The Nifty Next 50 is a unique index. The index can provide joy and frustration in equal measure to its investors. At the time of writing, it has failed to beat the Nifty 50 for the last five years. We address the question asked by two worried investors: is it time to exit Nifty Next 50…

The TER (total expense ratio) of the Tata Nifty Index Fund shot up from 0.05% to 0.15% on 5th April 2021. From 16th April UTI Nifty Index fund will charge a TER of 0.18% instead of 0.1%. From 15th April 2021, HDFC Nifty and Sensex Index funds will cost twice as much – from 0.1%…

The interest in index investing is growing in India, but few understand what indexing is and why it works. In this article, SEBI registered fee-only advisor Swapnil Kendhe explains the basics of indexing and why it is effective. About the author: Swapnil is a SEBI Registered Investment Advisor and part of my fee-only financial planners’ list….

Over the past few years, freefincal has regularly reported how hard it has been for Indian fund managers to beat the Nifty/Sensex and the Nifty Next 50. Did you know that 582 US large cap mutual funds have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last ten years! In this article, we present some results from…

Nippon India Nifty Midcap 150 Index Fund is an open-ended index fund tracking the Nifty Midcap 150 index – the second such fund after Motilal Oswal Nifty Midcap 150 Index Fund. The NFO period for the Nippon India fund begins Feb 4 and lasts until  Feb 12th 2021. What is the Nifty Midcap 150 Index?  Out…

Nippon India Nifty 50 Value 20 Index Fund is an open-ended passive fund that will track the Nifty 50 Value 20 Index. The NFO period of this fund is from Feb 4th to Feb 12th 2021. This article looks at the risk and reward of the underlying index and answers if it makes sense to…

There are currently 32 index funds with at least one-year history as on Jan 28th 2021. If we compare their one-year trailing returns with the respective benchmark (total return indices), six index funds are outperforming! That is, their one-year return is higher than than the one-year index return! Why does this happen? Although the stocks…

To aid active multi-cap funds to benchmark themselves after SEBI changed their asset-allocation pattern, NSE has launched a new index from Dec 2nd 2020, the Nifty500 Multicap 50:25:25 Index. In this article, we review the performance of this index. Since the index is new, the entire historical data  (from 1st April 2005) is based on…

It is now possible for retail investors in India to directly buy US stocks. One question that is now becoming popular among the investor community is, “can I buy US stocks (in particular US tech stocks) directly instead of investing in a US index like Nasdaq 100 or S & P 500?” SEBI registered fee-only advisor Avinash Luthria…

We shall look at the tracking error of Nifty Next 50 index funds from our tracking error report sheet to find out funds that have lowest tracking error. You can download this sheet to appreciate deviations from the benchmark in an intuitive way. In our previous study on how a market crash affects index funds,…

In this article, we show how the NAV of an index fund or the price of an ETF is affected by a market crash and discuss a simple, effective way to measure tracking error. That is how well the fund or ETF was able to track the underlying total returns index. Textbooks define tracking error…