Fifty Peaks

After graduating with a Master's in Civil Engineering, I worked for a small consulting firm in San Francisco. My first goal was to save enough money to pay back my parents. They had spent their life savings to send me to the U.S. I postponed buying a car, but it was no big deal. I had grown up in a lower middle-class family. Neither my parents nor any of our relatives or friends had a car. And San Francisco did have an excellent public transportation system. One of the benefits of working for the firm was totally unexpected. The boss liked classical music and had the office filled with sounds of a local classical music station, all day long. Never having heard such music previously, I hated it. But I had no choice; I just had to live with it. Then I got used to it and later I couldn't imagine a life without it.

There was another positive development too. I was aware of the racial prejudice in the U.S. There was no Civil Rights Act yet and the South was still segregated. Still, I never felt discriminated against. I had a few white friends and even though I was far from the proverbial tall, dark and handsome man, I didn't have much trouble dating women, all of whom were white, the predominant race in those days. Unlike many immigrants, I was quite comfortable living in a white society. Of course, I was continuously learning the western ways. One holiday season, I bought eggnog from a supermarket. I did not know what it was, but I liked the taste. A week later, at a New Year's Eve party, I spotted a bowl of it and helped myself to it several times during the evening. Later, I wondered why I was feeling tipsy. I never had any alcohol in India and not much in the U.S. either. I didn't know that it was a holiday tradition to add booze to the eggnog. I still remember the hangover I had the next day. Food, however, was a problem. I was used to spicy vegetarian food, and a meat and potato diet was literally hard for me to swallow. There were no Mexican restaurants that I knew of, and the only Indian restaurant was run by an Englishman. Not surprising, as just a few hundred people of Indian origin lived in the Bay Area at the time.

I returned to India in 1965. My plan was to check out the job opportunities. As it happened, I never did look for any. In the first few weeks, I realized that I was a stranger in my own country. My thinking had changed so much that I felt very disconnected, sort of like how one would feel moving from San Francisco or New York to a small town in, say, Indiana. Hinduism is more a way of life than a religion and many of the daily routines no longer made sense to me. I had been exposed to a different culture, religion, and way of life, and my perspective had changed. After a few months of soul searching, I decided on a life in the U.S. Luckily, soon after my return to U.S., I was able to get permanent resident status under the newly enacted 1965 Immigration Act.

For my birthday in 1968, my then-girlfriend Belinda, bless her heart, gave me a book, Anyone Can Make a Million. That was to be the second seminal event of my life. At the time, I lived in Palo Alto and worked for a medium-sized engineering firm in Foster City. Belinda knew I wasn't too happy being an engineer and that I was looking for some other career. The book struck a chord with me. Its author was a physician who had given up his practice and made a fortune trading various financial instruments. His statement "commodity futures represent the quickest possible way to get rich or go bankrupt amongst all forms of market trading" nudged me to look into it further. My liquid assets were maybe a thousand dollars, so going bankrupt wouldn't be a big loss. For the next three years or so, the scenario went as follows: I would make a trade or two and lose most of my money. I would then wait till I had saved enough to trade again. In a few weeks, I would lose it all again. It was quite depressing. I gave up many everyday pleasures to save the money, but all I received in return was a tax deduction. The plus was that the cycle gave me plenty of time to read the few books on the subject and do simulated trading. Meanwhile, Belinda was getting impatient, but I wasn't ready to get married while I struggled to find a career. We parted amicably.

By the end of 1972, I had learned from my mistakes and was well ahead for the year. In 1973, the markets had extremely large moves, albeit with high volatility, and I was able to capitalize on them. There were times when I would make or lose more money in a day than I was making in a year at my job. I had amassed a small fortune and it was time to say goodbye to my engineering career. I consider myself reasonably smart, but it is humbling to realize how luck and timing play such a big role in one's life.

I had planned to trade just my own money to make a living, but that was not to be. A few of my co-workers wanted me to trade their money the way I did mine. They were willing to pay me a percentage of the profits. I hired an assistant, rented office space and began doing business as "Desai & Company". That's how I wound up in the money management business. I was making money beyond my wildest dreams, but it hardly changed my lifestyle. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? I tried it, but it seemed to revolve around staying up half the night, consuming excessive amounts of alcohol and rich food. I was glad it was Robin Leach and not me who had to pursue that lifestyle. Middle Class and Mundane? Now you are talking. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I grew up with lower middle-class values, sort of like a depression-era mentality. I enjoy pizza and beer just as much as a dinner at a five-star restaurant. What I prized more about my new career was the game itself. I call it a game, because it is just like a giant poker game, with immense stakes. Commodity trading is inherently different from buying stocks or real estate. Money only changes hands between the traders. It has an economic purpose, but no wealth is created. In order for one person to win, someone else must lose. I couldn't wait to go to "work"; I almost dreaded the weekends. That was true happiness. And I had most of the afternoons free, because the markets closed at 1:00 PM. I also had the satisfaction of making money for my friends and co-workers. They were able to buy houses they couldn't have bought otherwise.