Hey there! đź‘‹
I’m Daman Arora (he/him) and I enjoy building things. Read more.
Boring Might Be Beating You: What I Learned About ETFs vs Stocks
Everyone loves the story of picking the one stock that 10x’d. Nobody tells the story of the four picks that went to zero next to it. So I went looking for what the actual data says about stocks vs ETFs, and it changed how I build my portfolio. Here is the plain-English version. The uncomfortable number Over the past 15 years, about 90% of professional active fund managers underperformed the S&P 500 (SPIVA data)....
Where AI Actually Fits (and What It Means for Software Jobs)
There is an old line about the software industry: cloud eats open source, open source eats software. Each layer commoditizes the one below it, and value moves up. Open source made writing code less of a differentiator. Cloud made running software into a paid service. Every generation, whatever was the moat becomes the utility. Naturally people expect AI to be the next step. Something that eats cloud the way cloud ate open source....
Bank 3-in-1 vs Discount Broker: What an NRI Actually Pays
I recently went down a rabbit hole exploring what it really costs to trade Indian stocks as an NRI. I was not switching anything, just wanted to understand where my money goes. Here is the short version. The account maze As an NRI you do not just open “an account.” You end up with layers: NRE / NRO are the bank accounts. NRE holds money from abroad and is repatriable. NRO holds income earned in India....
Primary vs Secondary Markets: Why NRIs Get an Extra Layer
If you are an NRI who has tried to invest in India, you have probably hit a wall of confusing terms: PIS, non-PIS, NRE, NRO, primary, secondary. It feels like bureaucracy for its own sake. It is not. Underneath all of it sits one clean idea, with a monitoring layer stacked on top. Once you see the structure, the whole thing clicks. The one idea underneath everything: primary vs secondary Every security lives in one of two markets, and the difference is simply who you are buying from....
Reaching for Yield in Crypto: What Three Cycles Actually Show
The phrase “reaching for yield” describes what happens when bonds get less attractive and money rotates into riskier assets to keep earning a return. When the Fed cuts, or even when it starts talking about cutting, capital tends to slide out of low-yielding safety and into stocks, corporate credit, real estate, and lately, crypto. I wanted to know how tight that link actually is for Bitcoin and Ether. Not the story, the numbers....