In a circular issued today, Dec. 19th, the EPFO allowed members who have not been employed for at least one month to withdraw up to 75% of their provident corpus. The EPFO circular clearly states that after two months of continuous unemployment 100% of the corpus can be withdrawn. There has been some confusion in this…
Continue reading →If you are looking for mid cap and small cap value stocks or mid cap growth stocks, there is now an easy way to create a shortlist for further study. NSE has recently launched strategic indices based on Nifty 500 (100 large caps + 150 midcaps and 250 small caps) and Nifty 200 (100 large…
Continue reading →After a long wait, the department of posts (DOP) has finally announced the India Post Internet Banking facility! This is a welcome move as it will allow users, especially senior citizens and their children to manage the account. This is a step by step user guide to register for the post office net banking facility and…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of ICICI Prudential Value Discovery Fund, one of the best-known value-oriented funds in the country. The fund has had a poor run in the last few years and has got many of its investors worried. This fund is partly why Sankaran Naren made a name for himself – he was the…
Continue reading →There is no compounding in mutual funds! Do not get fooled by “power of compounding”, “miracle of SIPs” and “8th wonder of the world” illustrations! The term “compounding” has no separate meaning than to represent compound interest. Since mutual funds offer no interest, the notion of compound interest or compounding does not apply to them. Here…
Continue reading →Interest in the Nifty Next 50 (NN50) has increased over the last couple of years due to its fantastic track record against many diversified equity mutual funds: Nifty Next 50: The Benchmark Index That No Mutual Fund Would Touch?! However, the NN50 is a volatile index with a huge peak to low falls (drawdown). So naturally, investors…
Continue reading →On Dec 9th, 2018, Fee-Only India, a community of SEBI registered pure fee-only advisors met in Bangalore (pictures below). As patrons of fee-only financial planning, they invited Ashal and me. This is the third fee-only meet and the second this year. The first was in Sep 2017 at Mumbai, the second in March at Hyderabad. It…
Continue reading →The union cabinet today has cleared five changes to the national pension scheme (NPS). The most important of which is that the NPS now has EEE status and the corpus that you can withdraw is tax-free. EEE means, that the money you invest in the scheme (up to a limit) is exempt income tax (1st…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of HDFC Hybrid Equity Fund and its old avatar HDFC Balanced. As we did last week with ICICI Prudential Equity & Debt Fund (ICICI Balanced), we shall use Nifty 100 TRI as the benchmark. We shall also use both ICICI Equity & Debt and ICICI Balanced Advantage as additional benchmarks. The idea…
Continue reading →“Should I use the same mutual funds for all my goals, or should I have separate funds?” is a question that investors often ask. The answer you can either go with the same funds for all goals or have separate portfolios. I discuss how to use the same funds for all financial goals. What are…
Continue reading →As announced earlier, I will be publishing market analysis using long-term technical indicators from the time to time. In the Oct. 2018 edition, we discussed if we are in a bear market. Have things changed now? Let us find out using the Bollinger Bands. They are easy to use and understand for investors to spot long-term…
Continue reading →Are you interested in timing the market? Then here is how you can do it right. Please do not assume that buying on dips is market timing. It is delusional. In June 2018 I started a market timing aka tactical asset allocation series, and I was surprised by the reactions to it. Most people who…
Continue reading →Ever wondered which are the most popular direct plan mutual funds? This is a list of the largest (AUM wise) equity and debt direct plan funds. The data is sourced from AMFI and is as on Sep 2018. The post is inspired by a series of questions by Anath at Facebook group, Asan Ideas for…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of ICICI Prudential Equity & Debt Fund (previously called ICICI Balanced) and a comparison with ICICI Prudential Balanced Advantage Fund. Let us find out how these funds have fared against equity benchmarks and discuss when to choose which fund. Let us start with the basics. What is the difference between…
Continue reading →It should now be reasonably apparent to the regular freefincal reader that Index funds are becoming harder and harder to beat and that one have easily constructed a minimalist index fund portfolio suitable for all risk appetites and ages. So the question now in many active mutual fund investor is, should I now shift current active funds…
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