If EV is now using this sleazy epithet to obscure Rawat's ill-gotten gains, then
a couple of pointed questions are in order.
Mr Rawat, as a successful private investor, you have amassed wealth considerable
enough to fund a private jet, a private yacht, a procession of expensive limos,
a Malibu ranch and real estate in choice locations around the world. This
achievement would seem to put you in the same class as such investing legends
as Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world.
Buffet's investing career is an open book. He made millions by investing
in companies such as American Express, Coca Cola, the Washington Post and
Gillette at times when nobody wanted to touch their stock with a barge pole.
Perhaps you could enlighten us with the knowledge of your own personal investing
strategies. Did you perhaps provide seed money for Microsoft or
Apple? Did you get into the telecommunications industry before cell
phones and wireless took off? Were you savvy enough to play the short
side of the market as the Nasdaq collapsed?
Or perhaps currencies are your forte, where you can leverage the global
perspective afforded by your extensive travels into profitable macro-economic
forecastes. Might I guess that you are at present net short the US
dollar?
Or then, again, perhaps you have a taste for the yellow metal. Are you a
closet gold bug? Did you perhaps correctly foresee that the misallocation
of capital during the nineties would spell disaster for paper currencies of all
denominations, and the re-emergence of gold as a currency of last resort,
jumping into mining and bullion stocks as they made 20-year lows?
I'm sure an account of the principles and practice of your investing philosophy,
as one of the foremost successful private investors of your generation, would
make fascinating reading, particularly for your followers and former followers
who themselves perhaps do not have the financial resources sufficient to engage
in such endeavours themselves.
Indeed, some might say that by sharing your considerable insight into
money-making matters you are making a real contribution to elevating the
quality of life of many people, again particularly your followers and former
followers, whose portfolios are probably, to put it mildly, somewhat less
extensive than your own.
And finally, of course, it goes without saying that by sharing your great
successes with the world you will put to an end once and for all the ugly
rumours that continue to circulate that contend that the nearest you ever come
to any kind of investing acumen is when you have your lackeys illicitly cart
suitcases of cash, donated as charitable contributions by your followers, over
to Switzerland for deposit into your own VERY private bank accounts.
rgj