I recently spoke to a group of employees about retirement planning. I was told that the group would mostly comprise young people in the 30-45 age bracket, but as always, there was a good chunk of older people in the audience. They were left shell-shocked to see some sample retirement plans – the corpus required…
Continue reading →Readers often ask, “What debt fund should I add to a long term investment portfolio?” After gains from debt mutual funds became taxable as per slab (applicable to units purchased from 1st April 2023), more readers have sought tax-efficient options. So here is an updated list of debt & hybrid mutual funds suitable for a…
Continue reading →We compare the portfolios of Parag Parikh Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund (PPDAAF) and Parag Parikh Conservative Hybrid Fund (PPCHF) to appreciate when each fund can be used. As noted earlier – Parag Parikh Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund: Who should invest? – the AMC wishes to maintain a debt-oriented allocation, making PPDAAF more tax-efficient than the PPCHF….
Continue reading →We publish a list of stocks with low volatility and momentum each month. We provide data for BSE 500 and BSE 100 stocks. There are now three different screener files available. (1) Stocks with low volatility and momentum from the BSE 100 large cap universe are available as a separate file (2) Stocks with low…
Continue reading →Many investors rush to invest Rs. 1.5 Lakh between April 1st and April 5th or as early as possible in the financial year to “maximize” the interest advantages of PPF. Is this wise? What are the factors to consider? If you invest Rs. 1.5 lakh during the initial five days of April, the entire amount…
Continue reading →you may have heard this in many personal finance forum: It is hard to get to a net worth of Rs. one crore. After that things become easier. In my experience, this is not an universal truth. Going from Rs. 10K to 20K networth and going from Rs. 1 Crore to 2 Crore could have…
Continue reading →A reader says, “I understand that the new tax regime is better than the old one because it does away with tax-deductible investments or purchases (80C, 80D, home loan interest, etc). However, I am used to investing in such instruments, and since I will continue to use them, is there any way to find out…
Continue reading →A reader wants to know, “Can I find out how much I need to invest for retirement without a calculator? Is there any thumb rule for this? Similarly, can I determine how much equity exposure I can have after retirement without a calculator?” We will discuss the first part of his question in this article…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “We have a retirement corpus of over Rs. Ten Crores. While we agree that having fewer funds is more manageable, we are nervous about stacking one cr in each fund, debt or equity. Do you think that fear is unfounded?” The number one goal in portfolio management is a peaceful sleep. So…
Continue reading →Many are drawn to the concept of generating passive income, yet few can achieve substantial results. This piece will explore the reasons behind such shortcomings and provide a passive income framework that can lead to a consistent income stream. Our focus will be on cultivating passive income online. Many of us struggle to build passive…
Continue reading →This article presents an outperformance consistency report of active mutual funds. This analysis was done for a SEBI-sponsored talk given to Tamil Nadu Investors Association Members on March 24th, 2024. Disclaimer: Fund performance reports present return and risk analysis of a fund with representative benchmarks and not investment recommendations. It must be expressly understood that the data…
Continue reading →These are the freefincal handpicked list of mutual funds for Jan-Mar 2024. New and old investors can use it according to their specific needs. The list is called “PlumbLine” and has been published since September 2017 for beginners to accompany the freefincal robo advisor tool. Most important! Plumbline is a mix of my opinions +…
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 appreciate the context of these investments. I started direct equity investing only after achieving a comfortable level of…
Continue reading →If diversification is about ‘not keeping all eggs in the same basket‘, rebalancing recognises that ‘what goes up, will come down‘. Let us revisit the topic of portfolio rebalancing and discuss what it is, why to do it, and simple ways to do it. What is portfolio rebalancing? Rebalancing is redeeming from one asset class…
Continue reading →We discuss a tactical entry and exit strategy for small cap mutual funds. This is the second such article. In the first part, we discussed a strategy based on the ratio of the small cap index to Nifty 50. This had a lower risk than a systematic investment in a small cap instrument and a…
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