Total Return Benchmark Indices Are Welcome, But There Are Bigger Issues To Solve

There were reports yesterday regarding SEBI thinking about asking fund houses to use benchmark indices where the dividends are assumed to be reinvested. Such total return benchmark indices (TRI) offer anywhere between 1-2% higher return each year over the normally used price indices (for large cap stocks) which do not consider dividends. While this is…

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Moneycontrol Stock Price History Update for Stock Analysis Spreadsheets

Freefincal has two automated stock analysis and valuation spreadsheets. One that obtains financial data from screener.in and another which obtains financials from morningstar. Both sheets also get stock price data from moneycontrol. This is an important update to both these modules due to a change in moneycontrol web layout. Thanks to swanand  pointing this out. Before…

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Should I Invest A Lump Sum In One Shot Or Systematically via STP

The systematic transfer plan (STP) is a way for an asset management company to lock into some “business”, just as jewel shop does with a “gold scheme”. It can be used to withdraw from one mutual fund to either generate regular income or transfer that money to another fund (typically equity) in the name of “reducing risk”…

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The Information Diet: How Less Information Can Make us More Informed

Technological advances in the past 25 years have reduced information access time from days/hours to seconds. However, our ability to process this information has not changed much and if anything, has only decreased due to an information-excess. Yes, most of us are addicted and slowly drowning in information that we practically have no use for. …

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Mutual Fund Star Ratings are Flawed, but Investors are to blame for taking them at face value

Why blame Value Research For awarding Taurus Liquid Fund that is in trouble for continuing to buy a near-junk bond (Ballarpur Industries), five stars (four stars when commissions are removed)? That is like blaming someone because they could not predict a market crash! Before we go any further, it is important to recognise that many…

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