based on that. I usually wait for 2 weeks to fill up one order and i think optimum time line is one month, having said that we carefully watched moving ave. charts. Since i’m not professional and i might read chart wrongly, to cover up that i usually wait for 2 weeks.

More tips:
1. You can’t find this kind of smooth peaks and valleys for old blue chips companies, because they offer generous dividends, hence stock price variance is almost nil. Good examples are GE and Altria (MO). GE offers 4.50% dividend and MO offers 5.50%. Altria is the stock to buy now, after Philip Morris span off, now it is good entry point now. GE, MO and PM are paradise for conservative buyers, since you can make 5.50% return on investment regardless of stock prices up/down. But most of the investors feel that MO is a sin stock, since it is dealing with tobaccos, but point to remember is no sentiments and emotions for investment business. If you feel that way, you can make some donations to cancer foundation with your profit or offer a gift to guys like me who quit smoking. ;-)

2. There are sometimes, even though chart suggested that stock is ready to fall, it may go upward for sometime. This is because of current market condition. In this situation, we can fill up 25% of our order by market order [buy it immediately] or adjust limit order price to upward.

3. If you are interested in one stock but not sure whether to buy or not, add it in your watch list and daily morning before market opens check the latest news, most of times 50 days SMA alerts might delivered from some professional.

Next post, bull and bear make money but pig always lose why? And how to stop lose like Las Vegas's bust style ;-)

Dark Knight: This Joker is not for jokes

There are very few English movies insisted me to see one more time, Dark Knight is latest one. I can’t explain Heath Ledger’s performance on this movie. You have to watch it!!!...What a terrific and never-tried-before performance by him. It got to me think that no body can act like this other than Heath Ledger. The first time he made a pencil disappeared to plotting to blow up ferry, are excellent and unforgettable.

Other than joker character, this is usual Batmen movie. I never watched previous Batmen movies. Movie is very interesting and Heath Ledger, sorry to miss a legend like him. I got excited to see my daily roaming places from Chicago downtown also.

Last dialogue from joker is "this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object". I had no idea why he wants a phone when he locked up in jail, but the reason is really terrific. The hospital plot also great and costume also.

A must see movie.

Dumb Laws

Taking off from investment series for now. Will be back on over weekend (assumption is i’m not going for fishing) with how to read a chart with simple moving average. Here is fun one…making money should be intelligence with fun.

1. China one kid policy:
Oops…I should blame “Adam” for this, he is one started all when he got bored. “Eve” had no idea what is going on from the start ;-) During 1970s China wants to control its exponential population growth by imposing one-child policy. First it was introduced as short-term goal, but due to huge success, this becomes law with some exceptions. One of the exception is, if one of the parents is single child to their parent, they are allowed to have second kid. Then my question is what will happen after some time, all one child can have 2 children when they ready to become parents. So it is 1 then 2 then back to 1.
(Source: http://people.howstuffworks.com/one-child-policy1.htm)

2. India National Anthem law:
India we are not suppose to sing national anthem at indoors. Still I have no idea why? Is it because we should not patriotic when we are at indoors? India going to host Commonwealth games on 2010, India is now building an indoor stadium, I want to see whether we are going to sing national anthem over there or not (Sometimes we use very high logic to become illogical, i believe…or both me and law interrupter misunderstood this law completely).

3. Islamic pardon law:
Most of the Islamic countries have pardon law, which is a murderer can acquitted if victim’s family can give pardon in writing. Ok. Who will give the pardon? Can somebody show me how many of them acquitted? (may be they get pardon after seeing their face with little sunshine, seeing face may help radical perception change of one’s character).

4. New Jersey gas law:
You cannot pump your own gas

This is stupidity law ever. Now the price of gas, we have to pay extra for pump our own gas with tips? Is it because jersey got polluted from New York waste hence nobody wants to get out of car. I don’t know…(all are misunderstanding of one’s intentional, I guess, and law makers are in hurry or jumping into conclusions to pass this as law without reading it)

5. Ohio five women law:
It is illegal for more than five women to live in a house.

What will happen if someone got 4 girl kids? Their mom has to go out. I don’t know whether to laugh or think (may be law maker confused with gender, “this could be 1 man with 4 women or 2 men with 3 women, may be to avoid more than one marriage” but the truth is all one gender)

6. New York elevator law:
While riding in an elevator, one must talk to no one, and fold his hands while looking toward the door.

(may be law maker is short tempered and strict and introvert ;-)). The law is clear; we have to be standstill position when we ride in New York elevator.. No talking even with your spouse or kids or friends, just concentrate on how elevator goes up.

Source: All US laws are from http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/

PS: A law is a law, no matter what, all citizen have to follow it, whether you liked or not. This post is just for fun. I read (pronounce red) a article about China one kid policy from howstuffwork.com, that inspired this post.

How to make money from stock investment – Part 1

Caution:Stock price movement is totally unpredictable by anybody. Please use it at your risk.

15/50 Rule: From various investment suggestions, I used 15/50 rule, which is sell if price goes down 15% or sell if price goes up 50%. As an individual investor, we have to minimize our loss at same time take off some profit.

For example,
If we buy Apple (AAPL) stock for $100, create two limit orders as soon as we bought the stocks,

1. Sell all if price is $85
2. Sell all if price is $150

This is very straightforward; this works most of the time, but when the market is volatile, we may want to use advance feature called stop-limit order.

Stop limit order is same as limit orders but more precious control than limit orders. Stop-limit order executed as per order, first stop on one price and then execute limit on one price.

We can use the above same example, because Apple stock price now very volatile nowadays, hence 15/50 rule may not work well. Better solution is stop-limit order for this scenario.

Same as above example, we can create 2 stop limit orders,
1. Stop at $85 and sell at $80. (This gives more margin of $5 drop)
2. Stop at $150 and sell at $160 (This gives more margin of $10 gain)

So, how to determine the stop sell prices, my advice would be read the chart. By using simple mathematics, we can assume peaks and valleys by using charts and simple moving average.

Oil Price – where are we heading?

August contract expired as of yesterday, New York crude future trade started for September contract from today onwards. Officially summer travel season ends on September and we are moving towards low demand months of oil consumption. Oil price slides to $127 (and today $124), that is, almost 20% drop from peak, that means, a prolong bull run have been ended. The main factor of oil drop is President Bush’s executive order of lifting ban on offshore drilling, which was approved by most of the US people.

I personally liked Al Gore’s 10 year, 3 trillion dollar investment to transform all energy need from oil to electricity. His views from Sunday’s “Meet the press” really good, but caveat is, he want to do it aggressively and on one go, no baby steps. He is not willing to join any future government position and doesn’t want to advice future president also. I think he want to convenience US business people to make his plan become reality.

There are several talks and brainstorms about future energy needs. This all take years to achieve. But my opinion is, we can’t see a substantial oil price drop and inflation would shoot up year by year for infinite time line.

My dad usually say, “Make more money, spend less, save more, accumulate money in saving account or under mattress”, I was always against to it. New school thought is “Make more money, spend high, invest more in stocks, bonds, mutual funds”. The old school thought is now obsolete. The money in saving account yields 0.5% growth rate per year, which is well below current inflation rate. In order to beat inflation, at least we have to make 5%-15% growth depends on where you live, 5% for developed nation and 15% for developing nation.

When ever I start discussing with my friends about stocks and investments, they always replied with negative tone. Most of them are thinking that stock investment is same as Las Vegas casino, which is not true always, but sometimes yes, when you are not prepared to face the market. One thing I learned from stock investment is, we have to work hard to find out which company to invest, market trends and follow-up with our portfolio at least 8 hours per week.

Greedy: Greediness is first enemy of investments, we can’t expect, invest $100 to grow $1000 within 1 month. On average S & P index yields return on investment of 10-15% per year.

Emotions and sentimental: There is no emotions and sentimental when we try to invest and make some money. Logic and reasoning are the best for investments. Unless there is a nuclear war between US and Russia/or China, we are all safe and sound. A good investor never presses panic button rather he/she buys when others sells out of panic and sells when others are buys.

Collaboration: Regularly communicate with other investors, and learn from others. But i think based on our interest we have to select stocks by ourselves. Make mistakes and learn from mistake.

Learn about new investment options such as ETF, FOREX, Commodity future trading.

Categorize investment style as “aggressive”, “moderator” or “conservative” and based on that we can start invest. In my opinion, normally a good investor starts young age 21-30 would consider themselves as aggressive and 31-45 moderate and above 45 conservative. Based on that we can allocate our funds to various investment options. Aggressive is 100% on stocks. Conservative is 30% on stocks, and 40% on mutual funds and remaining would be in govt. funds.

Resource: There are millions of sites, guide, TV shows and resource for investment, learn them. Before getting into market, you have to be master of investment strategies.

http://www.mymoney.gov/ - The best and unbiased information about stock investments and mutual funds.
http://www.sec.gov/investor.shtml - Security and Exchange commission for accurate and detailed information.
http://www.marketwatch.com/ - Wall Street Journal network, all news and commentary and latest market information.
CNBC TV Show – Mad Money by Jim Cramer and http://www.thestreet.com/investing-a-z/index.html

iBatis, Hibernate, and JPA

Excellent JavaWorld article from Infosys architects(Nitin, Ananya, Mahalakshmi and Sangeetha). I have not come across, this much detailed comparison of object-relational mapping (ORM) technologies, in my recent memory.

But my take on this topic is we can use standard java database connectivity (JDBC) to create, update, read, delete (CURD) operation. The idea of using ORM is to decouple database layer from business logic, so that we can easily migrate to new database. I don’t think most companies are often changing database, other than start-ups, all companies are using standard one-time buy database software such as Oracle, DB2. This article really helps to sharpen ORM knowledge.

I compared software database role with football kicker role, yes, if we see kicker’s game time is very less like less than 5 mins but every 4th play depends on kickers, which means, 25% of play was executed by kickers. Kicker is the one setting next play position by punt and helping teams to win with last minute field goal. Kicker’s role may be limited but value is huge.

Based on my kicker analogy, my opinion is, we need a dedicated team for PL/SQL programming and write as much as store procedures and call those from standard JDBC for any external facing /enterprise applications, of course this approach also has some drawback, but better than all others, and internal applications can use ORM tools.

iBatis is great and more control over SQL than Hibernate. I think iBatis is providing a balanced approach of standard JDBC and ORM. We can directly plug-in SQL into XML file from PL/SQL developers or PL/SQL developer can work with XML files directly. This is definitely an added advantage over other ORM technologies. It provides good support for both iterative database changes as well as separating SQLs from Java code.

Hibernate very effective when we design Java object model first and based on that relational database model. Java object model drives database design is something new thought process and we are not there yet. Hibernate can’t handle a small mismatch between relational and object design. But it provides all robust supports for database layer such as auto SQL, transaction, which are completely missed in iBatis.

Without Smoking – 1 month

One month without smoking is not a big success, but this time not even a single cig, not even a single buff. I think i crossed all physical/mental craving of smoking, still have to fight a long way to go. But last times, i slipped within a week with a single cig, and later on one and so on until i completely back to full form within 3-4 months.

First we have to understand the real facts of smoking addition, why we are smoking and what are the factors triggering smoking. Once we understand the facts, we can easily avoid the smoking craves and stay as non-smoker.

Feeling refresh after a smoke – Coffee is also giving the same refreshment, Tip: buy StarBucks tall coffee and sip it very slowly, 2 sip at a time for 1-2 hours.

Decreased concentration – No scientific study concludes that smoking is giving extra boost for new idea/solution or increase concentration but smokers does. The fact is, the time we walk to smoking place and staring at something and smoking and thinking at same time is the key and sudden increase of nicotine level feels that we are concentrating more until next cycle. Tip: same can be done with, staring at white board or ceiling or floor or something, thinking/analyzing by drawing a picture on a paper also helps a lot.

Seeing somebody else smoking – This is the worst craving factor for ex-smokers. We can’t avoid that also. Don’t see it, walk very fast if somebody start smoking on street, or shop entrance, if possible hold off breath for 10-15 seconds.

Celebrate achievements – Smokers have to smoke when they feel that they achieved something, such as fixed a broken car engine or caught a big fish or favorite team won at season opener etc. Tip: stand up and walk around or drive to StarBucks, again coffee 2 sip at a time for 1-2 hours.

Controlling stress – This one is very tough but doable. But based on my experience, smoking is creating more stress than real one. If some stressful event happen, all we need to do is thinking for 10-15 mins, after we found the solution, the stress will disappear. We need smoking to start thinking and try to found an answer within smoking time. But i think, the real solution is far away than time consuming for smoke.

Eating disorder – This is really worrisome, because after quit smoking, our taste buds improves and slowly we start eating more. i think putting extra few pound is not a real issue unless we are very concern about beauty and body shape. But we need to make sure that our cholesterol level is well within control and avoid fatty foods as much as possible.

Dealing with blue – After 1-2 weeks without smoke, we start feeling loneliness and feel like we lost something important. This is really a passing phase. We can avoid this by using nicotine replacement and spent more time with family and write more blog, engaged with some activity is really important.

Disclaimer: All are my personal opinion. I’m neither an experienced medical professional nor a quit smoking counselor, please use/follow it at your own risk.

Going Local : Chicago Updates

Crime Rate
It was very hot weather in Chicago, so do crime rate, either people are going crazy or they are getting guns very easily from market. Last 2-3 days, evening TV news and Chicago Tribune overwhelmed with crime news. June was worst month for crimes and increased 12.8% over last year. Mayor and Police Chief are pointing fingers to each other, but no solutions, all politics, obviously waste of time. The worst part of these shooting is, young teen kids are got killed. This is inexcusable and highly unacceptable. What is the point of killing innocent kids, they can't even carry a gun.

Taste of chicago got sour experience for visitors, all over internet forums, youtube overloaded with last day taste of chicago shooting videos. So this resonates all across US and world. Eventually this all creates bad image for Chicago and chances for 2016 olympics is in stake.

All this crime rate increasing, because of some people's greediness and drug related gangs. This bad guys are getting more support from Supreme court, which re-affirm 2nd amendment, that allows all US citizen can carry gun for self-defense. If i understand correctly, 2nd amendment was very old and don't had government supported police force . Now we have sophisticated police force, monitoring systems, CCTV, court and many more to protect us from criminals. I don't know what's logic behind that?

Stir Crasy tasteful mix
After a long time, we ate dinner at Stir Crazy this weekend, if you want a spicy and tasty mix, try one spoon of thai masala with two spoon of chilly paste and half spoon of curd, hmmm...taste is really great, nothing can be comparable. Really great taste.

Fishing Report
Today great weather for fishing but high winds, I went to Shabbona Lake. 78F, low humidity, but high winds 32 MPH. Because of wind, i couldn't catch any fish ;-). But great place to visit for picnic,boating and fishing.

iPhone 3G – Ready, Steady and Go

O.K. I’m glad that Apple “moved on” with old iPhone model and introducing next generation of iPhone, starting tomorrow. I think last 2-3 years, mainly mobile phones, evolution happening so fast, and definitely this new model from Apple, fuel already heated mobile phone competition. This is good for consumerism dominated society.

This 3G model got more media focus and everywhere talk and thoughts are about iPhone 3G. I think after “Bill Gate’s retirement”, Steve Jobs getting all media focus, because he is the only one now can replace Gates for media to get attention from public.

The main new features of new iPhone 3G are,

1. 3G network support, of course faster than EDGE networks. But we have to check AT&T 3G coverage area. As of now, only major cities have this advance network.

2. Half the price, price for new iPhone slashed by 50% than the previous models, but the catch is new iPhone buyers have to pay $10 per month more for AT&T 3G data plan.

3. GPS support, based on my experience with classic iPhone, Google map is the main breaker of iPhone stability. When ever i open Google map application, iPhone would crash. This new GPS support required constant touch with Google map, so i don’t want to tell the rest. It all depends on how apple improves iPhone software’s stability with this new release. No voice direction available at this time.

4. Custom apps, new iPhone 3G comes with iPhone new software version 2.0, this new software supports to add more applications from 3rd party developers. Some of them are free, and most of them are cost us $9.99. iPhone classic also gets this new software update, so they can also use custom application.

5. Microsoft exchange server support, this is intended for business users, we can use AT&T business data plan or Apple’s MobileMe feature to sync with office email exchange servers.

Why I’m writing this post is, to support guys like me, who wants to buy iPhone 3G but already owned iPhone classic and want to convince their spouse, pretend like "who does’t know anything" about iPhone 3G ;-)

Source : http://www.macworld.com/article/133988/2008/06/iphone3gfaqs.html

Chaos Theory

3 weeks back, i watched a Tamil movie “Desavadharam”, the movie was really great and everybody talked about actor Kamal Hasan’s 10 different roles. In my opinion, that was really fantastic. For me, my curiosity re-heighten from the movie is, chaos theory because the movie is based on chaos theory.

Chaos theory is “fact that the systems that the theory describes are apparently disordered, but chaos theory is really about finding the underlying order in apparently random data”. When we try to fix “hard to reproduce or complex” issues from production system, i think chaos theory is the key. I wrote my previous company’s internal blog, there i mentioned that when we try to debug a complex issue, note down all the issues/ and unsuccessful steps, which we followed to fix the issue. I think i mentioned chaos theory over there. The descriptions of issues with steps to fix are random orders but after some time if we analysis all points, we can predict what would be the real issue and solution for the issue.

Chaos theory really helpful to predict stock price future movements, future trade,weather and even our day by day activities. All we need to do is, store all data, as it appear random, after some point of time, we slowly analyse random events and thus we can easily predict what’s next. But most important point is, we have to store all relevant data. In my opinion, we need enormous data storage to analysis and predict something.

Medicine for Phobia is...

Everywhere we can see some kind of phobia or fear affected people. If we see the list of phobias, it is quite big and we can't imagine that people are afraid of these things. But reality is, there are 8 to 18% of people from US affected by some kind of phobias.

But as per my personal experience, the medicine for phobia is the same phobia stimuli object or situation itself. For example, i was Aquaphobia — fear of water, when i was kid. My dad one day took me to a pool and just pushed me into water. What a surprise? my phobia was gone and i learnt swimming within 2-3 days by myself.

But there are some phobias we can't do anything. There is one peculiar phobia is Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia — fear of the number 666. Another one is Paraskavedekatriaphobia, Friggatriskaidekaphobia — fear of Friday the 13th.
I think i can't prounce them correctly or write them without typo in my life time.

As technology improves, this new phobias list also growing. A new kind of phobia is Nomophobia — fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Other interesting and worth to mention phobias are
Xenophobia — fear of strangers, foreigners, or aliens.
Taphophobia — fear of the grave, or fear of being placed in a grave while still alive.
Panphobia — fear of everything or constantly afraid without knowing what is causing it
Coulrophobia — fear of clowns

Microsoft without Gates or Gates without Microsoft

O.K. We can find a smart, sharp intellect, high IQ people any time, any where. No problems. But finding a person with all the above quality with

A) Can foresee future of world
B) Thinking always how to improve future technology that makes people life easier.
C) Constant quest for knowledge
is rare and nearly impossible.

Bill Gates is one of the kind people of our generation. Everybody hated him, when he was trying to capture world by windows operating system, he was labeled as monopolist (that was true, hey nobody is perfect!!!), and even US antitrust law nearly tumbled him from top. But even the judge presumably used Windows-Word to type the judgment, he made windows available all the places, every corner of world.Nobody could reach at his height for near future.

Almost all techno geeks were against him, complaining about buggy windows, less taste products, cunning business mind, arrogant, aggressive, greedy and not too intuitive products etc.

All are went silence when he announced that, he is going to concentrate more on philanthropy and donated 99% of his wealth to his (and his wife) charity.(so it is his wealth made angry of others first not products...just kidding..thats was almost history ;-0). I believe because of the extraordinary forward thinking power of him, he can quickly sense that something needs to done for humanity, otherwise humanity will not survive, mainly Sahara African nations and other parts of Asia. Even his kids would inherent only some portion of his wealth. Because he perhaps thinks his kids already inherent $50 billion worth of brain.

Even though, he officially retired from day by day job from Microsoft, in my opinion, he can’t stay away from Microsoft for long. Now he wants to be non executive chairman of Microsoft, want to visit Microsoft for presentation ceremonies, want to attend internet future conferences. These all are indications that he would back to at least officially consultant based job at Microsoft again.