A risk and return comparison of Gold (INR, per gram) and Sensex data over the last 40 years reveals that gold is a high-risk, low-reward investment! This is an updated gold vs equity study, much more comprehensive than previous reports. It is important for investors to understand these results especially when gold returns look promising during periods when equity…
Continue reading →Imagine that you are a risk-averse investor and wanted to “park” some money for a few days, and desired to earn a bit more than a savings bank account, an overnight mutual fund is a reasonable choice. If you wanted to extend the investment duration to a few months, a liquid mutual fund is not bad…
Continue reading →A typical NRI with no set return date to India has a unique financial planning dilemma. Should I plan to stay put or for return? Do I invest in NRE FDs paying 7% or global equities expected to deliver between 4-6%? Should I buy a house abroad or rent instead? It’s an endless list. In…
Continue reading →This is a review of Franklin India Prima Fund: a 25-year-old fund that invests predominantly in mid cap stocks with a mix of value and growth style. Started on Dec 1st 1993, the fund has performed across fund manager changes. R Janakiraman who also manages Franklin Smaller companies has been at the helm since Feb 2008….
Continue reading →In this guest post, R. Srivatsan discusses the importance of time and energy budgeting for financial success! Srivatsan would only like to be referred as a “long time reader” of freefincal. Regulars may recall that he wrote a wonderful guest post on the importance of looking at the earnings power of a stock: It’s Earnings That Count: Forget…
Continue reading →Here is how one can choose a liquid fund in 2019 by minimizing credit risk. The recipe is simple: stop chasing returns; stop using star ratings and understand investment strategies. In the past couple of years, we have seen huge losses in liquid funds – something that was considered to be impossible. So we would…
Continue reading →Here are lessons from the best and worst performing mutual funds of 2018. None of the funds mentioned are to be considered for investment. Observing annual returns can make us understand risk better and sometimes introduce us to a new investment strategy adopted by mutual funds. In this 2018 return means return between Jan 1st…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of HDFC Balanced Advantage Fund, previously HDFC Prudence Fund. Does it still make sense to consider this fund or continue investing in it? Let us find out by comparing it with Nifty 50 and HDFC Hybrid Equity (Balanced) fund. This fund has had a colorful history The fund was launched in…
Continue reading →Here are three simple steps to review the mutual funds we hold. When we select a fund, we look at past performance: last three years, five years etc. However, the moment we buy units of a particular mutual fund, all that matter is its performance from that point in time. For example, suppose we start a…
Continue reading →Jan 1st 2019 marks the sixth anniversary of introducing direct plan mutual funds (where no commissions are removed daily from invested value before publication of NAV). This is the returns and corpus lost to commissions by not switching from regular plans (where commissions are removed) to direct. Please show this to your friends who still…
Continue reading →ICICI Prudential Focused Bluechip was launched in May 2008 right in the middle of the 2008 meltdown Armed with a lean AUM and 20-twenty stock mandate, the management could navigate the crisis well and soon became the darling of both the sales and investment community. Here is why the going will be tough for this (and other…
Continue reading →Here is a strange but true fact about how mutual funds beat the index! It is also the reason why I keep stressing on downside protection. Mutual funds that beat the index consistently find it easier to beat the index when it falls than when it rises! Here are numbers from the Dec 2018 freefincal Equity mutual fund…
Continue reading →Abhishek Kumar joins the freefincal list of fee-only financial planners and to mark the occasion, here is an account of his chequered journey. Abhishek is also part of fee-only India an association of fee-only financial planners and we met last month at Bangalore. You can contact Abhishek via his website Sahajmoney. Now over to him. While…
Continue reading →This is a performance review of Kotak Standard Multicap Fund, previously known as Kotak Select Focus Fund. As on date, this fund has consistently outperformed its benchmark in terms of risk and reward. However, the fund has swelled in AUM rapidly and this now has the highest AUM among diversified equity funds (excluding SBI Nifty 50…
Continue reading →Here is how you can create your own low volatility, momentum stock list with this download from the NSE published each month. Each month I hope to publish such a list (see: Nine momentum stocks with low volatility for 2019), but here is how you DIY this. What is the meaning of momentum stock? Momentum investing essentially…
Continue reading →