Original analysis, reports, reviews and insights on developments in the mutual fund space and in-depth reviews
Happy Teachers Day! There is no greater teacher than life in general and El Mercado – the market – in particular. We often forget its most important lesson: buy an asset class (eg gold or stocks) when it is not doing well and sell when it is doing well. No, I am not suggesting that…
Continue reading →Investors sense the risk of investing a lump sum in stocks in different ways. Here are two dramatically different Facebook poll results on the subject conducted at Asan Ideas For Wealth (AIFW) and what we can learn from it. This should also be of use to investment advisors in understanding how clients perceive risk. After…
Continue reading →NSE has launched a new strategy index (aka factor-based index, aka smart beta index), the NIFTY100 Alpha 30 Index from June 28 2019. The NIFTY100 Alpha 30 index consists of 30 companies from Nifty 100 with the highest Jensen’s alpha using one-year trailing price. In this review, we study how good a “factor” (explained below)…
Continue reading →Ever heard someone say “investing in the stock market is like gambling”? Well, at least in part, it is more accurate than we care to admit. The mental aspects involved for succeeding in poker (gambling), stocks and life (the biggest gamble of all) are one and the same argues Srivatsan in this article. Srivatsan, as…
Continue reading →Motilal Oswal Nifty Bank Index Fund will be India’s first bank index fund*. The scheme will track the Nifty Bank index. This has 12 of the most liquid and large Indian Banking stocks weighted as per free-float market capitalization. Should an investor consider this bank index fund? If so, when and how? Can this be…
Continue reading →When I tell people that I managed to invest close to three times of what I spend each month for the last ten years and this is key to becoming financial independence, there is a similar-sounding comment or question: If I invest so much, when will I spend money on the things that I love? When…
Continue reading →When you start an exercise regimen, the day after you would fee soreness and pain in new areas! I guess muscles that were never flexed before behave like that when flexed for the first time. Most investors who have started investing in equity mutual funds since 2014, 2016 would never have seen a prolonged period…
Continue reading →The Mutual Fund space in India is reasonably large and growing. There are almost 50 Asset Management Companies (AMCs) offering more than 1,000 – and counting – schemes. The choice can be overwhelming at times. There are literally thousands of places that list the ‘best funds’ to invest in. This short post approaches the issue…
Continue reading →Here are eight mutual fund products that I wish existed as they would make a big difference to investor choices and well-being (in my opinion of course). Please free to add your own product in the comments below. If AMCs paid more attention to what their investors want, they would not only collect higher AUM…
Continue reading →The third of the four new index funds from Motilal Oswal is one that will replicate and track the Nifty Smallcap 250 Index. Motilal Oswal Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund will be India’s 1st small cap fund. The Nifty Small Cap 250 index is the bottom half of the NIfty 500. Let us find out…
Continue reading →Motilal Oswal Nifty Midcap 150 Index Fund opens for investment from Aug 19th. It is India’s second midcap Index fund. Principal AMC ran an index that tracked the Nifty Midcap 100 Index from May 2014 to June 2017*. In this article let us compare the performance of Nifty Midcap 150 with active mid cap funds…
Continue reading →We are living in a time where half a data point is enough to announce trends, patterns prophecies. Every week one guy says the markets are going to tank and another says it will do well. The latest such development is the so-called inversion of the US bond yield curve and its association with the…
Continue reading →A ten-year SIP can teach us many things about risk and reward. I have one running in Sundaram Midcap Fund for a relative. This was just an Rs. 500 SIP in a quiet, reasonably consistent fund. I tried this all-or-nothing idea by putting everything for that goal in a mid cap fund because I figured…
Continue reading →Most investors, thanks to wonderful propaganda by the AMCs, believe mutual funds would give them fantastic returns and invest with wrong expectations. They also are made to think “staying investing” will get rid of risk, although it never will*. Here is an example of an ICICI mutual fund ad that helps drive in the wrong…
Continue reading →Here are four thematic mutual funds that have consistently outperformed the Nifty 100 Index and Nifty Large Midcap 250 index (dividends included) over every possible 1,2,3,4,5 year periods since inception. The SEBI categorization rules have clubbed fund that invests in a particular sector or particular theme in the same category “sectoral/thematic”. For the purpose of…
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