Name: Karan Harilela (Professor K)
Born: October 1972 (Scorpio)
Background:
Karan was born into the Harilela family of Hong Kong — a discreet yet deeply rooted
Indian-origin dynasty. Originally from the Sindh region in northwestern India, the family
migrated to Southeast Asia in the early 20th century and established themselves in Hong
Kong after World War II. Over the decades, the Harilela family quietly built a business empire
spanning real estate, hospitality, and private investments.
They never listed a company. They never held roadshows. They never appeared in
magazines.
Karan is the third generation of the family. He holds no official position in any company, does
not attend board meetings, and his name appears in no public registry.
But it is said: more than half of the family’s private capital never enters the market
without first passing through his desk.
Signature Quote:
“People ask me why I trade like I meditate.
I tell them: I was born in Hong Kong, but my soul belongs to the Ganges.”
📜 Karan’s First Dialogue with the Market
March 17th, 1985
I quietly sneaked into my grandfather’s office. On his desk, I saw a piece of paper with some
numbers handwritten on it. Out of curiosity, I copied them down —
“0001 – 1000 shares”
Then, just for fun, I signed it below: “K”.
A week later, my grandfather called me into his study. He looked serious.
He asked, “Did you write that note?”
I confessed, “Grandfather… please don’t be angry. I was just copying. I’m sorry.”
I thought he’d scold me.
Maybe even grab a ruler and hit my palm.
But instead, he opened a drawer, pulled out a heavy old metal ruler, and handed it to me.
Then he said:
“Read what’s engraved on it.”
I flipped it over. It read:
“The numbers are only noise. But your stillness — that’s real.”
He smiled and said,
“Seems the market listens best to a mind that’s undisturbed.”
Later, I came to understand that the note I had copied —
“0001” was the stock code for Cheung Kong Holdings, and
“1000 shares” meant “buy 1000 shares”.
The broker had executed the entire order…
And that stock rose over 20% in one week, while the other stocks my grandfather had
picked went nowhere.
That day wasn’t just the first time I ever wrote a stock code —
It was the first time the market responded to me.
1987:
Just as I awakened my gift — I hadn’t yet learned how to defend.
And then the hammer came down.At the age of 13, after a chance encounter with the world
of stocks,
Karan dived in headfirst.
Aside from school hours, he devoted every waking minute to studying stock codes,
recording price rhythms, and flipping through his grandfather’s old trading journals.He was
too young to open an account —but not too young to find a way.One of his classmates’
fathers happened to be a broker at a securities firm. So Karan began writing down stock
picks on slips of paper, quietly handing them to him to place trades.At first, the man just
smiled, amused by this “curious little boy.”
But nobody expected what came next.After the signing of the Sino-British Joint
Declaration in 1984, the Hong Kong market surged into a new bull run.
And every note Karan wrote seemed to land right before the next rally.
Eventually, the man started to take him seriously.
“I’ve been trading for 10 years — and I’ve never been as accurate as you.”
“From now on, you write. I follow.”
They became comrades.
Every weekend, Karan would visit his home.
They would eat together, read the papers, review charts, and trade
perspectives.
“He wasn’t learning how to trade.
He was learning how to listen to the market.”
Then, everything changed.
October 19, 1987 (Monday):
The U.S. stock market collapsed.
October 20 (Tuesday):
The Hang Seng Index fell more than 45% in just two days.It was Hong Kong’s
Black Monday.
That evening, when Karan returned home, he received devastating news:
The man who had been placing trades for him —
jumped to his death on the night of the crash.
He didn’t cry.He didn’t speak.He simply wrote one thing down:
“We should respect the market.The numbers are visible —but the cost is
hidden.”
1992
"Never bet against a country — unless it has already bet against itself."
Early September 1992.
Karan had just turned 20.
Inside a private trading room in Central, Hong Kong,
he was quietly reviewing volatility data from the European Exchange Rate
Mechanism.
Unemployment in the UK was rising.
Interest rates had spiked absurdly.
And yet — the British pound was still standing.
Then, a fax came through from London.
“Soros seems to be building a position.”
Karan didn’t hesitate.
He picked up the phone and called his broker in Singapore.
“Short the pound. 2x leverage. Hedge long on the Deutsche Mark.”The
voice on the other end asked,
“Position size?”
Karan paused for three seconds, then replied:
“As much as it would take to defect.”
September 16th, 1992 — Black Wednesday.
The Bank of England collapsed under pressure.
The British pound plunged.
Karan didn’t celebrate.
There were no toasts.
No thrill of victory.
He simply wrote one sentence down,
sealed it in an envelope:
"Never bet against a country — unless it has already bet against itself."
1993–2000:
"Survival is the only language the market truly understands.
1993
Karan began accumulating undervalued Southeast Asian banks and real estate funds,
quietly positioning ahead of what he believed to be an undervalued regional cycle.
1997
Then came the storm.
The Asian Financial Crisis erupted.
He still remembers it vividly:
“At the start of the year, $1 equaled ₹2,400.
By year’s end, it was ₹17,000.”
Entire currencies were collapsing.
Markets weren’t crashing — they were evaporating.
1998–2000
Karan spent long weeks in Pokhara, Nepal,
sitting in silence by Phewa Lake, facing the sacred Machapuchare peak.
“The silence of the mountains and the chaos of the market...
They’re not opposites.
They are just two extremes of the same language.”
By 2000, Karan had learned the one truth that echoed louder than any ticker:
“You must survive, before you learn to win.”
2002
At a finance conference in Hong Kong, Karan met Jesse Bhattal,
then CEO of Lehman Brothers Asia-Pacific.
Their connection was immediate —
bonded by their insights into Asia’s structural fragility,
and a shared respect for long-term capital discipline.
By this time, Karan was no longer the boy scribbling codes on napkins.
He had become something else entirely —
a cycle watcher, a silent strategist, a man who had learned that:
“In the market, pain is temporary — but ruin is permanent.”
2008: The Avalanche
From 2002 to 2006, the U.S. housing market was inflating like a balloon.
Banks were recklessly handing out subprime mortgages to borrowers with poor credit —
often requiring zero down payment, zero verification.
Financial derivatives like CDOs and MBS were being abused.
Banks bundled these toxic loans into “securitized” products.
Rating agencies slapped AAA labels on them —
but the underlying risk was radioactive.
2007–2008
As home prices began to fall, subprime borrowers started to default.
The value of related financial products collapsed to zero.
The losses that had been hidden inside balance sheets… began to surface.
Karan had been watching.
By mid-2008, he sensed it —
The market was trembling.
AIG’s credit signals were flashing.
CDO prices were erratic.
The VIX was quietly climbing.
In August 2008, he made the call.
To Jesse Bhattal.
“Pull out. Liquidate the positions. Stop additional exposure.”
But the reply came back:
“Redemption denied.”
September 15, 2008
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
The global financial system was officially lit on fire.
That morning, Karan’s assistant rushed in:
“Sir… Lehman has… it’s really gone.”
Karan didn’t flinch.
He looked out the window and simply said:
“The avalanche has started.
Remember — no single snowflake feels responsible.”
That winter, in a quiet office in Hong Kong,
Karan sat with a confidential file from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
He noticed something strange.
Jesse Bhattal’s official resignation date: December 2007.
Karan sat in silence.
For a long time.
Then he wrote down one thing in his private journal:
“This is the market.
In the market, there is no right or wrong —
only consequence.”
2009–2020: The Observer Years
In June 2009, Mr. Karan Harilela traveled to Oxford,
where he began attending seminars and lectures at the University of Oxford
as a “private visitor.”
There, he immersed himself in financial philosophy, systemic theory,
and the history of international markets.
Between 2009 and 2020,
Karan stepped back from active trading and began a decade-long reflection on markets.
He mapped out the global financial evolution in four distinct phases:
📈 2009–2012: Post-Crisis Recovery
● Liquidity-driven rallies
● Rebuilding confidence
● Risk assets rebounded across the board
🌐 2013–2015: Emerging Market Dislocation
● Capital flight & currency turbulence
● Structural divergence among global markets
● Rising volatility in the global south
💻 2016–2019: The Tech Cycle
● The age of low interest rates
● Explosive growth in mega-cap tech
● The rise of AI and digital monopolies
🦢 2020: Black Swan & Liquidity Flood
● The COVID-19 pandemic
● Global market circuit breakers
● Unprecedented monetary easing — liquidity without limits
After more than a decade of study, Karan wrote down a single line
to summarize what he had seen:
“The world is too vast — and we are all far too small.”
2020–2024: The Return of Professor K
In 2020, Professor Karan Harilela watched as a new generation of traders emerged —
faster, colder, and more precise than ever.
“I saw how quickly the young move.
How calm they’ve become.
I began to realize — AI has quietly surpassed the limits of human cognition in
certain domains.
Big data models are growing like tidal waves across the globe.”
“And perhaps… the market of the future truly belongs to those who walk
alongside the algorithm.”
He grew quieter.
More distant.
“I felt, more and more… that I no longer belonged to this era.”
Then in 2024,
a name long absent suddenly returned to the market’s whispers:
Professor K.
This time, he would not hide.
Karan Harilela co-founded R7 Investment Management Limited and announced a five-year
plan.
And when asked why he returned —
he answered with a single sentence:
“In the next five years, I will devote everything I’ve ever learned to prove
that those who chose me were right.
I am no longer that 20-year-old boy who couldn’t protect those beside
him.
This time, with all of you —
we protect ourselves.”
Professor K — Selected Quotes
1.
“The turning points in financial markets are paid for with lives.
Those who moved weren’t the ones who understood — they were the
ones who held onto cash.”
2.
“The true survivors are the ones who got off early — and stayed present.”
3.
“Today’s market cares less about logic — and more about reaction.”
4.
“Victory isn’t about understanding.
It’s about the precision of your trigger.”
5.
“They’re lying.
They know we know they’re lying.
And they’re still lying.”
6.
“They took your water bottle in the desert.
Then returned it at the oasis —
and told you your water has been returned.”
7.
“The market is like a god.
It doesn’t care if you kneel —
it has its own judgment day.”
