“Why should I invest in equity if it comes with no guarantees?!” A mighty fine question wouldn’t you say? In this post, I discuss the nature of stock market returns and why despite the lack of guarantees, it still a necessary investment avenue for some. First of all, let me make it clear that I am…

Here is a video description of how to select an equity mutual fund in under 30 minutes using the freefincal mutual fund screener (now in Mac!) and if necessary with the rolling returns calculator. The 5th version of the mutual fund screener was posted yesterday. I noticed a couple of bugs later. So I request…

Use this tool to automatically screen mutual funds based on returns and create a shortlist of consistent performers. The updated version corrects a bug and now includes Benchmark 1 to 12 year CAGRs. The tool grabs annual returns data from value research for different categories and calculates 12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2 and 1 year returns (CAGR corresponding to lump…

It is very common to see discussions on rent a house vs buy a house  and pre-pay a home loan vs invest instead. Sooner or later, someone participating would utter the word ’emotional’ (or some variant of it). The rent vs buy choice is largely governed by emotions. The pre-pay vs invest choice is largely…

How I wish I could say, Yes, the size of a mutual fund affects its performance! Then a lot of arm chair extrapolaters can proudly declare, “told you so!”. Unfortunately, I (thankfully like many of you) have a weakness for evidence. So I can’t yes for there is not even a shred of proof towards…

Ever wondered which to choose between Franklin Blue Chip and ICICI Blue Chip? Between HDFC Balanced and ICICI Balanced? Here is a mutual fund analyzer that goes beyond mere return comparison. It can be used each time you wish to make a choice or to compare how your fund did relative a ‘hot fund’ everyone is…

Four friends who had invested in the same equity mutual fund via a monthly SIP decided to estimate the growth of their investments together. The first friend beamed with joy, ‘my investment has beat (pre-tax) fixed deposits by almost 3%’! The second friend was not so happy, ‘if I had invested this amount in a…

Understanding the notion of a risk-adjusted return requires some maturity to think beyond mere returns. While comparing funds, a fund that offers a lower return with lower risk is better than one with higher return with higher risk. There are many risk-adjusted measures and one of them is the information ratio.  The information ratio is a measure…

Question: When can you use an investment portfolio that cannot exceed an equity allocation of about 25%? Value Research classifies them as Hybrid: Debt-oriented Conservative. There are about 43 funds in this category and more than half of them contain the phrase “monthly income plans” (MIP) in their names. Some are called regular savings funds (not to…

After spotting mutual fund underperformers in the portfolio, what is the next step? The options may seem quite obvious and there is not much to write about. I decided to write a post about it (instead of mentioning this in the last post itself) for two reasons: Handling underperformers in the portfolios has some interesting aspects of…