In Jue 2013, when freefincal had just completed one, I had written an account of how I came to be interested in money management and finance and my money mistakes. This is a mildly updated version for new readers, especially young earners who think they have “started late”. Trust me, when you look at my life, you will feel better about yours. Be it money or education or general living, fear has been a great stimulant for me. Specifically the fear of making the same mistakes again, the fear of being in the same situation again. As I write this, I am recovering from a nasty nightmare where this very fear is the central theme. Freud would have had a field day with me!
ICICI Pru Dynamic Plan is now ICICI Pru Multi-Asset Fund – Should I Exit?
ICICI dynamic fund has now become a mutli-asset fund. Is this a huge change from an equity to a debt fund? Should you now consider exiting or hold on? If you download the ICICI Mutual Fund Notification for changes in its hybrid and its equity scheme you might notice some amusing patterns. For eg. (1) ICICI Select Large Cap is now Focused Equity and it is investment objective is to invest in “30 companies across market capitalization i.e. focus on multicap.”. (2) ICICI Multicap fund now has an objective to invest “across large cap, mid cap and small cap stocks of various industries.” (3) ICICI Top 100 is now ICICI Large and Midcap but can hold up to 30% of other than large and mid-caps (and 30% debt). So that is a total of three multicap funds after conforming to SEBI categorization! And I thought it would be easy to build a diversified portfolio now!
Fee-only Advisor Journey: Vikram Krishnamoorthy’s organized rise to the top
This week on fee-only advisor journey, SEBI registered investment advisor Vikram Krishnamoorthy narrates his journey from MBA student to working as a financial advisor for the Canadian government to running an efficient and successful fee-only advisory service. Vikram is part of my list of fee-only advisors and Fee-only India (FOI): a movement to serve investors and advisors. I use the words organized and efficient because there is no better way to describe how Vikram approaches fee-only advisory and all FOI members (we all met last year and again last month) will attest to this.
Warning! Nifty Next 50 is NOT a large cap index!
Regular readers may be aware that I have repeatedly pointed out how hard it is for mutual funds to beat the NIfty Next 50 (NN50) index in terms of absolute return* and that no active mutual fund uses it as a benchmark! In this post, I classify NSE indices in terms of risk and point out the unique position of the Nifty Next 50. Let us try to answer two questions: (1) Which index has a risk-return profile similar to the NN50? (2) Is there any index that has offered better returns at lower risk than the NN50? This post is inspired by Subrat Dash who asked this question in FB group Asan Ideas for Wealth.
Should I Exit HDFC Top 200 Since it has now become HDFC Top 100?
Finally, HDFC announced its first batch of changes in its equity schemes to fall in line with SEBIs scheme categorization rules. While we wait for changes in its hybrid schemes including the much-awaited fate of HDFC Balanced and Prudence, one of the most prominent changes was HDFC Top 200 being renamed as HDFC Top 100 and it will now be classified as a “large-cap fund”. In this post, I discuss what current HDFC Top 200 investors should consider before “staying put” or moving on during the exit-load-free period.
