Here are three simple tips to choose the right financial advisor for you with no conflicts of interest (fee-only registered with SEBI). If you wish to outsource money management, either because you cannot do it yourself for want of time, confidence or expertise or because you prefer outsourcing, a trusted financial advisor is necessary. More…
Continue reading →After 13 years of using a feature phone, I finally decided to get myself a smartphone. Selecting one I realized that many of us have the right approach to buying a smartphone but fail to apply it to managing money and investing. First some blah blah about my new phone, kindly bear with me. Did…
Continue reading →Dear reader, this is a compilation of 100 questions that new investors in mutual funds should first ask and then seek answers. Unlike a conventional FAQ that deals with technical aspects on mutual funds like, what is NAV; what is the purchase cut-off time etc. the focus here is to ask questions that will make…
Continue reading →“What is your honest advice to friends in the MF distributor community? Do you suggest that it might be better for us to turn into fee-only financial planners or SEBI registered investment advisers?” This is a question asked on Youtube and think the best person to answer it is, Swapnil Kendhe, who successfully transitioned from…
Continue reading →Here is how you can replicate the returns and performance of NIFTY LargeMidcap 250 Index using Nifty 50 and Nifty next 50 Index funds. Motilal Oswal had filed an NFO application based on this index with SEBI, but this is unlikely to see the light of day (and that is good for investors). This post…
Continue reading →The people have spoken and how! The stock market may rejoice at the results of Lok Sabha 2019, but the new government has its work cut out. Modi 2.0 faces many economic challenges, perhaps because of their own doing: demonetization. Read about any sector, be it agriculture, auto, consumption, exports, banking, airlines etc, the one…
Continue reading →Use this nifty valuation tool to find out if the stock market is expensive or cheap using PE, PB, Div Yield, Bollinger Bands and much more. The idea to try and understand the state of the market using multiple methods. An example of some of the results obtained with this sheet is here: Are we…
Continue reading →This is a performance of Aditya Birla Sun Life Tax Relief 96 Fund, an ELSS mutual fund that qualifies for tax saving under section 80 C. In Jan 2019, I had featured this as one among the seven consistent ELSS performers. Let us take an in-depth look at its performance. Started in 1996 as a…
Continue reading →Let us find out how actively managed equity mutual funds have performed against reperesentative category benchmarks using the May 2019 Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener. The screener compares every possible 1,2,3,4 and 5-year returns of active funds with indices from April 3rd 2006. So please note that we are evaluating performance over the last 13 years…
Continue reading →From the financial year 2018-2019, long term capital gains above Rs. one lakh from stocks and equity mutual funds are taxed at the rate of 10%. The assessment year 2019-2020 is the first time when taxpayers will have to report equity LTCG in schedule CG of ITR2. However, since the income tax department did not…
Continue reading →Yes, NRIs can invest in PPF accounts that were opened when they were resident Indians in 2020. They will get the same interest rate as everyone else. The confusion arose when the ministry of finance announced in October 2017 that subscribers should close their PPF accounts when they become non-residents. However, in a circular dated…
Continue reading →This time on reader story, we have an account of old share certificates revealed by the Kerala flood and how FB group Asan Ideas for Wealth admin Ashal Jauhari, helped a reader (who prefers anonymity) convert them into Demat form. More such stories from the archives: How I transferred my home loan from LICHFL to…
Continue reading →If you explore the list of multicap mutual funds, something strange might catch your eye. ICICI Prudential Multicap Fund started in October 1994 has only an AUM of about 3600 Crores. Let us find out how this fund has performed keeping in mind its evolution over time. ICICI Prudential Multicap Fund: History Some mutual funds…
Continue reading →My mom had ear surgery a few months ago. The fee for the surgeon and the anaesthetist was surprisingly low! The former getting about Rs. 11,000 and the latter about Rs. 4,500. Is that low? Or is that high considering that both would do about 3-4 such surgeries a day and about 8-10 a week?…
Continue reading →Do you have stock options from your employer? Then you are likely to be overexposed to individual stocks. That is the bulk of your portfolio could be from just one or two shares. This is a huge concentration risk and must be handled systematically. Since I know many readers suffer from this problem, I requested…
Continue reading →