It usually starts innocently enough: a stock tip from a colleague, a trending news headline, or a weekend spent skimming stock screeners. Fast forward a few years, and you are staring at a chaotic, 50-to-100-stock portfolio sitting deep in the dumps, impossible to track, and thoroughly failing to generate alpha. About the author: Jay Sheth is…
Continue reading →I feel almost a little silly asking such a basic question on a forum like this. It sounds too simple, perhaps even embarrassingly obvious. Yet I have often felt that, despite being educated and earning well, many of us have surprisingly little understanding of what money actually is. Money is often treated either as a…
Continue reading →This article compares my stock portfolio with an equivalent investment in a Nifty index fund and the Nifty 100 Low Volatility 30 TR index. We post this comparison each month. Before we begin, new readers need to understand the context of these investments. Update: We recently added a new tool to the freefincal investor circle…
Continue reading →We discuss the performance consistency of actively managed small cap funds by comparing them with the Nifty Midcap 150 index. Some readers may be surprised as to why we are not choosing a small cap index like the Nifty Small Cap 250. This is because we are not trying to pursue a PhD here (I…
Continue reading →A reader who sent us the following details wants to know if investing Rs. 75K a month (increasing 10% a year) will fetch him Rs. 10 Crores after 15-20 years with a 12% return expectation. He also wants to know how to allocate this money. Age:32 Profession: Consultant Emergency fund – building Term insurance –…
Continue reading →I think we often misunderstand what we should expect from a financial adviser. Ask someone why they hired an adviser, and quite often the answer is: “Tell me which mutual fund I should invest in.” Or: “Which stocks are going to do well?” Or perhaps: “Do you know of any investment that can give me…
Continue reading →This debt mutual fund screener supports portfolio selection, tracking, and learning. It also includes hybrid funds that invest in bonds. It will satisfy investors seeking to invest in money market funds, banking PSU funds, and similar instruments. The sheet tracks the credit quality of the portfolio’s bonds and the bond maturity profile. Instead of using…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, “This is my 1st update to the story published in 2022 – My investment journey from random Purchases to a goal-based portfolio“. About this series: I am grateful to readers for sharing intimate details about their financial lives, which benefits us all. Some of the previous editions are linked at…
Continue reading →In June, we launched NaviPlan: a privacy-focused multi-asset tracker and Goal Planner. Developed by Gokul of Naviran Technologies in association with freefincal, this tool lets users track mutual funds, stocks, FDs, global assets, NPS, pension funds, and insurance policies! The user can tag these to financial goals and track their progress. The tool also offers…
Continue reading →This index fund screener is based on tracking error and return differences wrt benchmarks (also known as tracking differences). It will help users evaluate how efficiently an index fund has tracked its underlying benchmark. It will also help them understand how tracking a midcap index, such as the Nifty 100 or 500, differs from tracking…
Continue reading →This composite case is built from patterns I see repeatedly in practice. Names and numbers are fictional. I show every calculation so you can check it and reuse the method. This is Part 1 of a four-part case study. About the author: Ajay Pruthi is a fee-only SEBI-registered investment advisor. He can be contacted via his…
Continue reading →In Aug 2026, we published a report comparing Active Mid-Cap Mutual Funds with the Nifty Midcap 150. We used 5-year, 4-year and 3-year rolling returns. What about the performance over longer time frames? Is it worth staying invested in an active mid-cap fund, paying a high management fee in the hope that it will beat…
Continue reading →Over the past few months, I’ve found myself asking AI more and more financial questions. Sometimes I already knew the answer. Other times I simply wanted to see how it reasoned. Can it calculate a retirement corpus? Compare the old and new tax regimes? Explain sequence of returns risk? Build an asset allocation? Review an…
Continue reading →This ETF screener tracks errors and differences (ETF return minus index return). It will help users evaluate how efficiently an ETF has tracked its underlying benchmark. The tracking error is the ETF’s standard deviation minus the index’s monthly return differences. The lower the tracking error, the more efficiently the ETF tracks the index. Unlike returns,…
Continue reading →When we talk about financial freedom, we usually think about income, savings, investments, debt, and returns. But there is another factor that can quietly influence our financial decisions: Trust. Yes, Trust. We trust our bank relationship manager. We trust the insurance agent who has been visiting our family for years. We trust the neighbour who…
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