Archive for December, 2008

Forthcoming Economic Awakening…

Once when Brezhnev was taking his mother around his castle, showing off his cars and swimming pool, his mother asked him “Son, what if the Reds came back?”
Or so goes a story. If you think there have been excesses in the American economy, please re-think.
Top executives at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG (which put client’s [...]

How much to invest? read on!

this article appeared in www.moneycontrol.com
If you ever wondered how much to invest, read on!
THERE are some word pairs that go hand in hand. When you say one you cant help but think of the other – eg. chicken and egg, carrot and stick, marriage and love, beach and sun and so on. When it comes [...]

Advisor’s fault, of course!

I know a few HNI investors. One thing common to all HNI investors is that they do not like to be classified as a “HNI”. This is good for the adviser too, because no 2 HNIs are alike.
Some HNIs are well assured of themselves, satisfied with how their life is going and understand their finances. [...]

Understanding Costs and Benefits

A great swimming pool has been opened to the public recently near my residence. I told a friend it costs Rs. 12k for a 1-year membership. He said it was too expensive. He is right. There are pools in Navi Mumbai that cost Rs. 3k a year. So 12k is expensive. That was his argument.
My [...]

Index funds – a good place to be in uncertain times

this article appeared in reuters india’s  personal financial page….
If my students do not ask “When will the market touch 21000 again?”, I ask them the same question.
The most optimistic answer I have got is 6 months and the most pessimistic answer I have got is 2 years. Very clearly short term memory is [...]

Christmas hijacked by Madoff!

 
For most Americans, Christmas has been Hijacked. Or whatever was left of Christmas after the dreaded R word, the non-bail out of the auto giants, but the top most question is: In the fraud dictionary,
Has Madoff replaced Ponzi?
Every year, I watch, good, honest, hard-working people go and lose a lot of money to some Ponzi [...]

Advisor’s role?

The advantage of having a stiff target is sometimes good! Though many bank and brokerage house Relationship Managers might argue against this, to the best of my knowledge targets seem to be helping. It helps the bank and the RM for sure.

Funnily I found that customers are also very impressed.

One friend told me “My [...]

Lying about money!

Last week I was speaking to a cousin who has just retired – and is likely to get a few million in retirement proceeds. Make no mistake she is rich and not really dependent on this amount of money. Her husband earns very well and they are what can be called “upper middle class” [...]

Equity Valuation: An alphabetic soup!

Financial advisor designations and Equity valuations – there are so many of them that you put all together, you can create an alphabetic soup.

And life comes a full circle for me. When I started life (a few moons ago in the ‘80s) as a Chartered Accountant, I naively thought and believed that people invested [...]

Financial Planning Workshop

Along with a software company (www.myirisplus.com) I did financial planning workshops in various parts of the country. Delhi, Kolkatta, Indore, Hyderabad, Bengaluru (Bangalore), Pune, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Andheri, Churchgate, Chennai, Cochin, Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, ….To be honest the response from the ‘IFA’ – the person who sells life insurance and mutual funds to you was [...]