Archive for January, 2009

Insurance Misselling – story!

I know of a few mis-sellers in the financial services who excel in mis-selling. Let us call them A, B and C. A is so used to mis-selling that when a ‘friend’ wanted to buy a DVD player, he was convincing her to get a lap top. This in spite of the fact that he [...]

Jeevan aastha is taxable?!

I was inundated by clients, friends, foes, readers, ….Is Jeevan Aastha a good investment? Two friends came to meet me. One had just invested Rs. 100 lakhs in JA, and the other was crying over the fact that the last date had passed. (I was not sure about the closing date anyway). I reassured my [...]

The 3 pigs story – and investing

a better version of this appeared recently in moneycontrol – in their wealth section… Shiva Garru of Hyderabad told me a story really difficult to believe, amusing for the readers and sad for the participant. His father in law had invested in fixed deposits and lost money, where as his father had a lot of [...]

Can I afford it? Ask Suzie Orman!

Suzie Orman is an American TV host who runs a very successful program on personal finance. She runs one section called “Can I afford it”? Needless to say it is very popular. So popular that it has, obviously, triggered a few Indian equivalents in the television space. Nothing much in the print or web – [...]

Mutual fund ranking trap…

In the past I had done 3 articles calling the article ‘ranking trap’.  These articles were written on 5th july, 20th july and 19th dec. Using past data to judge is height of  “&^%$#*” – fraud or comedy depending on your point of view. Mutual fund ranking is a fantastic money spinning game for most [...]

Slow down: taking its toll?

A couple of weeks back I had written a post about how the slow down will hurt some industries. Fairly clearly those companies (industries) which have a high cash burn ratio – and who cannot reduce fixed costs will bleed first. Financial services industry – life insurance, broking retail, general retail – are all vulnerable. [...]