Senior self-publishes book on finance

Twenty hours a day for 10 days; that’s how long it took senior Mahir Jethanandani to amass his 11 years of studying finance into one grand masterpiece: “The Immaculate Investor.”

Spanning 136 pages and containing eight chapters, Jethanandani’s self-published book guides readers from their first investment to their retirement.

“People [have] a clear interest in how to grow their money [and] how to make more money,” Jethanandani said  “[So I thought], why not teach myself first the power of investing and then spread it when I’m old enough to be taken seriously by elders and my peers?”

Two main incidents sparked Jethanandani’s interest in writing a book on finance.

The first experience came when Jethanandani was in kindergarten and his older brother, Rishabh, was in fifth grade; the siblings ran what Jethanandani jokingly describes as a “Ponzi scheme.” They made $500.

“We broadcast the idea of a private wealth management firm, which in a 5-year-old’s terms means, I give you my money, you make me more money and I get more money back,” Jethanandani said. “I didn’t know too much about investing, but I was very lucky in [that I] invested in the companies that were just happening to be doing well.”

For example, when Google came out as an IPO and entered the stock market in 2003, Jethanandani invested in it and found himself with a 300 percent return. Despite his success, he and his brother’s plans were cut to an abrupt halt when the parents of the students who had invested in his project found out.

“One of the parents — I can’t remember the kid’s name — caught their son without their birthday money and their birthday savings,” Jethanandani recalled. “And then the [son] explained [how he was participating in] the Jethanandani private wealth management, so we got caught red-handed investing 50 fifth graders’ money and had to return the profits — positive profits too — and I never got a thank you from the parents or anything like that.”

Second was the promise his parents made him as a 7-year-old: He could keep a dog so long as he managed it and the costs himself.

“After estimating and crunching some numbers, I calculated that it cost about $534 per month to take care of, feed and maintain the dog,” Jethanandani said. “So after collecting some birthday money, I realized the power of compound investing, which [states that] I can really fund this dog if I somehow come up with 34 percent monthly returns on investments.”

Jethanandani’s pre-teen self came away from these experiences with a desire to see what finance could offer him. Beginning from about age 7, he began to teach himself. For him, his childhood held no video games; it was about studying the financial field.

The first thing Jethanandani read was ‘Investing for Dummies,” followed by what he deems is the best book on investing, the “The Intelligent Investor.” In fact, the title of Jethanandani’s own book is a playoff on “The Intelligent Investor.”

Though Jethanandani’s interests and high level of reading were unusual for any second grader, they were unrecognized even by his parents.

“[My parents] thought it was cute that I was flipping through pages every two or three minutes,” Jethanandani said. “They’d just be like ‘Oh, he’s pretending to absorb something’ but I was [actually] absorbing a lot; I was learning how to Ponzi [scheme] people’s money.”

During the winter break of Jethanandani’s junior year, when his parents were on vacation, Jethanandani spent 10 days writing his 600-page first draft, leaving room for only about four hours of sleep per night.

The nearly nonstop draft-writing became increasingly difficult as the days passed; by the third day, he had written 200 pages and was exhausted. Oddly enough, the main challenge for Jethanandani was maintaining the physical stamina, not the mental dedication.

“I [always] just came back to it because I thought, ‘This is going to be [like] my senior thesis for what I’ve learned in high school,” Jethanandani said “‘[So] I’m going to get this done in these 10 days [of winter break].’”

Almost no one knew about the book while it was in progress. Jethanandani was initially worried that others would “judge” his writing style.

“I think every English teacher I’ve had has called my writing dense, so at first I didn’t give it to my brother or my parents or any of my friends,” Jethanandani said. “I contacted a friend of mine at Morgan Stanley, who had a very in-depth financial background. To hear how few criticisms he had and the great praise he had for it just made me confident that I could publish [my book].”

And publish Jethanandani did; after creating an account on CreateSpace from Amazon, editing his work to a book of about 136 pages and garnering publishing approval from the CreateSpace experts, Jethanandani had his first book finished, published and ready for distribution on Amazon for about $9 each. 

Though the publication date was in October, Jethanandani had already finished the book’s final draft in July. He felt then that he wanted a “need” to finally publish.

“Releasing the book on a non-specific day in the middle of the school year wouldn’t have [had] much significance for me,” Jethanandani said “Someone must have said something that must have really irritated me — something about how I’m not worthwhile or anything — so I said ‘I’m going to release the book and silence my haters.’”

Jethanandani currently runs several finance organizations, such as “The Immaculate Investor” blog, DECA club and Investing Club. He plans to release an additional collaborative book in 2015, “Two Billion Under Twenty,”

The significance of the title is that 2 billion people in the world are under 20, and the upcoming book highlights 20 teens who undergo the process of becoming visionaries. Jethanandani will be writing the section on innovation, where he will cover other activities he has done.

For Jethanandani, his first encounter with the publishing world has shown him the “empowerment of education.”

“It’s [writing is] about empowering and understanding, though not necessarily about understanding your own potential because I believe that you can grow your potential infinitely by arming yourself with knowledge [that] will prepare you for the real world,” Jethanandani said. “Books should be catalysts and lower the required amount of effort and the required amount of time [it takes] to empower yourself and become a master.”