The setting is familiar. It’s a cousin’s wedding, a Diwali card party, or a quiet Sunday lunch. You are enjoying your paneer tikka when Sharma Uncle—a distant relative, a retired neighbour, or perhaps your own Chacha ji—corners you. After five minutes of polite small talk about your job and marriage prospects, the pivot happens. Beta,…
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 →In a previous study published on freefincal, we showed that the Nifty 200 Momentum 30’s apparent alpha largely disappears among high-turnover stocks, and survives only in the illiquid half. The natural follow-up question is: is this a momentum-specific quirk, or does Scaled Turnover reshape other factor premia as well? Is Scaled Turnover a Universal Filter…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, we have “a late-starter story with a few bruises, some luck, and a system that finally makes sense”. 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 the bottom of…
Continue reading →The latest freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener is now available. Use it to screen for equity mutual funds that consistently perform. You can screen based on fund category & benchmark to identify mutual funds that offer higher returns than the benchmark while maintaining lower risk. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory…
Continue reading →As many are aware, all Government employees who have joined service on or after January 1st, 2004, are covered under the National Pension System (NPS). While the NPS definitely has the word “pension” in its name, it isn’t really a pension scheme, and if you are covered under the NPS, please do understand what the…
Continue reading →Often, readers email us saying, “I do not have enough to invest for my long-term goals. What should I do?” This is a common situation; most of us start our investment journey this way. Don’t despair. Here are some options to consider. 1. Consider clubbing all long-term goals together (greater than 10Y away) and investing…
Continue reading →It has been one of my favourite topics – Finance! Specifically, Personal Finance. You might think that I belong to Wall Street or was an investment banker, but I am not. I am a Pharmacologist and work for a hospital. I was brought up to think that one should save and that the only investment…
Continue reading →If you are interested in building a second income source immediately or wish to lay the foundation for it to bloom after you retire, here are some practical tips. In our opinion, every business should be guided by these two brilliant quotes by Rand Fishkin and Chris Do. Best way to sell something – don’t…
Continue reading →We grow up believing one thing about wealth: Buy property. It’s almost cultural. A house means stability. A second property means ‘real’ success. Rental income means security, guaranteed income for life. But somewhere along the way, the dream became heavy. Heavy EMIs. Heavy loans. Heavy responsibility. Heavy dependence on interest rates we cannot control. And…
Continue reading →‘Money cannot buy happiness, ‘money is the root of all evil’; Marriage is just a union of two souls. Isn’t it? Why bring money into the picture and spoil the sanctity of the union? Right? Many similar statements sound cool, but we all know the cost associated with survival. Marriage can change your financial life…
Continue reading →This is a National Pension Scheme Fund Screener to shortlist consistently performing NPS schemes. You can also identify NPS schemes that offer a higher return than the benchmark while maintaining lower risk. This is similar in design to the freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory tool…
Continue reading →In the world of personal finance, there is a silent disease that kills more wealth than market crashes or recessions. It isn’t ignorance. It isn’t inflation. It is Hyper-Optimisation. It is the irresistible urge to shift your money from an instrument giving 12% to one that might give 14%. We call this the 2% Itch….
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, we have a 25K salary-to-25X corpus growth story. 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 the bottom of this article. You can also access the full reader story archive. Opinions…
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. Update: Starting March 2026, the screening metrics have been significantly updated (details below). There are now three different screener files available. (1) Stocks with low volatility and momentum from the BSE 100…
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