Whither convergence?

All aspects of life are being converted into bits and bytes and being stored nowadays.  Every person will soon have a unique ID, which a camera will identify just by panning at his face. Every object in every part of the world will have its own string of identifiers and be tracked continuously by computers across the world.  Every time you pass any checkpoint (and there could be one on every street) your passing will be recorded by some computer and stashed away. The computer of course would have identified you either by analyzing the way you look, the way you walk, or even the pattern of your nose.  Every vehicle will send a constant stream of GPS co-ordinates to a satellite which will be stored for later retrieval. Every person’s location will be tracked every minute through his cellphone signal, and this data fed into a database. Every conversation he has on his phone will be recorded somewhere. Cameras mounted on cars will trawl streets and feed real time images to map-sites. Giant databases will store all this information. There will be backend programs constantly tagging keys to this data and indexing them for future retrieval. The data could be in the form of alphanumeric entries as well as live video feeds.

Every person’s shirt or some other accessory on his body will carry a video camera linked to the internet which will send a constant feed of whatever the camera sees.  Life will be ruled by a plastic card – a super-smart card which will act as your wallet, your credit card and your entry to your office, apartment and club.  It will be the key to admit you wherever you have to go, while at the same time it will act as a lock to prevent others from accessing what is yours. 

There will be cameras placed in the inside of your body at strategic intersections in your blood vessels to see if you are working fine.  The moment your heart misses a beat or a foreign particle enters the bloodstream it will alert your doctor who will pump some extra medicine by remotely instructing the drug canisters placed in your body. The precise mix and dosage of how much drug from each canister, will of course be calculated by the computer.  It is possible that the computer may decide – the doctor may not even intervene. If you forget to take your medicine as per the prescribed dosage, of course the computer will know, and your nominees may be denied your insurance on the grounds that you brought about your own demise.

Supermarkets will have RFID tags imprinted on every product, and RFID readers at every aisle and at the checkout.  You won’t even have to swipe to bill.  All you will have to do is pass through the checkpoint with a loaded cart –you will be billed, the money will be transferred, and your bill will be mailed to you without even your having to remove your card from your wallet.  The list of what you bought will of course then exist in a giant computer somewhere.

It will be possible to transfer money to anyone in the world or receive it by punching in the amount and a few numbers.  You will be able to retrieve details of all that you own, at the press of a button, and so will someone who has access to your data.

If you want to make sure students don’t bunk classes, the benches will tell.  If you want to make sure your employees are not goofing off while on their sales rounds, you ask the computer to compare their GPS co-ordinates for the day with their sales reports. And for good measure, to check on the GPS co-ordinates of the persons they were supposed to have met as well.

The databases will have data-mining software with sophisticated AI-impregnated algorithms which will analyze all the data about you and create your profile – where you stay, where you go, where you work, whom you meet, what you do, what you eat, what you buy, how you spend, how you spend your time, and, by extension, what you think.  Your profile will be matched against other profiles which match you on various parameters and the computer will draw up your psycho-profile. It will then try to guess what you will do, where you will go, what you will eat, what you will buy, what you will spend on, how you will spend your time, and by extension, what you are likely to think. This data will of course be available to marketers for a fee.  You will aid in this process by the trail you leave on your email, twitter, facebook, linked-in, and all your online travels through gateways such as Google.

The very same marketers will subscribe to the advertisement service at the billboard at the street corner. The moment the billboard sees you in the crowd it will flash advertisements customized for you.  It could even flash your name on the screen if it so desired and if the law permitted it.

All magazines will be downloadable online into your e-reader.  Each magazine will be customized with its own sequence of ads depending on the profile of the customer downloading it. Your e-reader will not be different from your single-access-card (which we spoke about), your cellphone, your laptop, your internet connection, or your TV.  They will all be part of one gadget which will be tied to you.  In fact, it will be programmed to cry, and to cry out, if separated from you by a distance of more than ten feet.

All things in the world will be linked, or linkable, through interlinked databases. Most of the applications mentioned above are actually real – it is happening in some part of the world today. Every day databases are growing larger along with the amount of storage space increasing, and the cost of storage is growing smaller.  Chips are getting more powerful, and algorithms more savvy. Computers are getting linked, and data is being shared. The speed at which data can be transmitted is increasing at an exponential pace. Every activity of daily life can be stored for posterity in the form of these bits. And the giant brains linking them are getting smarter.

Newer and newer applications will be found for all this data that is sitting around. Newer linkages, newer insights, and newer ways of exploiting those insights.  The day may soon arrive when the computers which have all this information start sharing it among themselves, form their own conclusions and start controlling our lives!  In any case someone who has the power can easily kill you by wiping off all your traces from the databases.  A more effective form of death than stopping of the breath.

Happy Brave New World!

Part 13: Marketing gimmicks and investor psychology

“This is your only chance to invest in the New Fund at Rs.10! As the NAV rises later, you will have to pay more!”  And you rush to hand in your money. What difference does it make what NAV you invest at? But ask the marketers. It works!

There is a fund house that is advertising heavily that they pay regular dividends out of their funds.  Assume you are young (which most of you are) and you are investing for the long term.  You would in that case want to invest in a fund for the long term and not keep taking the money out. As we saw earlier, for the power of compounding to take effect, you have to keep your money invested for the long term without dipping into the dividends.  In this case, every time you receive a dividend, you would have to reinvest it somewhere.  And where does the dividend come from? It comes from your own corpus, and the moment the dividend is declared your NAV drops to that extent.  Why then is it an advantage that the fund declares frequent dividends? 

The insurance company runs a highly sentimental ad that shows the father taking his child out for a walk by the sea, and dreaming about his future. Or the wife coming home to find her husband in what she thinks is a dead state.  Some clip like that is followed up by the conclusion that you should invest in a ULIP. Where is the connection? If it’s insurance they are selling, they should be selling you a pure Term Plan. If it is investments they are peddling, they should be talking about pure returns. As per IRDA regulations, they are supposed to put “Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation” at the end of every message.  They should change that to “Your emotions are the subject matter of exploitation”.

It’s the month of February, and you have to invest Rs.50,000 in tax saving schemes.  You have done all the homework and have zeroed in on three schemes, all of which are equally attractive.  What do you do then?  You split your money into three portions, and invest in all three schemes.  Why would you want to do that?  All of them are almost risk-free since they are guaranteed by the Government of India, and offer the same returns.  Perhaps you get more satisfaction by having more pieces of paper in your hand, and more items to keep track of. 

Instead of taking one insurance policy for a life cover of Rs.10 lakh, you buy two ULIPs, one endowment, and one money-back, all totaling up to a cover of Rs. 10 lakh.  You obviously spend more time thinking about the options, cutting the cheques, and keeping track of each of these policies. Why do you not just buy one policy for Rs.10 lakh?  Since you work more to keep track of them, do you feel more vindicated that you are doing something?  When it comes to investments we frequently fall into this trap. In the absence of more money at our disposal (which is true for all of us – this lack of money) we try to make up for it by more activity. We have all been brought up with the virtues of working hard and working more dinned into our heads since childhood.  In investments, as in other areas of life, we don’t often question the need to work harder – we just do, and it makes us feel better!

Your broker keeps calling you to tell you which stock is up today and which is down. NDTV and other news channels constantly run tickers at the bottom of the screen on stock prices which change by the minute. You have loads of buy and sell recommendations thrown at you. Some of them say that you have to target a return of x% and then sell.  Sell and do what?  Buy another stock of course! You sell
Company A and buy Company B, and your friend sells Company B and buys Company A.  Both of you are happy that you are constantly active in the act of making your money grow. Who benefits out of all this activity?  I do not know if you or your friend benefit, but the broker certainly does.  His commissions are made on executed trades. He makes money only if you buy and sell, not if you do nothing. Hence, it is in the interests of the trade to make you constantly trade!

Every time you buy and sell, you lose about 1 to 1.5 percent.  If you do this on average three times in a year, that’s 3 to 5% gone.  Out of your return.  Over the long term, when you compound the losses over several years, what would it be?  The only reason why you would buy a stock is if you consider a company as valued far below its intrinsic worth, and you would sell if the converse were true.  Why do you think the intrinsic worth of a company would keep changing on a day-to-day basis when it is dependent on the long term prospects of the company? Even if you were taking a timing call on the market, that would not vary on a day-to-day basis.

But try sitting tight and not doing anything and you will feel miserable.  It’s human psychology. You want to be doing something all the time, or you can’t seem to justify your existence, even to yourself. Investing is as much about fighting the markets as it is about fighting yourself!  If you invest directly into the stock markets, you should check the stock prices only once in a long while (what is long, I leave it to you to decide – Warren Buffett would say a few years), and act only after due deliberation. If you are not the kind to invest directly into the market, but prefer mutual funds, then pick a few (very few) mutual funds and stick to them for reasonably long periods of time.  Review fund performances once in a year or something, and adjust your asset allocations slightly to match changed circumstances. 

Discipline in this case, is to consciously try to do less!  I shall refrain from writing more – bye till the next issue!

Part 12: The World works for its own benefit, not yours

So we are willing to take losses; not happy, but willing.  This is because we understand that any asset class comes with its inherent risk/return equation, and losing money is part of the investment game.  However, there are other reasons that we take losses as well, and those reasons are due to the fact that we are not well informed.  There’s no reason for us to get into those common traps – let’s examine some of them.

We rush to invest in IPO’s.  It’s like someone is distributing lollipops free.  We take trouble to fill in forms, block our money for days, and wait for the allotment.  If the allotment comes - and most of the times, it is partial allotment - we are jubilant, as if we have just won a lottery. It’s a major victory since we know several people who did not manage to get allotments. Have you ever reflected on the fact that it’s the promoters who are selling their shares to you in an IPO; and they have decided the timing, and the price? Would you want to buy something at a time and price convenient to you, or to the seller?

IPO’s invariably are announced when the market is doing well and share prices are generally buoyant. The promoter teams up with a merchant banker who creates slick presentations on why the company has a great future.  A lot of fiction gets distilled into numbers at this point. It is marketed heavily, and both institutional and retail investors queue up.  The amount of oversubscription in some cases is huge, thus requiring a lottery for allotment. Obviously, since demand is high, you would expect the price to go up significantly on listing; hence you rush to invest.  Pause: are you investing in the company for its long term prospects or short term trading gains?  If it is the latter, then you are just waiting for another fool to come and buy it from you at a price higher than what you paid – it’s called the greater fool theory. In times of intense speculation, this works well – just hope you are not the last fool who is left holding the baby!

Most IPO’s fall below their issue price within a year of listing.  Of the several companies which came out with IPO’s in the last five years, you would hardly touch 20% of them today – the others are either names you have not heard of, or companies that do not inspire any confidence.  Why don’t we just wait and pick them up at our time and our price from the market?  That’s because the marketing machinery creates an illusion of shortage; and we want to go grab it since we may never get it in future. There was a time when in India IPO prices were set by the Controller of Capital Issues (CCI), a government body that used to set the price at far below the intrinsic value.  Equity culture was not prevalent then, and those who applied to IPO’s and held on to it, made a lot of money.  There is no more CCI now, and the promoters are free to price issues at any level they want. Looks like as a society we have still not got away from the hangover of discounted pricing. Don’t you rush to the big bazaar when there is a discount sale on?

As an employee of Fidelity, you are anyway not supposed to invest in IPO’s. Rather than a lost opportunity, it may actually be a blessing in disguise!

Your primary motivation for insurance is to save on tax.  You think you are killing two birds with one stone. So you contact the “agent” who happens to be your aunt twice-removed whom you met at your wedding. She understands nothing of financial planning, but of course you know that.  Or, she understands a lot of financial planning – her own, and is out to maximize her commission. She pushes a Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP) product on you – you get to save tax, you get insurance, and your money is invested so that it grows! Killing three birds with one stone!  What is never stated is that there is only one bird in this case, and that’s you; and there are three stones.

There are far better avenues to invest to save on tax – PPF, ELSS are two examples. There are far better ways to insure yourself – term insurance is the best example. And there are far better ways to grow your money – investing directly in mutual funds saves you all those horrendous commissions that are deducted from your premiums and gives you a much more transparent product where you are able to track what’s going on. As you keep paying your premiums you never really understand what happens to your money, and how much commission your aunt gets in the process.  You do get a lot of money back – you are happy but do not realize that the returns are in most cases less then inflation.  You would have been better off keeping your money under the pillow. The aunt talks very sweetly to you whenever you meet, but even simple things like reminding you to pay your premiums, or helping you change your address in the records, she won’t do!  She will, though, definitely attend the naming ceremony of your son, so that she can sell you a Child Plan – guaranteed to secure his (and the aunt’s) future!

Your trusted bank manager who has access to your bank account details calls you. Coincidentally, it is about the time when your bonus has been credited to your account.  He sends over the wealth manager / your trusted relationship advisor / slick salesman to meet you at your office. Since you are a “preferred customer” they come to your doorstep to take your money away – in any case you will not see a major part of it again, but they make it easier to hand over for the High Net Worth customers.

The person who has come to meet you has targets.  He is supposed to sell you all kinds of products for which the bank has tied up with various providers. These include mutual funds, insurance plans, and more insurance plans.  When it comes to funds they will try to push NFO’s (New Fund Offers) on you since that is where the commissions are maximum.  When it comes to insurance their preferred order of selling will be ULIP’s, Pension  Plans, Child/Widow/Widower/Daughter’s marriage, etc. Plans and Plain Money Back or Endowment Plans, and they won’t even mention term insurance.  When it comes to your own financial health the preferred order is reverse – in fact, you should be buying only term insurance and nothing else; and investing in funds with good track records, preferably directly on your own without advisor fees.

Of course, your trusted personal wealth manager (since you are a “preferred customer”) has only your interests at heart. He will be very solicitous about your health, inquire about your family, sympathize with you about your marital state or state of marriage, and then proceed to use all that information against you. You will have tears in your eyes by the time you sign away your bonus cheque into six different products, most of them savings-cum-insurance plans, since he has been so eloquent in his sales pitch.  He is happy since he has achieved a substantial portion of his target through you, managed to sell you the products on which he gets the most commissions, and managed to convince you that he is your friend.  It’s what is called a win-win situation.  Where everyone wins but you lose. The branch manager is still not happy – his targets are high, and he needs his sales guys to find a hundred more customers like you.

And so it goes on. You are the golden goose, and they are out to milk you.  I think I am mixing metaphors somewhere.  Milking the golden goose sounds a little funny – but you get the idea. 

More about marketing gimmicks in the next issue.  Bye!

On Technology

Technology is advancing at such a fast clip nowadays that it is impossible to keep up.  And AAARAAA too – that’s short for “Acronyms Are Advancing Rapidly Across All Activities”. I’m sure you are not aware of some of the latest technical (and management) acronyms that are a result of the initiative undertaken by AEIUAA - Association for Enhancement and Integration Of Universal Animal Acronyms.  If you haven’t heard of that organization, you should google.

The AGE Committee (Acronym Generation Evaluation Committee) is currently looking at including these acronyms into the DOTAGE – Dictionary of Technical Acronyms in
General English.

MULE: Multi User Limited Experience: Technical Enhancement to Massively Multi-user Online Games to Limit the experience of certain category of players based on age and other criteria.

DOG: Dedicated Optimized Gateway: The rapidly evolving science of Optimizing Dedicated Paths used by companies on Public Gateways to enable greater speeds while ensuring greater security of data.

CAT: Collaborative Application Terminal: Artificial Intelligence built into “dumb” terminals to enable collaboration across Applications.  Also stands for the Common Admission tests of the Indian Institutes of Management which are currently struggling to go online.

COW: Co-located Online Workstation: The new feature offered by certain advanced call centers, where two associates who are remotely located can be co-located thorough on-line meshing of their workstations.  A very advanced technology still under development.

PIG: Practical Implementation Guidelines: On the principle of KISS – Keep it Simple and Stupid comes this new SRS (Systems Requirement Specifications) development guideline – a new standard for Implementation Guidelines to be part of standard SRS documents in future.

EMU: Extended Management Unit: An extension of management cells into branch locations designed to replicate all decision-making functions – not just a branch office, but a head office in a branch.  When applied to Chip Manufacture, refers to remote special-purpose chips being used as temporary EMU’s or extensions of the CPU to speed up processing.

HEN: Heuristic Engagement Networks: Optical Fiber Networks that figure out on their own how to re-route data packets based on statistical analysis of traffic density at various points of time during the day, and current and expected load of traffic.  Uses extensive heuristic thumb-rules developed by the NSO – Network Statistical Organization.

ANT: Application Networking Terminal: A terminal that enables Applications to cross over on their own across various networks thus ensuring seamless connectivity and performance. 

RAM: Rapid Application Management: Software techniques to enable quick development of enhanced versions of existing applications – popularized by the new book “Ram it through” by Ram Ramgopal.

BEES: Business Enhancement and Effectiveness Strategy: A new technique originating from Harvard.  Means what it says.  What it says can be learnt more in detail through a five-day seminar in Boston costing 100,000 dollars. 

LIONS: Latency Inhibited Offline Network Server: A Server that acts as an Offline Inhibited Network Router – helping to cache data offline, for specified amounts to time depending on traffic density, and release it in tranches based on programmed latency models – the current servers that are being tested increase Total Network Throughput (TNT) by about 20% while the average increase in time delay is only 2 milliseconds.

MOOSE: Multi-User Online Oligopolistic Server Enhancement – an initiative by Microsoft and Intel to compete in the server market. They intend to combine their respective expertise in software and hardware to create special servers for massively multi-user online environments.  It’s one of the initiatives under their Future Initiatives Baselining (FIB) project.

OX: Obsolescent Xtras: Useless resource-guzzling features that all application software developers are alleged to add to their products to ensure that current hardware configurations become obsolescent.  It is suspected that this is a conspiracy between the major software and hardware companies to increase sales of their products.  The allegations have not been proven. “When they want to retire their hardware early, they ask the software people to OX it.”

FOX: Freeflowing Online Xtensions: Extensions to open source online software.

TIGER: Time Induced Growth and Extinguishment Rationale: Modern theory of how to manage a Product Life Cycle – how to grow it, milk it, and kill it over time.  Refer to the bestselling book “Evolution of the TIGER – Management Lessons from the Jungle” by Prof. Mule of Mumbai.

VIXEN: Vertically Integrated Xpanded Enhanced Networks: After the era of Networks expanding horizontally across the world – the coming era is expected to be one of vertically integrating all networks with the businesses and applications they serve to create a seamless global knowledge network.  Research in this area is fast gathering momentum.

ZEBRA: Zero-based Estimation of Budgets, and Rational Allocations: A new advancement in Finance theory combining zero-based budgeting with “Theory of Rational Allocations based on Social Inequality – a new Paradigm for Justice” by Prof. OBC Iyer.  This is expected to be the next big thing after Going Green.

Part 11A: It is time to take stock (answers)

1) If you estimate that your current monthly expenses (for your family of four) are in the region of Rs.20,000 per month, what is the corpus you would need today, in order to be able to retire?  It’s a very open-ended question so let’s put in some more conditions.  Use the method already explained in Part 1, and make a similar assumption for taxes. Assume that your corpus will yield 8% p.a. pre-tax. Since you still don’t own a house, you need to add Rs.25 lakhs to your final answer. I am looking for one number, in Rupees.

Ans: Rs.97 lakhs.

A corpus of Rs.30 lakhs yields Rs.20,000 p.m. as interest at 8% p.a.  Doubling this gives Rs.60 lakhs.  Adding 20% for taxes gives Rs.72 lakhs.  Adding Rs.25 lakhs for the house gives Rs.97 lakhs.

2) Which of the following are assets in the sense that we have defined it? (a) Yacht  (b) Motorbike (c) Cash (d) Equity Shares (e) Units in a Money Market Mutual Fund (f) RBI Bonds (g) Kisan Vikas Patra (h) 30% discount voucher of Shoppers’ Stop

Ans: The following are the assets as per our definition:

(c) Cash
(d) Equity Shares
(e) Units in a Money Market Mutual Fund
(f) RBI Bonds
(g) Kisan Vikas Patra

3) When interest rates go up, the NAV of your long-term GSec Fund (a) goes up (b) goes down (c) stays flat (d) fluctuates (e) can’t say

Ans: (b) – When the interest rate moves up, the NAV of a long-term GSec Fund goes down.

4) You invest Rs. One Lakh in your savings bank account. (A) What would it amount to at 3.5% per annum in 10 years? (B) What would be the Net Present Value of that amount today if you discount it at the expected inflation rate which is 7%? (2 points)

Ans: (a) Rs.1,41,060    (b) Rs.71,708

5) Your credit card company charges you 3.1% interest per month, compounded monthly.  You have a credit card balance of Rs.50,000.  How many months (rounded off to the nearest month) will it take to repay the whole balance assuming you repay 5% of the monthly outstanding every month? Assume the balance is repaid the moment the outstanding balance drops below Rs.100.

Ans: 300 months. That’s right - 25 years!      

6) You take a personal loan of Rs.50,000 to repay the credit card balance.  The loan is at 15% per annum (@ 1.25% p.m.), interest calculated monthly on the outstanding balances.  You repay 5% of the outstanding balance every month. How long will it take you, in months (rounded off to the nearest month) to repay the entire loan? Assume the loan is repaid the moment the outstanding balance drops below Rs.100.

Ans: 160 months

7) Arrange the following in ascending order of liquidity (least liquid first, most liquid last). Land, Cash, Car, Equity stocks, US Dollar bills, Five-year Bank FD opened three years back, your Wedding Ring made of gold. Keep sentiments out of the picture.

Ans: Land, car, [wedding ring, five-year FD/equity stock (both are about equally liquid)], US Dollar bills, Cash

8) Arrange the following loans (assuming you are the one who is doing the borrowing) in order of most desirable to least desirable, in terms of interest rates (a) house loan (b) personal loan from a bank (c) credit card debt (d) overdraft against security of shares from a bank

Ans: House loan, overdraft against security of shares, personal loan, credit card debt

9) (A) How many companies is the BSE Sensex composed of? (B) What proportion of the Sensex is represented by the top 5 shares by market capitalization? Answers within +/- 2% will be taken as correct. (2 points)

Ans: a) 30   b) about one-third, as on Feb 26, 2010.  See attached link for the details:

http://www.bseindia.com/mktlive/indiceswatch_scripweight.asp?iname=BSE30&sensid=30&type=sens&total=2460549.41&mktcapteck=1219463.52&dateheader=Tuesday%2C+February+02%2C+2010

10) Index Funds are usually (a) actively managed (b) passively managed (c) not managed

Ans: b) Passively managed

11) You are about to retire in five years’ time.  Conventional financial wisdom indicates that you should currently have most of your money invested in (a) 100% Equity (b) 100% Debt (c) Predominantly Equity (d) Predominantly Debt.  Assume Equity and Debt are the only two investment options available.

( d) Predominantly Debt
 

12) 916 Gold refers to how many carats?

Ans: 22 carats.  916/1000 = 22/24.  24 carats is pure gold.

13) If you want to retire, the following things are important to do: (1) Keep rigorous spending targets (2) Keep aside the balance by Paying Yourself First (3) Invest the balance to earn steady returns (4) Invest for the long term and allowing the money to compound (5) Have a judicious mix of less risky and more risky investments depending on life-stage and other factors (6) All the above

Ans: (6) All the above

14) You invest Rs. One Lakh in a five-year deposit with a finance company that promises to double your money every six months.  At the end of five years, how much money are you likely to get back?  Hint: Not everything in the world was achieved with Math.

Ans: Zero. You will not get any money back.  At those interest rates, did you really think you would? 

15) A Systematic Investment Plan is good because (a) it inculcates discipline in investing (b) of Dollar cost averaging (c) It takes away the hassle of thinking and analysis, while retaining good investment wisdom (d) of all the above

Ans: (d) All of the above

16) Diversified Equity Funds diversify by (a) investing in a broad range of Equities (b) investing in a mix of Equity, Corporate Debentures and Government Securities (c) buying and selling often (d) investing in only companies that sell a diverse range of products (e) investing in varied geographies (f) all the above

Ans: (a) Diversified Equity Funds diversify by investing in a broad range of Equities

17) Money Market Funds invest predominantly in securities with maturities exceeding one year – Yes/No

Ans: No.  Money Market Funds invest in very short maturity securities, ranging from one day to a few months at most.

18) Fidelity believes ‘more’ (remember ‘more’ is only a matter of degree) in which of the following: (you can indicate one or more choices)  (a) top-down stock picking (b)  bottom-up stock picking (c) quick short-term returns (d) investing for the longer term

Ans: (b) and (d). Fidelity believes in “bottom-up stock picking” and “investing for the long term”

19) Peter Lynch managed which Fidelity Fund?  Name one book that he has written?

Ans: Magellan Fund.  He has written three books (with co-author John Rothchild) – One Up on Wall Street, Beating the Street, and Learn to Earn.

 
20) Who is known as the Sage of Omaha?

Ans: Warren Buffett  (The last two were easy for those who know how to google!)