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…
Continue reading →At some point, after you started investing in mutual funds or stocks, you might have heard the words “annualized returns” or “CAGR” or “XIRR”. If you are interested to know what these mean, how they are calculated and how to interpret them, read on. But first, do check out My Handpicked Mutual Funds September 2018 (PlumbLine)….
Continue reading →PlumbLine is my list of handpicked mutual fund started in last Sep for beginners to accompany the freefincal robo advisory template. After a gap of four months, here is the September 2018 edition with three new additions. This marks one year of the robo template. If you are seeing this for the first time, please…
Continue reading →As pointed out yesterday, many investors get nervous when the market hits all-time highs on a daily basis and start asking “should I book profits now and re-enter later?”. Sadly, they only talk about the exit mark and have no idea when they would re-enter. It amounts to a random thought often influenced by what…
Continue reading →Each time the markets move up for a few sessions, it makes many investors uncomfortable. Is it a bubble? Is it euphoria? They wonder and if the movement results in an all-time time, the worry machines are turning in full swing. In this post, I discuss some reasons for this investor behaviour and how one…
Continue reading →In the 6th part on the series on tactical asset allocation techniques based on market timing, we evaluate the Motilal Oswal Value Index (MOVI) over five-year vs ten-year periods. The MOVI index data is available at the Motilal Oswal website used a combination of Nifty price to earnings ratio (PE), price to book value (PB) and dividend yield…
Continue reading →“I started investing Late, Can I Catch Up?” I am often asked this question. The catching up here refers to being able to create an adequate retirement corpus. The answer depends on the age of the person. For someone in the 30s (even late 30s), I think it is quite possible if they put their head down…
Continue reading →Change in any sphere of life is inevitable. In the last decade or so, change has been so rapid in the Indian financial industry space – especially that concerning mutual funds and investment advise – that it is scary to watch even from the sidelines. A couple of years ago, PV Subra(money.com) asked a gathering…
Continue reading →Using the August 2018 Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener published yesterday, we find out how large-cap and value-oriented mutual funds have fared against the Nifty 100 Equal Weight Index. This index has equal exposure to the top 100 stocks by free-float market capitalization. Sundaram and Principal AMC have index funds based on this. So like the Nifty…
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