Are we now in a bear market? The Senex has fallen 8% this month and 14% the last year. If you had invested a lump sum at the end of May 2014, it would given close to nothing or even a small loss. Does this mean we are in a bear market now? This is…
Continue reading →Download a free early retirement calculator for India with a checklist to retire early in India. You can also down a free e-book to plan early retirement. When I earlier asked “Is it possible to retire early in India?“, many readers assumed that I meant early retirement is not possible in India. All I wanted to…
Continue reading →This is a guest post by one of the earliest freefincal readers, Anish Mohan. In 2001, Anish, a profound believer in Swami Vivekananda abandoned his romance for communism and took up a job in the Indian software industry, where he witnessed the good days of post-liberalisation era, punctuated with events of the 2008 global crash. In…
Continue reading →Here are some less-understood facts about the National Pension Scheme (NPS). National Pension Scheme comes with no guarantees of returns. NPS is a mutual fund and carries with it all the risks associated with any old mutual fund. Read more: NPS investments are mutual fund investments! The aim of NPS is to generate a corpus…
Continue reading →Investing for long-term goals is governed by the following tenets. 1) Beat inflation either by investing more and/or with adequate exposure to volatile but productive assets. Preferably ‘and’, not ‘or’. 2) Understand the importance of containing volatility and that trying to maximise returns by being more aggressive is like trying to run a marathon like…
Continue reading →SEBI will soon make it possible for investors (shoppers?!) to buy mutual funds via e-commerce websites. A discussion on the pros and cons of such a move with a poll which I request you to participate in. Why are they doing it? One word – costs! If the cost of acquiring a customer is Rs…
Continue reading →Many years ago, I found, in an exchange of comments in a blog, a curious statement: ELSS funds have a lock-in period (of 3 years). Hence, the fund manager can operate without redemption pressure, resulting in better returns. No evidence was provided to prove or disprove this statement and I thought no further about it. A…
Continue reading →A review of Amit Trivedi’s new book, Riding The Roller Coaster -Lessons from financial market cycles we repeatedly forget. I was fortunate to listen to Amitji on March 1st 2015 at the Mumbai Investor Workshop. We were short of a speaker and Subra requested Amitji to speak on debt mutual funds. Amit Trivedi is a renowned…
Continue reading →When you get a home loan, are you really saving tax? Listen to Ashal Jauhari explain why it is an illusion to think that one can save tax by getting a home loan! Here are the videos of the third Chennai investor meet held on Sep. 2015. I was able to videograph only part of…
Continue reading →This is a guest post by Guhan Ramanan, a friend I got to know through the blog. I requested Guhan to share his money management journey and hence this post. Guhan is what I would call a ‘quick-to-understand’ investor.When he saw the value of managing money with a plan and in an organized way, a…
Continue reading →A simple way to understand a loan EMI calculation in terms of a lump sum investment and a monthly SIP is discussed in this post. This is applicable for all kinds of loans – home loan, car loan, personal loan etc. There is a close connection between investment mathematics and loan/mortgage mathematics. In fact, those…
Continue reading →MF Utility is a mutual fund transaction portal jointly run by 25 AMCs. From today, 1st Jan 2016, investors can use its online transaction portal to invest in direct mutual funds. Instructions for how to go about this can be found here: MF Utility Online Platform is operational! Here some screenshots of the transaction portal taken…
Continue reading →MF Utility, online transaction portal for investing in direct mutual fund plans from 25 AMCs (as of now), is operational! Here are instructions to access the portal. Steps necessary to use the online facility of MF Utility Obtain a Common Account Number (CAN) following the instructions in the investor page of MFU The CAN form…
Continue reading →Each December, I conduct a personal financial audit. I take stock of my financial goals and other aspects of personal finance relevant to me. For the last couple of years I have been sharing the gist of such audits at freefincal: This may help interested readers to conduct one themselves: how to conduct a personal…
Continue reading →Here is a simple way to construct a diversified mutual fund portfolio, or to declutter and reconstruct an existing portfolio using the investment style box available at mutual fund star rating portals. The following are the attributes of a ‘good’ portfolio. Diversification across assets classes (equity and fixed income should do) Diversification within each asset class….
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