The finance ministry wants pre-filled income tax returns from AY 2020-201 onwards as announced in the budget yesterday. At first sight, this is appealing and convenient, but will it result in a host of new problems? The finance minister in her budget speech said, “Pre-filled tax returns will be made available to taxpayers which will…
Continue reading →The finance minister in her budget speech said: “ETFs have proved to be an important investment opportunity for retail investors and has turned out to be a good instrument for Government of India’s divestment programme. To expand this further, The government will offer an investment option in ETFs on the lines of the Equity Linked…
Continue reading →A new section under 80EE of the IT act has been inserted in the Union Budget 2019-2020 to provide an impetus to affordable housing. An additional tax deduction of Rs. 1.5L has been provided on home loan interest for residential property from any financial institution subject to the following conditions Loan was sanctioned between 1st…
Continue reading →PlumbLine is my list of handpicked mutual funds. This was started in Sep 2017 for beginners to accompany the freefincal robo advisory template. This is the July 2019 edition (3rd quarter). I have added a disclosure of which funds I use from this list and what for what purpose. If you are seeing this for…
Continue reading →On June 27th 2019, the SEBI board approved several proposals to manage risk and liquidity in liquid mutual funds. Over a period of time, it will lower risk and therefore returns in this space. Here is a simple explanation of what these rules mean to the investor. The proposals were made by the Mutual Fund…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of L&T Emerging Businesses Fund a small cap fund. We compare how it has fared against its benchmark and peers. Launched in May 2014, this will invest in “Emerging companies” defined as an early stage business that has the potential to grow at a faster rate than established companies. Currently…
Continue reading →The way UTI Mutual fund handled the DHFL crisis leaves a lot to be desired to say the least highlighting the need for tighter rules on what an AMC should do in the case of a bond default. In early June 2019, Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd a housing finance company defaulted on almost 1000…
Continue reading →Each time gold prices start to move up, there is talk about how “gold is a hedge”, “gold is a safe haven”, about how every investor should have a small exposure to it, 5-10%. The question investors should really be asking is, how much gold in my portfolio will protect it against a market crash?…
Continue reading →In the last ten years, online mutual fund investing has been a gamechanger for both the investor and the industry. I think it is time to stop and ask is it unhealthy to buy mutual funds from an investment platform? Just think about the number of mutual fund investment channels available today, it almost seems like…
Continue reading →SBI Magnum Constant Maturity Fund can be considered for the debt part of the portfolio to be used for long term goals nearly free of credit risk (as per current scheme rules). The fund will invest at least 80% of its portfolio in central and state government bonds with a maturity of about 10 years….
Continue reading →This is a health insurance policy comparison spreadsheet prepared by K R Lakshminarayanan for his personal use. He has kindly come forward to share it with all of us. Use it as a base for comparing health insurance features and understand aspects of a policy that matter. Health insurance policies currently available can be classified…
Continue reading →When it comes to stock selection, two questions are always on the top of my head: (1) Is there a simple way to find out how good a business is? At least I must be able to identify stocks that I should not invest in. If I can do this in a visual manner from…
Continue reading →The 14th edition of the freefincal stock analyzer is now available for free download. Since Morningstar changed to site layout the sheet could no longer download financials and many users wrote to me about this. In this edition, I had changed the way the sheet retrieves data. Give this a try and let me know…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of Tata Equity PE Fund. We find out how consistently it has beat its benchmark and fares against peers in the category. Tata Equity PE fund is a value-oriented fund that tries to buy “good stocks at cheap valuations”. To achieve this, the fund uses several quantitative and qualitative factors…
Continue reading →This is how I lost Rs. 24,000 on my health insurance claim due to the presence of room rent sub-limits. However, having a policy without such sub-limits is not a bed of roses either. Readers may recall that my mother had ear surgery in Dec 2018 but I thought I got away with the sub-limit…
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