Never hold your mutual fund units in demat form! In this post, Anish Mohan draws from personal experience to explain why dematerialisation is a terrible idea with no benefits whatsoever! What is Dematerialisation? Dematerialisation is the process by which a physical certificate of holding a share or bond or mutual fund unit is converted into an “electronic…

The expense ratio of direct mutual fund plans is a subject of debate among those who do not benefit from it. In this post, Balaji Swaminathan digs deep into the annual reports from three AMCs to understand how the expense ratios compare and whether the absence of commission is the only reason for the lower expense ratio…

In this post, let us discuss mutual fund exit strategies. In particular, the oft asked question, “when should I exit an equity mutual fund”. It is obvious that in order to know when to get rid of a mutual fund, one should know how to review a portfolio of fund holdings.  In an earlier post…

Have you ever wondered how the total expense ratio (TER) of a mutual fund is calculated? Or what the constituents of the TER are? The most authentic publically available source for understanding the TER is the annual report released by AMC. Yesterday, Franklin Templeton announced to its investors that the abridged annual report for 2015-2016…

Use this sheet to automatically track the XIRR of your mutual fund SIP month by month and compare its performance with a benchmark index. In this updated version, the Nifty strategic indices have been included for comparison. The sheet includes a ‘cumulative outperformance’ feature. This gives you the no of times the fund has out-performed its index…

It is possible to build a beautifully diversified equity portfolio with only sector mutual funds. The data first published with this idea in April 2014 has now been updated. Note: what is presented below is an investment idea presented with academic curiosity and not a recommendation to abandon your existing diversified mutual funds. Investing for long-term…

Rolling returns calculators provide a simple, easy to understand visual representation of how consistently a mutual fund has outperformed its benchmark. The freefincal mutual fund lump sum and SIP rolling returns calculators now include six nifty strategy  indices (smart beta) for analysing mutual fund performance. As seen in a recent series of posts, Nifty strategic indices…

I have been holding an individual health insurance cover for my family for the last 10 years. In this post, I look at how the insurance premium has increased during this period. I hold a United India Platinum policy for self, wife and son and a Gold policy for my mother. Each year, I have…

The Motilal Oswal Value Index (MOVI) allows the investor to change equity and fixed income levels as per MOVI values. In this post, I try to understand how the MOVI is calculated. This is only an academic post about the MOVI and is neither a recommendation to use MOVI or Motilal Oswal Mutual Funds. MOVI-based indexing…

The NSE maintains 15 strategy indices, each of which are based on a unique quantitative method. Collectively, they are referred to as a smart beta strategies. In this post, I would like to present a short introduction to six of them which I believe could be more stringent alternative benchmarks for mutual funds. They could (and are)…

The Nifty Low Volatility 50 Index (NLV50) is a portfolio of 50 stocks that has the least volatility among all the stocks listed at the NSE. This is referred to as a smart beta strategy. Considering the way it is constructed, its performance (much of which is backdated) has been quite interesting and I think…