After much debate and hesitation, I finally took the plunge and purchased super top-up health insurance for my family. Since I have written several posts on health insurance, I thought I will share the details here. This is not a recommendation and the purchase I made is truly personal. I am sure there are better…
Continue reading →So a question on many lips is, “Should I now switch from large-cap funds to index funds?” the reason being the new rule about large-cap funds that 80% of their portfolio should be from the top 100 stocks in terms of full market capitalization (that is from the NSE 100). In this post, I discuss…
Continue reading → In this guest post, SEBI registered fee-only advisor Avinash Luthria who is part of the freefincal list of advisors and fee-only India suggests that investors should minimize costs through index funds and not waste energy fighting the law of no-free-lunch, instead use it as a tool for thinking, to avoid mistakes and also. Avinash Luthria is Founder,…
Continue reading →I discuss how to use how to time the market by spotting bullish and bearish trends with the moving average crossover. The idea is well known in technical analysis and involves two moving averages. This is the 7th post in the series on tactical asset allocation (link to all posts). We had earlier considered market Timing With…
Continue reading →If you have started investing in equity mutual funds and/or stocks in the last few years and if your financial needs are far, far away, this is the best time to invest in equity. You don’t need to be an expert or genius to recognise that the markets are going to move up and down…
Continue reading →In this post, I discuss the difference between risk and volatility. Distinguishing the two can lead to better money management. Please do not expect the usual sales guys argument that volatility is good and everything will turn out okay in the long term. So let us start with the basics. This post is part of Resolve –…
Continue reading →Version 3 of the freefincal excel stock screener now includes the Joel Greenblatt Magic Formula Screener. This quickly allows you to select quality companies available at attractive prices. The screening can be done index-wise. sector-wise and market-cap-wise. The financial data is obtained from Value Research and the multiple screens available have been created with the help…
Continue reading →A few days ago, we had discussed, what is the best way to invest in Nifty Next 50 Index? and among the 8 choices available to invest in the Nifty Next 50 Index – which by now most readers should recognise as a high-risk, potential high-reward, hard to beat index – we had singled out three. These are…
Continue reading →After the IL&FS bond downgrade, it should be clear to all debt mutual fund investors that a high credit rating does not mean much. Even a small degrade will affect the NAV. While I am firm of the opinion that such credit risk NAV falls are part and parcel of debt mutual fund investing, many…
Continue reading →Yes, that is right! Each time we get on the internet, search for information, get entertained, use social media, shop online, buy and sell stocks, pretty much anything, we are part of someones’ data experiment! Whether we like it or not, whether we consider it an infringement of privacy or not, we simply have no…
Continue reading →Last weekend, rating agency ICRA downgraded bonds of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) . The long-term bond ratings went from AA(+) to BB. That is a huge downgrade! We need to stop and count this! AA(+) –> AA –> AA(-) –> A(+) –> A –> A(-) –> BBB(+) –> BBB –> BBB(-) —> BB(+) —> BB….
Continue reading →In June 2013, Rajesh Dalmia a certified financial planner and director of Mandar Learning Academy authored an impressive do it yourself financial planning guide for investors to understand the basic features of insurance planning and goal-based investing. He readily agreed to shares his work here. I think it is time that a new generation of…
Continue reading →By now it should be no surprise to freefincal regulars that the Nifty Next 50 (NN50) has a fantastic (though volatile) track record and most actively managed mutual funds struggle to beat it. In fact, no active fund has NN50 as its benchmark. So this naturally draws the question, what is the best way to invest in…
Continue reading →Every teachers’ day, I think about my third standard class teacher. She is a visionary. She looked me in the eye and said, “you will come to nothing in life” and that turned out to be true. I have no idea what I did to make her so angry, but I still remember where I sat…
Continue reading →The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) published a report on transforming India’s gold market in February 2018 and proposed the introduction of a new financial product: Gold Savings Account (GSA). Let us look at its main features, benefits and discuss how and when to use the GSA. As on date, the scheme is only a…
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