If you sit and think about investment ideas without bothering to check how effective it has been in the past, many extreme strategies like buying only when the market is “low” or buying more often equals better averaging appear “intuitively” correct. When we try to validate them interesting results on SIP and lump sum investing…
Continue reading →After the Feb-March 2020 market crash, 80% of active large cap mutual funds have outperformed Nifty 50 and Nifty 100 total return indices. This is likely due to the two-year imbalance among Index stocks that was destroyed due to the crash. A performance report on active large cap funds. Have they returned? Will they do…
Continue reading →If we look at the fall in Nifty from its early Feb 2020 levels it certainly feels like a crash. After all, we witnessed the biggest intraday fall that sent the 10-year Nifty SIP Return to 2.3%; 14-year SIP Return to 5% and we also saw the biggest intraday gain after 10Y and then a…
Continue reading →One of the biggest mistakes investors make is to neve visualise their portfolio as “big” in future. They assume their portfolio value will always be comparable to what they invest each month. This results in many misconceptions like, “I can rebalance my portfolio just by changing the amount I invest”, and “I can time the…
Continue reading →The real risk associated with equity markets is not a huge fall. That often results in a strong upward movement sooner than later. The real risk lies in lost time when the market heads nowhere. Over 10 years, 15 or 25 years, one could make huge absolute gains but poor annualised returns if we hit…
Continue reading →While corporate investors withdrew from several Franklin debt funds forcing the closure of six funds (a first in India), the AMC lost 28,664 Crores of debt fund AUM from 31st Dec 2019 to April 30th 2020. Amusingly, one of their debt funds grew 520% in AUM! A look at the change in their debt AUM.
Continue reading →Last week I had reported that the annualized return (XIRR) of all my equity MF transactions tagged to retirement planning goal (or financial freedom) dropped from 11.6% in Dec 2019 to 2.75% after the crash. Some readers were either disheartened about this or twisted the result to point out equity investing is risky. In this…
Continue reading →The mutual fund industry lost 16% equity AUM bet Jan 31st 2020 to April 31st 2020. It also lost 14% debt AUM! While a good part of the equity AUM fall was due to the crash, the debt AUM fall was primarily due to redemptions triggered by the crash and associated fear. This is how…
Continue reading →A comparison of Nippon India ETF Nifty BeES with UTI Nifty Index Fund to understand the true cost of investing in an ETF.
Continue reading →Screener for consistently performing equity mutual funds in May 2020. You can screen on the basis of fund category & benchmark. Includes an Rs. 1000 off, discounted link to the lectures on goal-based portfolio management.
Continue reading →The lockdown has put many people out of business and in particular, some segments that dependent on footfall from other parts of the country or the world face huge uncertainty. Even if you are salaried and not sure if you would be in the coming months, a regular income stream has to be set up…
Continue reading →House rent allowance (HRA) is an allowance that many employees in India receive, both in the public and private sectors. Many employees also have a home loan in their names. Tax benefits are available on both HRA and home loan. Let’s see how HRA and home loans can be used to reduce your tax outgo.
Continue reading →If you have just started investing in mutual funds over the last few years, perhaps via a SIP, then here is what you should do next! These would help increase confidence and not fear market crashes or years of no returns (yes that is possible!).
Continue reading →Sooner or later after we finish college and start working, a life-altering realisation hits us. We find out what our school mates and college mates are doing, their lifestyle, how much they are likely to earn etc. We begin defining our relative station in life. What should a reasonably young person with “low income” do to…
Continue reading →When I first computed the overall equity mutual fund portfolio return for my retirement corpus after the crash it was close to 10%. I thought, “hey that does not seem bad! Maybe with time, the XIRR sensitivity to market movement is lower”. Turns out, there was a problem in the calculation and the return is…
Continue reading →