“My goal is long-term. If my risk appetite is moderate, what kind of mutual funds should I choose?”. This is a common question asked in personal finance forums. We discuss what investors in this situation should do.
Continue reading →In the past week, gilt mutual funds fell between 1-2%. Dynamic bond funds fell 0.8% to 1%, Banking and PSU funds, corporate bond funds and all categories of debt funds holding medium to long term bonds fell by varying extents. Why did this happen? Will it impact the stock? What it means to your investments.
Continue reading →The S&P MERVAL index has registered some astounding returns. Its 10-year SIP return is 36.68% (yes, that is annualized!) a 15-year SIP return of 30.25% and a 5-year SIP return of 30.06%. If you have wondered why the Indian and US stock markets have been moving up in spite of the pandemic, these returns from…
Continue reading →Let us consider this question asked by a reader: “Instead of starting a mutual fund SIP, can I invest small amounts on my own each month?” The answer might seem trivial to old investors, but it worth clarifying for the sake of newbies.
Continue reading →This is a performance review of Franklin India Feeder – Franklin U.S. Opportunities Fund. This is an open-ended fund of fund scheme that invests a minimum 95% of its assets in the Franklin U.S. Opportunities Fund – I (acc) USD based in Luxemburg!
Continue reading →Investing in mutual funds is only a choice and has nothing to do with “financial literacy”. Imagine yourself as a financial advisor with no conflict of interest – meaning you are neither a sales guy nor looking to profit from a percentage of a clients networth. A client comes to you and says, “I want…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of HDFC Top 100 Fund. We ask if existing investors should exit the fund because of its recent poor performance or hold on, wait for the market imbalance to reduce and give Prashant Jain some more time to turn things around.
Continue reading →A multi-asset mutual fund is a new fund category introduced by SEBI. It has the mandate to invest at least 10% each in equity, debt and gold or permitted commodities at all times. We discuss the nature of available multi-asset funds, when investors should consider them and what to expect. We also consider if these…
Continue reading →We there is a discussion on gold returns, someone tends to point that “silver has done better” or “silver has more upside potential than gold” or some such statement. In this article, we compare returns and risk associated with gold and silver from Jan 1979 to Aug 2020.
Continue reading →In this edition of reader story, Vignesh Srinivasan describes what he has learnt about money management over the last couple of years. How asking “What makes one a bad investor?” has helped him build a robust framework based on four pillars – Investments, Taxation, Administration & Protection.
Continue reading →Here is how you can set off LTCG from shares against LTCL in ITR2 for the financial year 2019-2020, that is for the assessment year 2020-2021. Some readers have pointed out that the benefit of the Rs 1 lakh exemption is not being applied in the ITR2. This is not an error in the ITR2…
Continue reading →Recently the income tax department announced a new specified financial transaction (SFTs) that will be reported under form 26 AS. These include life insurance premium, health insurance premium, share transactions among others. Here is a full list of such STFs.
Continue reading →In this edition of “reader story”, K. V. Krishnan lists five simple actions by which he simplified his financial life to focus on building wealth.
Continue reading →A “long-term” SIP can teach us many things about risk and reward. These are the lessons learned from an Rs. 500 a month SIP running since Aug 2009 in Sundaram Midcap Fund for a relative. Some tend to dismiss our earlier analysis on “SIP risk” as “theoretical”. So here are inferences with “real money”!
Continue reading →“My SIP in Nifty Next 50 over the two and a half years has underperformed a Nifty SIP. Should I switch my SIP from Nifty Next 50 to Nifty 50?” We discuss this question posed by Nirmal.
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