In a country like USA where there is a decent press, democracy and a vigilant SEC, the financial fraud culprits are brought to book quite slowly, if at all. What will happen to Indian customers who have been had? How does one react to the CEO of a foreign bank saying “we will make up […]
People have been investing since times immemorial. You could invest money as an owner (equity) as a lender (debt), as a landlord (rent) as a banker (gold). However, as the market got more and more sophisticated direct investing became difficult if not impossible. So the common investor needed a manager who would help him/her in […]
If you read magazines, newspapers, etc. or watch the business channels you would have been convinced that people chase performance. However when I recently ran a screen on the best mutual funds over the past 3 years, I found something interesting. The fund returns (on an annualised basis) was 33.07%, 31.30%, 30.79%, 30.42%, and 29.66%. […]
Now that the Pay commission recommendation has been accepted, inflation gets a nice leg up :). Now you can see inflation at 12.5% this week and perhaps at 13% the next week. This will increase the interest expectation of the people and therefore the reluctance of people to participate in RBI auctions. Thus if you […]
Many things in life are better achieved slowly if you want the gain to be permanent! Does this remind you of another boring task – the process of losing weight? If so, welcome! Investing and money management is a lot like eating. So is losing debt like dieting? maybe…maybe not. Is getting out of debt […]
It is customary for life insurance salesmen (by whatever name called) to sell life insurance by showing what is called an “illustration”. What is wrong with this “illustration” that is shown to potential customers? Simple, it does not mean a thing! IRDA has stipulated that the illustration should be made with 2 projected returns: 6% […]
Financial analysts try to determine the value of a stock by calculating a company’s discounted “free cash flow”. This is based on a series of computer models with assumptions about future sales, earnings and growth rates. These models are only as good as the programmers and analysts that build them. What you end up with […]