We have recently witnessed a big shift in how young earners manage money. Investing is getting popular instead of saving. Many more think of future money management (a better-sounding phrase than “retirement”) earlier than ever. However, not all of them sit down and do a proper retirement planning exercise. Here is why this is essential….
Continue reading →This is a debt mutual fund screener for portfolio selection, tracking, and learning. It also includes hybrid funds that invest in bonds. It will satisfy investors seeking to invest in money market funds, banking PSU funds, and similar instruments. The credit quality of the portfolio’s bonds and the bond maturity profile can be tracked. Instead…
Continue reading →One evening, my eleven-year-old asked me a simple question. “Why do you keep putting money into that account?” He had seen me do it many times while hovering around my laptop. A small investment every month. Quietly. Consistently. To him, it looked like money kept disappearing somewhere. To me, it was something very different. It…
Continue reading →A reader shared a health scare he recently experienced and the lessons he learnt from it. He would like to remain anonymous. I have diligently built my net worth to Rs. 10 crores over the past 20 years, with a good but not spectacular salary, all of which has been earned in India. Thanks to…
Continue reading →Many NRIs living in the Middle East may be making a simple but expensive mistake with their Indian mutual fund investments. They continue holding their mutual funds for years without periodically realising their long-term capital gains, assuming they can redeem whenever they want. On the surface, this may not seem like an issue. But if…
Continue reading →This index fund screener is based on tracking error and return differences wrt benchmarks (also known as tracking differences). It will help users evaluate how efficiently an index fund has tracked its underlying benchmark. It will also help them understand how tracking a midcap index, such as the Nifty 100 or 500, differs from tracking…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “If there is a Real estate component (physical) in a retirement planning portfolio, what is the best way to consider this during the rebalancing of assets? Or when considering the equity vs debt allocation”. “For example. Without considering RE investment, my portfolio is at 65: 35. ( 65 % equity). However, if…
Continue reading →A reader says, “I have a generic question about retirement planning. Can you retire if your annual expenses equal 6% of your corpus? Say my monthly expenses are 1 lac. My corpus is two crores. I do SWP for 1 lac monthly. If the returns exceed 6% pa, it will also cover inflation. Is there…
Continue reading →The setting is familiar. It’s a cousin’s wedding, a Diwali card party, or a quiet Sunday lunch. You are enjoying your paneer tikka when Sharma Uncle—a distant relative, a retired neighbour, or perhaps your own Chacha ji—corners you. After five minutes of polite small talk about your job and marriage prospects, the pivot happens. Beta,…
Continue reading →This ETF screener tracks errors and differences (ETF return minus index return). It will help users evaluate how efficiently an ETF has tracked its underlying benchmark. The tracking error is the ETF’s standard deviation minus the index’s monthly return differences. The lower the tracking error, the more efficiently the ETF tracks the index. Unlike returns,…
Continue reading →In a previous study published on freefincal, we showed that the Nifty 200 Momentum 30’s apparent alpha largely disappears among high-turnover stocks, and survives only in the illiquid half. The natural follow-up question is: is this a momentum-specific quirk, or does Scaled Turnover reshape other factor premia as well? Is Scaled Turnover a Universal Filter…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, we have “a late-starter story with a few bruises, some luck, and a system that finally makes sense”. About this series: I am grateful to readers for sharing intimate details about their financial lives, which benefits us all. Some of the previous editions are linked at the bottom of…
Continue reading →The latest freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener is now available. Use it to screen for equity mutual funds that consistently perform. You can screen based on fund category & benchmark to identify mutual funds that offer higher returns than the benchmark while maintaining lower risk. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory…
Continue reading →As many are aware, all Government employees who have joined service on or after January 1st, 2004, are covered under the National Pension System (NPS). While the NPS definitely has the word “pension” in its name, it isn’t really a pension scheme, and if you are covered under the NPS, please do understand what the…
Continue reading →Often, readers email us saying, “I do not have enough to invest for my long-term goals. What should I do?” This is a common situation; most of us start our investment journey this way. Don’t despair. Here are some options to consider. 1. Consider clubbing all long-term goals together (greater than 10Y away) and investing…
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