This is my 99th blog. And I wanted to sort of look back over the blogging journey and write a blog about the blogs.

What is Interest Upon Interest?

Some websites have such cool names. And I wanted something cool for my website and I wanted it to relate to the eighth wonder of the world – Compound Interest. Websites with names such as 72 or Know72 or eight wonder were all taken. So among the few names I could think of as a proxy to Compound Interest was Interest Upon Interest. It’s not a great name, but it’ll do.

How did I start writing?

The journey of blogging is intertwined with the my journey as an Investor. And therefore, let me start with the latter.

In 2003, while doing my MBA at MDI, Gurgaon my first interest was Marketing. In my 2nd year, Prof. Sanjay Bakshi was teaching an finance elective called Securities Analysis and Business Valuation. Attending that course was totally by chance, but I understood nothing in that course.

In 2015, I had taken a sabbatical from work. And I read all of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders until then. It was easy and fun to read. And then a light bulb went on in my head that said “Be like Warren Buffett. Put Compound Interest to work”. And so after much dilly-dallying, in 2017 I quit my job and became a full time investor.

I also noticed that people who were into investing were all reading a lot of books, taking ideas from those books and applying to investing. And along with reading and investing they were writing nice blogs too. So I decided to do the same: read, invest, write, repeat. So much for originality.

I first started writing a blog in 2015. I wrote about 10 or 15 blogs until 2017 and then I thought it was too embarrassing, so I deactivated that website. I made a second attempt at blogging in May of 2018 and I started to do that on Medium.com. After about 8 months, I thought my blogs should be published in my own website and so I ported those blogs to this current website. So yes, the first 10 or 15 blogs of the current 99 started life in Medium.

Why do I write?

I don’t have any product or service to sell; the blog is merely an expression of love for Investing. If Warren Buffett didn’t write letters, I would never have found my love for investing. And there are things that Buffett has explained way better than anyone else. Take the one on: The Great, The Good and The Gruesome in 2007. Or the ones he has written on the Insurance Industry and the Reinsurance Industry. So, just as Buffett passed on his love for investing through his writings, I am doing my small bit here.

A second reason why I blog is for my children. If I were not around tomorrow, they would have some of my thoughts and pointers to look up Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger for guidance.

A third reason is that I experience a state of flow when I write. For those few hours the mind is totally focused only on what I am writing on and I lose track of time.

I have stayed away from writing on politics, controversies and on the current hot topics. My view is that most of that is noise. It seems important now, but 6 months from now you won’t be able to remember it. I’d rather write on what is timeless like say “Power of Incentives” or “Non linearity”.

And lastly and most importantly:

Dear Reader – Thank you for your reading and providing kind words of encouragement. I cherish the few emails that I have received regarding the blogs and their quality. It tells me that I have been somewhat successful in spreading the love for investing.

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The 50th blog was written by a friend and 75th blog was written another special friend Anshul Khare. Continuing with this tradition, the 100th blog will also be written by a special friend. Look out for that one!

Cheers!