Every time a young investor reads John Bogle or Warren Buffett’s statements on low-cost index funds, they want to know if index investing will work in India? if in the long run index funds will outperform actively managed mutual funds, should I not switch to an index fund? I recently showed how the Nifty Next…

Looks like mutual fund star ratings are useful for something after all! To understand how much you lose via commissions, study the difference between the star rating of the direct plan (no commissions) and regular plan (where commissions are removed from your investment value before NAV is reported – because what you can’t see cannot hurt…

Would you prefer a fund that beats the index whenever the index moves up or would you prefer a fund that falls lower than the index? Our first response would be, why not both? Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that. Very few funds manage to do both. In this post, I discuss why downside…

“If I have a lump sum, what is the best way to invest it in an equity mutual fund?”, is a question that I am asked repeatedly. In this post, let us discuss simple ways to invest a lump sum in an equity mutual fund. Lump sum in a debt mutual fund Let us first get…

Each financial year, we do our best to reduce as much income tax as possible. I am only referring to legal means (!)- the most common of which is investing in tax-saving instruments. We do this because income tax hurts. The thought of losing a significant chunk of our salary fills us with a sense of loss*….

Yesterday, SEBI announced its new “Categorization and Rationalization of Mutual Fund Schemes”. In this post, I discuss the positive and negative aspects of this move. As with any change, it is a mixed bag, especially for existing investors. SEBI has made it clear that only one scheme per category will be allowed and that AMCs…

You would be surprised as to how many people ask, Why not invest in multiple mutual funds to “average” out returns? and how often such an advice is provided in the media and in real life too! This post is in response to a question from S.B.Raajesh Kannan as it gives me a chance to cough up some portfolio…

Lump sum vs SIP investing: Which is “better”? You might have heard this question often in personal finance forums. Perhaps you have thought about this yourself. In this post, let us trace the month-by-month return from a SIP investment and a lump sum investment started on the same date. What is the point of this…

I received this interesting question from R Siva Prasad: “Sir, While selecting/screening a mutual fund, you advise to compare it with benchmarks. But I want to compare with Mutual Funds in the same category. As long as my fund is on top in the category why do I have to think about the benchmark? And if a…

In this post, I discuss a simple way to find out if a certain fund or a certain fund category is suitable for our need. We shall the use often-mentioned idea of standard deviation as a simple measure of volatility. Although not perfect, it is good enough to differentiate type based on daily market risk…

This year marks twenty years of computer and internet usage for me. In a two-part series, I discuss my experience and learnings on managing multiple passwords (part 1) and computer security (part 2).  From spending the whole day in the IIT, Madras library in the mid-90s to rarely entering it in the 2010s, it has…

With each passing day, our parents are growing old and their ability to be independent is gradually diminished. Elder care or senior care is a young, but rapidly evolving business, however, the ground reality is that, even if we are willing to pay, the competence and training levels are nowhere near adequate. If there is…

In this post, I discuss why it is important for investors to not take mutual fund market cap classifications seriously. In particular, your “large cap fund” is probably either a multi-cap fund all the time or now and then. The notion of what is a giant cap, large cap, mid-cap, small-cap or micro-cap stock is not…

Use this tool to calculate the annualized return (XIRR) of your mutual fund SIPs month by month since the date you started it and compare its performance with its benchmark. This now offers a range of about 70+ benchmarks from the BSE and NSE to compare mutual fund performance. What is XIRR? When you invest…